Stuck Talking About Your Big Lap Instead of Actually Planning It? Here’s the Trap
We’ve helped many families over the years plan their big lap of Australia, and there’s one mistake that keeps popping up time and time again. This one mistake can push families’ trips back by months, sometimes even by years.
We call it being in ‘fairyland’, and it’s probably the single biggest thing standing between a family and an actual departure date.
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What Being in ‘Fairyland’ Actually Looks Like
It’s basically where you go around telling all your friends and family about this magical trip you’re going on, with your caravan, seeing Uluru, Karijini, the Daintree, all these amazing places. Your family and friends just go, well, go, just go. You keep talking about it, and instead of actually going on this magical trip, you keep researching, keep planning, and you can’t get out of that loop of research and planning stage.
Why This Is the Biggest Thing Families Struggle With
Everything else you can put in place, you can work out what to do with your house, your stuff, and so on. But until you have that departure date, you cannot put your timeline in place. That’s the hardest thing to do. And look, honestly, there is never a best time to plan your departure date. There’s always something.
The Way Out Is a Real Date, Not More Research
The fix isn’t more research. It’s picking a real date and letting everything else fall into place around it. Once you’ve got a departure date, work becomes something you have a conversation with your boss about instead of a hypothetical. The house becomes something with an actual timeline instead of a someday project.
How to Tell If This Is You
If you’ve told your friends and family about the trip more than once, if you’ve got tabs open comparing caravans or researching routes you haven’t committed to, and if the honest answer to ‘when are you going’ is still ‘we’re not sure yet’, that’s fairyland. It’s not a character flaw, it’s just what happens when planning feels safer than deciding.
The way you know you’ve actually left fairyland isn’t a better spreadsheet or a longer research list. It’s a date on the calendar that other people can hold you to.
Our Thoughts
Fairyland is a comfortable place to be, because nothing is at risk yet. You haven’t told your boss, you haven’t sold anything, you haven’t committed to anything. That comfort is exactly what keeps families stuck there for months or years longer than they need to be.
If this sounds like you, the fix isn’t a better plan. It’s a date. Even a rough one is enough to start working backwards from, and it’s the one thing that turns ‘we’re going to do the big lap one day’ into something your family can actually prepare for.
- Best Time to Travel Australia by Caravan? Start With the Seasons
- You’ve Got a Departure Date. Now Work Backwards From It.
