Reality check: Lessons from travelling Australia with a baby
How did I learn these lessons?
We’ve been travelling Australia for just over six months now, but I started this post originally when our daughter was 8 months old.
I’ve learnt more lessons since then. It’s been almost a year since the first draft of this post. I’ve left paragraphs largely intact from my original writing as a reflection of my thoughts then, when we were still deep in the trenches of babyhood.
As I’ve added more points to this post, I’ve reflected on the first year of Sprout’s life and the lessons I learnt in the first twelve months. I can say that just over a year into parenthood was a turning point for me and things started to get easier overall, not just with travelling.
Any positive reflections, I’ll be honest, were likely added most recently - as time (and therapy) has softened my view of new parenthood.
When I look back on Sprout’s babyhood, I mostly feel relief. It was enormously difficult time that I’ve very grateful we won’t be repeating (happily, one-and-done family here).
My biggest lesson, in 18 months of parenthood and travelling, is of self-compassion. It’s an ongoing lesson and there’s been far greater things written on the topic than I could ever offer. It doesn't feature on this list. But I mention it as a reminder to be kind, to yourself and others, and to remember than nothing you see on the internet, on social media or of strangers in the playground is ever the full story.
The person and the mother who began writing this post at 8 months postpartum seems like an entirely different person. I’d rather like to give her a hug and show her what we’re up to now.
So, here it is - my 9 hard lessons from travelling Australia with a baby.
Planning feels pointless (it’s not)
Finding the time to plan a trip is tricky, staying up late or squeezing minutes out of the day around the normal parenting and household workload.
It’s frustrating to spend time planning a trip to find it derailed in no time at all. We’ve left the house with a plan and changed it several times in one day.
Sickness, lack of sleep, extra fussiness, changes to nap schedule, timing medication, dropping milk feeds…
There’s an endless list of things that can pop up and make travelling more difficult or even super ill-advised.
Things like bad weather, heavy traffic or road detours that were previously annoying are considerably more frustrating when you’re trying to travel with a baby and meet everyone’s needs.
Travelling with a baby requires greater flexibility - but more planning.
You’ll need to make sure all the effort you’re taking to travel with your kid is worth it.
Things that are essential to check:
Opening days + hours
Expected distance + driving time
If pre-booking is required for any activities you want to do
Really useful things to know before you leave:
The weather forecast
Parking
Ammenties
How far you might have to walk
A rough plan for the day
How long you expect any planned activities to take
This was our ‘test run’ - a first overnighter a few hours from home when Sprout was 3 months old. It’s a lot of stuff for just one night!
It’s stressful before you even get moving
The big shuffle begins.
Packing and dragging an extraordinary amount of stuff to the car from the house.
Even if you were organised and had everything neatly lined up, the nature of life with a baby means you’ll inevitably need something from the bottom of the bag before you get a chance to leave the house.
If you’re sleep deprived, there’ll be a lot of second guessing and double checking.
If there’s more than one responsible adult, try to sort out who’s in charge of packing what or you’ll still thinking of questions about nappies and bottles and toys and keys half way down the street.
If you’re often heading out for day trips, start deciding where things will ‘live’ while you’re out. Is there a good pocket for spare dummies? Do you have a place for wet or dirty clothes?
I always feel under incredible pressure to time our leaving the house with a perfectly full tummy of milk, clean nappy and a suitably sleepy baby.
Do you know where you’re going? Excellent! I hope you’re leaving with plenty of time…
Double the drive time
Before we had Sprout, we talked about slowing down our travel days.
We liked the idea of a change of pace and more time to enjoy the spaces we stopped in. But I don't think we realised that travelling would take us twice as long!
If the trip is over two hours of driving, we tend to double it.
Driving from our home town in South East SA to my parents' house in Southern Adelaide used to take under four hours. Now we usually take between 7-8 hours to comfortably make the drive.
Why?
We try to keep Sprout in her car seat for a maximum of two hours. It’s generally accepted as best practice and we’ve found it to be a healthy limit for everyone in our family.
We tend to stop for a minimum of 30 minutes after a two hour driving stretch. With a nappy change, snack for everyone (or a bottle) and play time for Sprout, it's easy for time to slip by. If we are stopping for a meal in a nice spot and with decent weather, we usually spend about an hour out of the car.
Unexpected stops happen.
It's rare that we make a car trip without at least one unplanned stop. Some days there are many, many unplanned stops. Those are long days for everyone.
One memorable trip that should have taken about six hours to travel home (doubled from 3 hours of driving) actually took 10 long, exhausting and tear-filled hours.
We spend a lot of our travel time in playgrounds and green spaces to find baby-safe places to play. There’s a common thread of families travelling Australia with a baby or older kids, we’re all on the playground lap!
Go fast or go well
Do we always double the drive time?
No, but it does take a whole lot longer than pre-kid travel.
Recently we did an eight hour stretch of driving in twelve hours (Sprout has just turned 1). Everything about the trip went perfectly and we had no unplanned stops! We stopped every two hours and got lucky that Sprout had a good travel day. It's the longest stretch we've travelled and don't plan on doing it again without good reason.
Travelling fast was more stressful, even though the day went well.
We watched the clock at each stop and knew that an unexpected issue would derail our plans. We hurried our meals and cut-down on play time. We had to maximise our driving time, so we found a safe spot to pull over at around the two-hour mark instead of looking for somewhere more enjoyable to take a break.
When we travel with our baby, we choose a priority for the day.
We can focus on making good time or on enjoying the journey. We talk about our priorities the day before travelling and also when we get in the car. 'What does today look like for you?' is a common question to check we are on the same page.
When we choose to travel fast, we cut our breaks to 30 minutes. Jacob and I eat a lot more fast food and rely on pouches of baby food for Sprout supplemented with easy-to-prepare fruits and veggies. Sprout may have a smoothie in her Subo (no spill!) bottle and a banana whilst we eat breakfast at Maccas.
When travelling fast, I feel more pressure to keep Sprout happy in the backseat to avoid any unplanned stops.
I spend more of the drive entertaining her because we aren't spending time playing at the park or on the grass.
I work harder to support her to sleep during nap time.
There's less time to recharge because our breaks at shorter and I spend all day actively parenting whilst Jacob spends almost all day driving.
Times when we choose to travel fast:
Super long drives (six hours or more of driving time).
An unexpected trip - we need to drive somewhere with less than 24 hours notice.
Travelling on someone else's schedule
Strict arrival time, e.g. travelling a few hours to an event on the same day.
The route has very few services, town and suitable rest stops along the way
Most days, we choose comfort or enjoyment as priorities. We don't follow a schedule, there's no arrival time and we value the journey as an experience. We get there when we get there.
Travelling slow is infinitely more enjoyable - no matter how long the day stretches out - because we focus on getting everyone's needs met.
We play with other kids at the playground, take the time to make coffee and take in our surroundings. There's time to read the signs, sit on the grass and take a walk around the new town.
Jacob and I can give each other breaks - someone taking Sprout off to look for magpies or check out the flowers whilst the other person gets a few minutes of peace and solitude.
We are more likely to pick up groceries and prepare our own food. There's time to drive around looking for a lunch spot. We set up the awning, sit at our own table and chairs and share food as a family.
We choose slow travel days because we travel so frequently.
With all our practice, we haven't learnt to travel faster with a baby but how to travel better as a family.
Double the driving time can mean double the fun.
Enjoying the simple things - a picnic rug, a couple of twigs and some sunshine on a cold day. These little moments wouldn’t happen if we tried to travel fast.
See less, enjoy more
We plan for one main activity a day as a family and fill in the rest of the day with meeting everyone’s needs and getting chores down.
There’s a lot of pressure to ‘do all the things’ - especially if you’re comparing to other people and what you see on social media.
I know it looks like fun - especially on camera - but spending every single day on-the-go isn’t sustainable. No one really travels that way long term, or at least not without burning out.
If you want to enjoy your family holiday - even if it’s a ‘once in a lifetime’ trip - slow it down.
Prioritise what you really want to see and schedule those activities, even if they don’t require a pre-booking. Then add any nice-to-have extras. And leave time on every single day for downtime - whatever that looks like for your family.
If you’re travelling full-time, add an extra day to a comfortable, cruisy destination to catch up on jobs, spend some time doing nothing and take a breath before moving on.
Yes, you might see less.
But you’ll enjoy more.
And with more time to take it all in and soak up the sounds, feelings and little moments of pleasure - you’ll have really rich, wonderful memories too.
Nap time is a daily grind
Having a consistent nap routine is hard - especially on non-travel days, where Sprout naps in the camper trailer.
Car naps are usually easy and a decent back-up plan when we can't get Sprout to settle. Unfortunately, it gets expensive in both fuel and time!
There's less control over the environment when you're staying away from home.
I've lost count of the number of times someone has started mowing a lawn, blowing leaves or running their bus engine just when I'm trying to get Sprout to sleep. A neighbour at a caravan park was busy working on his car and every time he picked up his tools, Sprout would cry - loudly. We didn't have our car at the time and had no real way to escape the situation. Eventually, he came over for a chat and put the tools down for a bit whilst I got the baby to sleep - to which we were all very grateful.
Getting a baby to settle to sleep in a bright, noisy caravan definitely takes more effort.
Each phase as Sprout grows older comes with different challenges. She's more aware of the world now at 12 months and is interested in what's going on outside the caravan. She understands that all sorts of things are continuing on outside when she is inside. I spend more time reading stories and singing songs to settle Sprout once we get to lying on the bed.
At night, the challenge can be winding down for bedtime.
In a confined space, there's no room for playtime or bedtime routine except on the bed. It can make bedtime seem extra drawn out on cold and dark evenings spent inside the caravan.
I try to manage a walk in the pram after our evening meal to give Sprout some wind down time away from the caravan, especially as the days get shorter.
On warm, sunny evenings we maximise outdoor play time before bed. We use a screen tent and insect repellent to reduce the chance of mosquito bites.
After all the effort required to get bub to sleep, you're always hoping they'll stay asleep.
Sometimes though, a noisy neighbour turns up or a new bird screeches and suddenly, your chance for peace and quiet is gone.
Enjoying a sunset dinner at Uluru. One of our full days at Yulara was spent doing dishes, laundry and tidying up camp - a small list of chores to tackle on the road.
All the chores come too
When you travel full-time, it’s not a holiday. There’s very similar chores on the road compared to living in a house but usually without the conveniences of your own laundry and kitchen.
We also have new chores - finding water to fill up tanks, going to the dump point and looking for places to throw out rubbish.
Then there’s all the little extra baby things. Washing bottles, getting food stains off shirts, cleaning endless snack containers and straw cups, repacking the nappy bag… it all adds up.
I thought we would have ‘more’ time when we travelled - and in lots of ways, we do! But there’s also plenty of normal, everyday things that still need done on the road.
As Sprout gets older, we’ll reclaim tiny bits of time back - when there’s no bottles to wash and our days don’t revolve around nap times.
For now, we’ll just be grateful that we get to see and experience some marvellous things in between doing all the other stuff that keeps our wheels turning.
Destination disappointment
Sometimes, despite the planning, anticipation and effort to get somewhere, it’s a disappointment.
It’s harder to have disappointing outings now that I have a kid, because it sucks up so much energy to get there. When something requires a lot of my time and energy, it hits hard if I don’t get something back out of it.
Destinations can be disappointing because:
they’re not how you expected them to look/be
it’s unsafe or difficult to be there with a child
you arrive later than expected and miss the opening time, the weather window, the sunset
the people around you aren’t excited or don’t react how you expect them too
the journey was so exhausting that you’d rather just be at home
Realistic expectations, planning and learning to be flexible help to avoid feeling devastated by disappointment.
It’s also okay to feel disappointed.
It’s a hard emotion to feel. It’s easier if we learn ways to cope with feeling disappointed so we can move on and try to make the most of the rest of the day or the rest of our trip.
A rainy walk through rugged Arkaroola. Entertaining kids around a campsite for days and days of rain is pretty hard going!
It’s always hard and it’s not always fun
There’s another kind of disappointment - of being in a fabulous place, in the role as a parent. I love sharing amazing places with my child and of course, I love spending time with her too.
But sometimes, I wish I could spend a couple hours somewhere instead of 15 minutes. I wish I could wander the museum alone. And a big one, I wish I could enjoy feeling connected to a place spiritually.
It’s hard to find feelings of awe and wonder when your mind is switched on to ‘parent in the wild’.
There’s a whole lot of joy in watching your child take in a waterfall, climb over logs and notice the flowers. There’s a lot of joy in seeing the sunset with your family. There’s a lot of joy in handing down an appreciation for our Earth to your child.
There’s a lot of work in those things too.
Of course, there’s gratitude - bucket loads of gratitude - I know that before my daughter was born, this was everything I ever wanted.
I just didn’t realise it would be so damn hard.
So, I love, love, love seeing the country with my daughter.
And…
Sometimes I wish I had just a tiny slice of it all to myself, to sit quietly and watch the sunset and hear my own thoughts.
It’s okay to feel. An ongoing lesson.
Wondering why on Earth I travel with my child?
There are a multitude of wonderful reasons for travelling Australia with a baby. I haven’t had a moment to write them all down yet but, while you’re waiting, check out some of my other posts and I’m sure you’ll find plenty of reasons (and inspiration) to travel with a kid!
