Somewhere between the third flat tyre and the first proper campfire, most families work out that travelling Australia with kids is nothing like the brochure. It is better, and it is harder, usually in the same afternoon.

That gap between the dream and the reality is why Travelling Australia With Kids exists.

We did not start TAWK. We joined it, then we bought it.

TAWK had been going for years before we had anything to do with running it. It was where families went for the real answers, the ones you cannot get from a booking site. Which parks genuinely welcome kids rather than just tolerating them. What a lap actually costs once you add it all up. How to keep the schooling going somewhere between Broome and Bunbury.

We were two of those families. When the chance came to take TAWK on, we took it, because something built by travelling families for travelling families deserved to keep going.

Between us, we are both kinds of TAWK family

Tara

Has done the lap

Months on the road, the whole thing, kids and all.

Chelsey

Weekend warrior

School holidays, long weekends, and squeezing a trip into the gaps around work and school.

That is on purpose, and it is why the advice here works whether you are heading off for a year or for four days. Most travel content is written for one or the other. Australia is big enough for both.

What TAWK is now

A community of thousands of travelling families right across the country. Close to a hundred Featured Family stories from people out there doing it, the brilliant days and the ones where the fridge packs it in outside Cobar.

A directory of more than 120 caravan parks, farm stays and camps that have told us, in writing, that families are welcome. Partnerships with attractions and businesses who want to make the trip more affordable. And an inbox we still answer ourselves, because the questions landing in it are the same ones we had when we started.

TAWK has been featured in Western 4WDriver, the Sunday Times, Channel Ten News, RV Daily and on radio around the country. That is all lovely. But the part that actually matters is that a family in Adelaide can ask a question at nine at night and wake up to three answers from people who have driven the same road.

What we are not

We are not a booking site and we are not a tourism board. We take on partners we would recommend to a friend, and we say no to the ones we would not. Everything in the directory is there because a real family would be glad to pull in.

If you are heading off

Tara, Chelsey and Families