A few years ago, Steve had one of his ‘famous’ ideas…
The first of Steve’s famous ideas was back
in 2007 - that he retrains, and we apply to migrate to Australia. We all know
how that went (Hello Perth!!!). So, off the back of that success, a couple of
years later he had another one of his ideas – we would make a 10 year savings
plan where we put extra into the mortgage every year for 10 years, then when we
had amassed enough we would leave our jobs and travel Australia for a couple of
years, self-funded by our savings.
I mean, why move half-way around the world
and not have a good look around the place you’d moved to??!!
So, in October 2018 we started to save.
Fast-forward to early 2020. Covid was
making travel a bit of an impossibility (both international and inter-state) so
the ‘plan’ got revised. We would buy a caravan sooner rather than later, so we
could travel within WA and use that time to make sure that we were set up for
the major trip.
We started researching caravans and watched
a lot of YouTube channels about full-time caravan living. In March 2020 we
started to visit the caravan dealerships so we could get a feel for the type of
layout that we preferred and what upgrades we thought we would need.
Jayco Caravanland were so helpful, and we decided
that the 19’ All Terrain might just be the one for us. To be able to see this
caravan in real life, rather than online or just in a brochure, was great – we
like the layout and the off-road capability. We came away and decided that
before we made our final decision, we would research a bit more and save a bit
more so that we would have a decent deposit.
A few months later, in June 2020, we were
out and about on a Saturday afternoon and decided to call in to Caravanland just
to “have another look” at their caravans. We ended up putting the deposit down
on the caravan that day, with a provisional delivery date of mid- to end-November
2020.
From that day, the saving got a bit more
serious as we wanted to pay as much as we could so that we had as little as
possible to put on finance.
Covid hit the east coast of Australia quite
hard in the latter 3rd of 2020 and, as happened everywhere, many
businesses were closed due to lockdowns. We heard in late September that the
caravan would now be mid-December. No worries – we could maybe have a bit of a
break away in it over the Christmas holidays.
Nope. More lockdowns, more delay. Next news
was mid-February 2021. That was fine – the kids would be back in schools so
easier to travel.
Erm, well… maybe in time for Easter? Maybe
not.
End of May? No – Issues with staffing
levels at the manufacturing plant and issues with componentry supply.
Eventually, we got the call to say that the
caravan had come off the production line and was waiting to be shipped to WA.
That’s right, they really do send them from Victoria to WA on a BOAT! But not
to get our hopes up because there were backlogs at Fremantle Port.
But wait… Was that an email to book in our pickup
and handover for 2nd July. It sure was!
So, we finally got to drive down to get the
caravan and drive home with it for the very first time!
The best part(s) about the delays – we had
managed to save hard and could pay for it without having to take out any
finance, and we had collected a LOT of stuff to kit out the caravan (was there
anything left in Kmart or IKEA? Who knew!?)
The journey back home went fine, and it only took 2 goes to get the caravan parked on the patio. Well done, Steve!
It only just fits!!!
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