Shay and Dean Paine-The Big Lap

It’s the great Aussie dream, well for us it is anyway, to hook on a caravan, leave the day-to-day hustle behind, and head out on a wild adventure.

We are super excited to share our travels with you as we explore the iconic places of Australia, and find some hidden gems along the way.

Let us introduce ourselves, we are a travelling family of five. Dean (aka daddy), Shay (mumma bear), Evy (8), Vinnie (3), and Mo (2). We have rented out our house in our hometown of Newcastle, crammed a lot of stuff into storage, and are hitting the road for at least 12 months of wild fun.

We are pumped to have a 19ft 6 Jayco Journey Outback in tow, with triple bunks so the kids each have their own little home away from home. This isn’t our first travel rodeo. Back in 2017, we hit the road for our first lap of oz, back then we had a camper trailer. And can we just say, we are extremely grateful this time around to have our Jayco caravan, it has made travelling so much easier and so much more enjoyable. Quick one night stops are a breeze, and navigating dinner time with the mozzies is no longer an issue with our kitchen inside. Mind you, Dean still loves to slide out the Webber in our front tunnel boot to cook up a steak.

The traditional loop of starting at one spot and making your way around Australia in a circle just didn’t quite fit the current times of 2021. So, as crazy as we are, we travelled from Newcastle to Queensland to do the theme parks (this was the bargaining tool to help Evy feel ok about leaving her school friends), from here we made a quick pit stop to visit friends on the Sunshine Coast, before starting our long haul journey across the country. You can check out more about our theme park adventures by looking at the highlights on our Instagram profile @shayanddean.

On our last trip, (which you can find on Youtube we had little Vinnie’s birth impending so we skipped most of the WA west coast areas, which means that seeing the west coast on this Big Lap is an absolute must. This is why we managed to drive from the Sunshine Coast to the NT/WA border in 6 days. Don’t forget we also have three kids tagging along, so it was no mean feat that’s for sure.

We had our G2G (good to go) passes approved and we stopped for lunch on our last day of driving (which was a 13 hour day) to cook up all our fresh food ready for the quarantine check at the WA border. Big mistake (well that’s what it felt like at the time). When we arrived at the border,  we were met by police who informed us that the border was closed indefinitely. Enter a few frustrated and exhausted words from us, and we took our disappointed selves to camp on the side of the road just back from the border.

While missing the border was really disappointing, there is good news on the horizon in our next blog to pivot our travel plans and we head off to explore Kakadu National Park.