Our budget challenge

When we devised the idea for the trip we set ourselves a budget challenge.

I mean who doesn’t look at their finances just before, or in the planning process of their next travel experience.

This made it achievable without pressure and also meant that and we are able to demonstrate that having a budget such as ours is possible for other families too.

There would be very few families that would have the luxury of travelling without a budget of some sort.

We have aimed to stick to a budget that demonstrates that experiences such as travelling Australia as a family is realistic.

Our budget is $150 per day.

Endeavouring to stick to this budget has not been without its critics. After researching we felt this was a realistic daily budget and something achievable by families with children without having to sell a body part or remortgage their home or sell everything they owned.

Of course, if you did every attraction at every town you stop at then it will quickly and quite easily blow the budget. Having said that, there are still many things to see and do and attractions that will quite easily fit into the budget and also with a little creative thinking and planning it could be pushed into fitting within the budget too. And then there are the things to do that are free, which is always a bonus as some days it may seem that your wallet is hemorrhaging money.

Over the course of our Australia road trip we will show you what you can do as part of researching the attractions within a town and you of course can make your own choice if you are to visit that town, and we will do a select few along the way.

We feel that this budget by no means compromises our trip or intention to show you you can do such a trip and feel like you have it all.

For example there is The Caves, which is 23 km north of Rockhampton in a town by the same name and while this reads and seems to be a perfect place to stop as it is considered QLD’s oldest tourist attraction dating back to 1884 when tours first commenced- it was a something we missed. We chose not to go not because of the cost ($65 for 2 adults and a 4 + 6 yr old) but rather as when we called and spoke to them about what the tour consisted of then we found that it went through the caves (obviously, but not given much thought of that before then and didn’t realise it was an hour tour down there!) and we have a little one who is not too happy about being in dark places especially since it is also the major breeding ground for the tiny bent-wing bats but it may perfectly fit into something you would like to do so we added it into the things to do and see section of the blog for the Capricorn Coast region.