Overland with Kids

It’s very early days for us yet but before we left, we were following the Brethouwer family on their travels from Oz to Europe when, all of a sudden - 4 months into an approx 1-year trip using a converted van, they disappeared off the radar. Their website www.arewethereyet.net also suddenly died and vanished. Before leaving Australia, the Brethouwer’s had sold up both their toy shop businesses and their home in Australia before leaving. Very early on in our planning, we had initailly hoped to cross paths somewhere between the UK and Oz at some point. We contacted the Brethouwer’s A) to find out if they were OK and B) to discover some interesting information which we’d like to share:

This is following a total 4 months out of a planned 1 year trip on the road -

“Lulu, who is now 9, was very unhappy travelling. She wanted to go back to school like ‘normal’ kids.
We put Lulu on the plane to NZ from Bangkok, to stay with her grandparents and go to school there, while the 3 of us continued for another 6 weeks, after which Shona and Kaia also flew to NZ to join Lulu. I spent another month getting the van back to Melbourne from Bangkok via Singapore.
Not what we planned, and both Shona and I wanted nothing more then to keep travelling, but we couldn’t with a very unhappy teenager (yes, she might be 9, but she’s very much a teenager already). A major oversight on our part - the whole idea that Lulu might not enjoy travelling never even entered our minds. Even now we keep going over it in our minds about what we might have been able to do differently. Ultimately we think it really depends on the child if they can cope with it or not.”

Food for thought for anyone considering such trips with children (including us) as a two week holiday (even two or four months) can be much different from a planned year of travel. Although you meet many people and the children meet other children, have memorable experiences and see and do lots of things - without friends, extended family and the creature comforts of home for a long period of time - who knows how a child is going to feel once on the road for a long time.

We remain positive, mindful and realistic that such a circumstance ‘could’ occur with regards to our own children. An important message so we’re just taking the trip one day at a time.

All the best for now,

A, A, J and AJ

xxxx

 

Diary (Blog)