Living in a motorhome | Indefinite Leave

Living in a motorhome with Indefinite Leave | Interview Series

When we first started planning for our trip around Australia, we had so many questions about the best type of vehicle set up for what we wanted to do, all the things that we would need to bring with us, and how to plan our trip.

But as a not-independently-wealthy / still-needing-to-make-an-income couple, our biggest question was how we were going to pay for it all; especially as we didn’t want to go for just a couple of months or a year. We wanted to hit the road indefinitely.

I figure that there are probably many others who want to travel Australia and have similar questions to ours.

So we asked some of our blogger friends if they would share more of their story, about how they got started travelling Australia full-time, and how they can keep going.

Sit back and get ready to meet some amazing people in this series of interviews with people travelling Australia full-time.

Worldschooling while travelling full-time | Cake and Eat it 3

Caravanning Australia Full-time | MY RIG Adventures

RVeeThereYet share their caravanning experience

Budget Travel Around Australia | Our Wayfaring Life

Caravanning and camping around Australia | All Around Oz

We start with the ball rolling with:

Kevin & Adele – Indefinite Leave

Kevin and Adele have been travelling Australia in their Winnebago Esperence motorhome since February 2016.

They have most recently been stuck on Fraser Island while the rest of the world went crazy around them. They took on a short term role as caretakers of a group of holiday homes and arrived at the beginning of March, right before everything needed to be shut down on the island (and everywhere else!).

You can read their story here about how they ended up on Fraser Island during lockdown and what it’s been like to have almost the whole island to themselves… How we ended up on an island in lockdown

What made you decide to hit the road and live in your motorhome full-time?

We have always been adventurous and we had done a bit of travel together. Adele did a lot before we met even back when she was just 25.

We met some German travellers who had just travelled to Cairns and back in a Motorhome and they told us all about our own state. We couldn’t believe they knew more about it then we did.

We were fed up with the whole Groundhog Day thing of work all week and do chores all weekend, so we decided to pack it up and see Australia for 2 years.

4 and a half years later we’re still going with a long list of places we still plan to see.

Who are you travelling with?

We began as a family of 4, our son Matt who was 23yo at the time came with us and our beautiful Golden Retriever MACKS who was 14.

Sadly we had to say good-bye to MACKS in Darwin when she went to puppy heaven.

And Matt decided to go home after 2 years on the road with us. Now it is just Adele and I.

What is your vehicle / rig set-up?

We have a 2009 Winnebago Esperance Motorhome.

We absolutely love it, great space, heaps of storage, so many benefits and we don’t have to worry about the fear of rolling over.

But the time has come where there’s a few things we want to do where the motorhome just can’t get us there or allow us to stay where we want.

So change might be looming.

Before leaving, what did you do with all your belongings?

We sold a lot of our belongings, gave stuff away, leant some to the kids and took a lot to the tip; but we still had heaps left over that we put into storage.

Storage fees cost us $7,100 over the first 2 years, which we realised was wasted money. So we sold more off, gave more away and reduced it to just a few items and lots of boxes.

This is now stored in a room under our house which is tenanted.

How can you afford to live this lifestyle?

We are fully self funded. At first we had savings but that dried up after 12 months.

I have a business which we expected to generate income as we travelled but it didn’t turn out that way.

Basically the next 2 years we lived off credit cards and sporadic bits of income.

We stopped for a few months back home to spend time with family and that allowed me to work on the business and earn enough to pay off that debt.

In November 2019, after 4 years running our travel website and associated social media, we decided to get it to generate an income for us.

It was going great and income was increasing each month and then … BOOM… the travel industry basically shut down!

We quickly adapted and within 2 months we were growing income again from our website and YouTube channel.

Our goal is to have it fund our travels, this way we can continue exploring and showcasing the amazing places in Australia and continue to inspire others to get out there and see our amazing country.

What’s your favourite thing about living on the road?

Freedom.

Meeting so many fantastic new friends.

Simplicity of life.

Waking up in new places.

Adventures.

Every day is different and something to look forward to.

We just love life on the road.

What’s your least favourite thing about living on the road?

Being away from our mums and sons.

Our Mums are both mid 80’s, we miss them so much and they both now want us home. We are very close to them and it’s a difficult sacrifice we are making.

Our sons, Matt and Cameron, have their own lives but after being with us for 2 years Matt does miss us and the lifestyle.

We have lots of friends we miss too but especially those that are doing it tough due to health issues and we would like to be there to support them.

This is by far the hardest part about travelling for us.

Would you recommend others do things the way you have done it?

Everyone’s travel and adventures are different.

We all have different setups, leave from different locations and at different times of the year. Some of us are couples, others are families and some are solo.

We plan everything whereas others love to wing it, no plan just go where the flow takes them.

So everyone’s travels will be unique and I’d encourage that.

Most important things are to have fun, be prepared for things to go wrong because they will, and enjoy making new friends.

And watch out for those happy hours, they can get dangerous!

More from Indefinite Leave

Thanks so much Kevin and Adele for sharing more of your story.

You’ll find an absolute wealth of information and resources over on their Indefinite Leave website, including their books:

The Ultimate Guide to Planning your Road Trip – I think this is a must-have guide for anyone that is in the planning stage of their travels and has no idea what the heck to expect! Buy the Guide here

Travel Chat with Indefinite Leave – where they sit down with 7 families travelling around Australia for their honest and sometimes funny descriptions about life on the road. Buy it here