An adventurous young family has taken to the road, travelling in the direction of their dreams. Jill Malcolm finds out more.
A year ago, Amanda and Alastair Tobin and their young family were living what Amanda called ‘a normal life’ at their home in Whatawhata, Hamilton. As of now, Amanda and her husband Alastair, both in their 30s, have now been on the road for the last 12 months, along with their pug dog, Tonks, and their three children, Fynn, 12, and 10-year-old twin girls Isabella and Elena. And it would never have happened if Covid hadn’t changed everything.
The three children are all homeschooled, which for this family is nothing new. Amanda had been schooling the kids when they were living in a house and says it’s not much different now they are living on the road, except that all the other activities they do mean their education is so much broader. “One of the things we have discovered,” says Amanda, “is just how many people there are on the road who, like us, are homeschooling their children. We meet them in the places we stay and then keep bumping into them again as we travel.”
“Our whole family enjoys the outdoors, particularly hiking, fishing and cycling, and Alastair likes hunting,” says Amanda. “We owned a Kea Horizon motorhome to go on family holidays in and so we’d had some experience of travelling in an RV. Sometimes we dreamed of living in a caravan, but we kept putting it off for various reasons until the disruption of Covid. The disturbance that caused made us realise that anything can happen, that life can be short and we wouldn’t have anything to lose by making the dream a reality.”
In December 2021, the Tobins sold their house. They’d spent the year before renovating and getting it ready to sell and had started researching for an off-roader caravan with three bunks, which wasn’t easy to come by. Several brands they looked at might have suited but there was a long waiting list for them, as there was for all RVs at that time.
“One night after we’d had few beverages and just weeks before the house sold, we were looking on TradeMe and found this Canyon Drover triple-bunk model that was being sold at Off Road Caravans in Papamoa,” said Alastair. This was the one. “The Canyon had a good payload rating, a large fridge/freezer, a good-sized awning and beds that didn’t have to be made up each day. It had one 400-watt solar panel and we had another of the same size added,” he says.
“We also had a 2000-watt inverter installed and upgraded the batteries to 200 amp-hour lithium ones. Extra fresh and grey 75-litre water tanks were fitted, plus a diesel heater, walls for the awning, bike racks and a clothes washing machine. It had a gas grill and stove top but no oven.” After they had purchased the caravan, the couple bought a Toyota Hilux SR 5 Cruiser ute. Once on the road, however, they realised it didn’t have the horsepower to safely tow the weight of the caravan with all their gear in it. They have now replaced it with a more powerful workhorse, the 79 series Toyota Landcruiser ute.
Adventure time
It was New Year 2022 when the Tobin family finally set off on their great adventure. Their first visit was to the Coromandel where they found their ‘land legs’ and learnt to enjoy their new lifestyle. Although they’d said there was nothing to lose by hitting the road, Amanda and Alastair missed their families and friends. The three children were less complicated; they missed their Lego, which had to be left behind in storage.
“Oh, and I sometimes miss having an oven,” said Amanda. “On the other hand, after a bit of trial and error, I’ve perfected baking on the Weber barbecue. The lack of space hasn’t been as bad as I thought it might be. Some days, if someone is in a grumpy mood it can be challenging, but now that we have received the walls for our awning, the space has doubled, which has caused a lot of excitement.”
“Cooking in such a small space can be a bit difficult but it forces me to clean up as I go and we do a lot of cooking on the barbecue,” she says. “The kids have learned to put away stuff straight after they’ve used it to avoid clutter piling up. Their other chores are to wash the dishes, take the dog for a walk, make their own beds and help with the pack up when we move. Like us, they have had to learn the new showering technique so that we have enough water for the whole family – a short dousing, turn the shower off to soap, then back on for a quick rinse.
A time for learning
There have been no disasters – yet! Learning events, though: for sure. For example, they broke a drawer by leaving it unlocked. Pots were strewn around the van but there was no harm done. They were snowed in at Tekapo and their water pipes froze in Twizel, which left them without water for a day as the town’s water supply was also frozen. The three children are loving the adventure. They are seeing so much and trying new activities such as fishing, cooking and wood whittling, and identifying birds, trees and insects.
They miss their friends from home a bit, but they keep in touch with them on video chats and emails, and they are always meeting up with new friends along the way. They get to play and mix with all ages. “We’ve met so many people, it’s hard to remember them all,” said Amanda. “We are collecting a lot of phone numbers and have many offers of places to stay. And, as I’ve said, we have met a lot of other younger couples who are travelling with children and are homeschooling. Like us they believe that a good education should be eclectic – a mix of bookwork, the development of interests and real-life learning.”
The Tobin threesome mostly “goes” to school in the morning, although some days don’t turn out as planned. For formal bookwork, they sit around the table inside or in fine weather at a table outside and if they are near a lake or beach, they take the work there. “Workbooks are a base for maths and English,’ says Amanda, “and then we make up other subjects to fit in. For instance, at Hallowe’en we do Hallowe’en-themed crafts, write spooky stories and research the history behind the concept. At other times they might do science experiments and listen to Alastair or me reading the news and talk about what’s happening. And in bad weather, we do school work or crafts, read, listen to audiobooks, watch movies or just put on jackets and go out anyway.”
The parents have their own work to attend to. Amanda is a skilled crochet worker and sells her creations on Facebook. Alastair picks up work where he can and at the time of this interview, they were parked up in Wanaka for three months while he worked on a construction site. They have no idea how long they will be on the road. At the moment they are going with the flow, crossing each bridge as they come to it and loving the ride.
I don’t know who it was that once said, “The purpose of life is to live it,” but I know what it means. And talking to the enthusiastic Tobin family it became obvious that they are doing exactly that.
