Australian family of six take the plunge with borrowed caravan: ‘It was quite daunting’

Defying society’s expectations isn’t easy. Just ask mother of four, Nicky Mumford.

Earlier this year, she and her husband Brad and their children, ages 1 to 11, said goodbye to their home and traditional lifestyle to pursue a long-held dream. They rented out their Adelaide home and swapped it for a borrowed caravan and hit the road, working and homeschooling while traveling the country.

“It was pretty daunting and overwhelming,” Nicky told Yahoo News of the change, especially being responsible for the children’s education while he was on the road.

“You fall back on what society says,” she added, referring to the unspoken pressure to live like everyone else.

But it’s something they’ve always thought about, and after their fourth and final addition to the family, they started planning in earnest.

“It wasn’t until we had our last child and that season of our lives was over that we really thought about it,” she said. “The biggest thing for us was setting the date.”

That was in February of this year. They packed their things and the children’s favorite toys and set off.

The Rise of Homeschooling in Australia

The couple have two girls, Hannah and Madelyn, and two boys, Ari and Micah. They paid private school fees for the children, seeing their early education as “really important.”

“I didn’t want to think later, ‘We really made a mistake by taking them out of school,’” Nicky said.

She spoke to all of her children’s teachers and interviewed them about everything she could before buying a program online. “The advice I got was that they learn so much as they go… Just focus on math and English.”

Families who want to homeschool must register with their state government education authorities, so there are good statistics on the growing number of families joining the trend. Today, around 40,000 Australian children are homeschooled, double the number before the pandemic, just under five years ago.

Queensland has seen the largest increase in the number of homeschooled students, from 3,400 students in 2019 to more than 10,000 in 2023. That is almost a threefold increase.

In New South Wales, state government data shows a steady increase from just under 6,000 students in 2019 to more than 12,000 in 2022 and 2023.

Things haven’t always been easy for Nicky and the kids, with seven-year-old Maddie the most resistant to tutelage under the new teacher. “When we clash, I just let it go,” Nicky told Yahoo from a free campsite outside Cooktown, north of Cairns.

Overall, “they love it,” she added. “Last week we spent the whole week in the Daintree Rainforest.”

While still unconventional, she sees homeschooling as another form of education for her children on the go, and believes it has created a deeper understanding and empathy for nature in them.

Australians make record number of caravan and camping trips

Australians will take 15.3 million caravan and camping trips in 2023, a new record, according to data from the Federal Australian Trade and Investment Commission.

Once the domain of ‘grey nomads’, caravanners are increasingly younger families. “Our experience is that it’s mostly grey nomads, but there are a lot of families these days,” said Nicky, meaning the kids can often find other kids at campsites across the country.

Online she shares her travels and tips with a growing community of like-minded nomads and even encourages others to take the plunge.

The plan is for the family to live in a caravan for the next two years and then travel around the country.

The caravan they are currently living in is borrowed from her parents, but her mother and father have another caravan and expect to join the family next year, so the grandparents will be coming too.

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