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Realistic family travel for Australians with limited annual leave

Welcome to Annual Leave Adventures — a travel blog for families who want memorable trips, but also have jobs, school terms, budgets, limited leave and normal life to work around.

This is not a “quit your job and travel the world” kind of blog.

It is for families like ours: trying to make the most of school holidays, public holidays, long weekends, cheap flights, practical itineraries and the annual leave we actually have.

What you’ll find here

At Annual Leave Adventures, I share realistic family travel planning, including:

  • how we choose destinations around school holidays
  • how many annual leave days a trip actually uses
  • real family itineraries
  • cost breakdowns
  • what we would do differently
  • practical choices around flights, luggage, car hire and accommodation
  • honest reflections when a trip is worth it — and when it probably is not

Start with these posts

For a short Australian road trip

Start with:

6 Nights in Tasmania With Kids: A Realistic Family Road Trip Itinerary

This post covers our Tasmania route, where we stayed, what we spent, and how we made the trip work without turning it into an exhausting driving marathon.

For school holiday planning

Start with:

The School Holiday Trap: And How We Ended Up Booking Vietnam

This is the story of how we landed on Northern Vietnam for the school holidays, after balancing flight prices, leave days, weather, work, kids and budget.

How this blog is different

Most travel content makes trips look effortless.

But family travel usually involves a lot of invisible decision-making:

Can we make the dates work?
Are flights too expensive?
How much leave do we need?
Will the kids cope with the pace?
Can we fit everything into cabin luggage?
Is the itinerary actually enjoyable, or just impressive on paper?

This blog focuses on those real decisions.

Choose where to go next

I want realistic itineraries

Head to the Destinations page to browse trips by place.

I want to plan around annual leave

Go to Annual Leave Planning for posts about school holidays, public holidays, leave-efficient trips and planning decisions.

I want honest cost breakdowns

Look for posts where I share what we actually spent, what we estimated, and where costs could be reduced.

I just want to browse

Go to the Blog page for the latest posts.

A note from me

I’m Mel G — an Australia-based working mum who loves travel, but also has to plan around school terms, work calendars, budgets and two kids.

We have travelled a lot, but not because life is magically flexible. Most of our trips involve trade-offs, spreadsheets, late-night flight searches and a fair bit of “can we actually make this work?”

That is what this blog is about.