Travelling Full Time On The Road During COVID

June 24, 2020|Journeys

If you are reading this I hope you have enjoyed following our journey so far. I (Kylie) have thoroughly enjoyed writing about it. We have had so much fun and feel like this is just the beginning with plenty more travel years up our sleeves.

If you are new to our journey we are currently in South Australia and staying in the Barossa Valley. The famous Barossa Valley was high on our list of places to visit and we were thrilled to have finally made it here after 10 months of being on the road. I have written another blog about this to help with finding some great wineries in the Barossa Valley because it really is a must when in South Australia.

Just as we were starting to explore South Australia we began to hear the news of COVID-19. It really threw us just like the rest of the world. We live full time from our caravan and do not have a house to go back to. We didn’t know what was to come in the upcoming months and we unsure of the restrictions that were about to be put in place. But we knew it was time to put our forward thinking caps on and find somewhere to bunker down for this pandemic that was just about to unfold.

Luckily enough we have family in Victoria, so we made the drive to the chilly Victorian state and that is where we have stayed. We stayed 15kms from the city of Bendigo. It was a blessing in disguise. We have loved our stay here, even though it has been very cold. We arrived with no warm clothes and underestimated how cold it really was in Victoria. As soon as we arrived we built a fire pit and had this lit nearly every evening from 2.00pm onwards.

Entering lock down we thought it was going to be hard not being able to go exploring and adventuring like we do everyday. We thought the kids might go stir crazy which would make Dan and I go stir crazy. But the exact opposite happened…..we seemed to slip into lock down very well. There were limited fights from the kids and everyone seemed to just gel together. This really does go to show how well you adapt to living in a van too. It might seem like a small space to live but there is enough room for everyone to live inside.

We occupied our time by going on bike rides everyday, Dan found a great bike for $20 so everyday we went on a bike ride as part of essential daily exercise. This helped everyone find their ’20’ and into some sunshine.

The kids spent everyday outside building and climbing trees. Where our van was parked was on land at the back of our families property. This had a creek bed, lots of area to run around and the kids loved playing in the mud. Lucky we have a washing machine in our van. Everyday we were able to do a load of washing, we love our washing machine, best decision was to have it added into the build.

The weather was the biggest shock, it was cold everyday and the nights were the coldest. Our van has a reverse cycle cooler/heater and this gets turned on at 7.30pm every night and gets turned off in the morning. This keeps us warm through-out the night. We would not travel without our heater. It has been a lifesaver for the Victorian winter.

We have gone about everyday like we would normally would. We now cook dinner inside the van and still continue to do the kids schooling. Dan stopped flying to his mine site and has had a few months off work which has been great to have us all together for a long period of time.

We are getting itchy feet and are ready to start to travelling up the east coast of Australia. Our plan first though is head to the bottom of the Victoria’s coast and do the Great Ocean Drive. This has been high on our bucket list and we cannot wait to get there! Check out our next blog post to find out all the tips on road tripping along this iconic stretch of road.