Hi, I’m Erin, the founder of  Love To Travel, Stay-Eat-Do – otherwise known as Parkers From Australia!

Here you will find our top tips for travelling from Australia, including guides to buying the most essential travel gear, inspiration for destinations to travel to, as well as my own unedited travel journals I write while we travel. I will always provide honest reviews of places we go and visit, so if I say it was great, we really thought it was (and vice-versa!).

From my family to yours, I would like to welcome you to our site! I hope that you find some travel tips and inspiration from what we have shared here.

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A bit about me!

My first trip overseas was in 1996, I was in Year 10 and I went on a three week school exchange to France. It was a life changing experience and one I will be forever grateful for. If it wasn’t for that early introduction to international travel, I may not have ever been brave enough to go again!

In 1997, my Dad moved to Thailand. Up until 2017, he lived in Thailand, India, Singapore, Japan and Dubai. I managed to travel to each of those places, except Dubai, giving me a taste of Asia.

Having finished my teaching degree in 2002, working a year in Melbourne in 2003, I decided it was time to head off overseas again. At the beginning of 2004 I moved to London and was a supply (relief) teacher in a range of schools across London. I travelled through a great range of European countries, seeing as much as I could and having as many great experiences I had the opportunity to take up, all on a very tight budget! I took up every opportunity and the most amazing time! I made lifelong friends who remain some of my closest friends today.

I slept in train stations and in parks when I couldn’t get accommodation. I stayed in bed and breakfasts, hostels, hotels and massive dorm rooms with rats running around! I travelled solo and with friends. I did a trip to Florida from the UK for two weeks and cruised on the Carribean! I travelled across to Morocco and got a taste of Africa. On my way home in October 2005, I trekked Annapurna Base Camp in Nepal with my best friend and spent a month in India.

In 2009, I met my husband, Geoff. We travelled to Thailand together before getting married in August 2010. We spent five weeks travelling through China and Tibet on our honeymoon – amazing!! Our honeymoon was meant to be a seventeen week trip which was cut short due to illness – we also put in a massive(!!) insurance claim – we’ll never travel without travel insurance! During the illness/hope to get well, we managed another five weeks in Nepal and Delhi. Oh, I got frostbite on my bum during that trip, too – and no, my bum did not fall off! That’s a long story…

In 2012, we had our first child, Finn, in 2013, Taj, our second came along. In 2014, we had trips to Singapore and Thailand and Malaysia all while Taj was under two. In 2017/18, we took the boys on their first big adventurous trip and spent five weeks travelling through Laos and Northern Thailand – it was the best! Following that trip we started planning a white Christmas in Lapland, Finland. The pandemic interrupted our booked trip in 2020, so we rescheduled, replanned and made our trip bigger and better than ever and went to Europe with them in 2022/23. We met Santa, saw the Northern Lights, drove husky dog sleds and snowmobiles, just to name a few exciting activities! We visited Finland, Estonia, Denmark, Sweden, The Netherlands and France.

We have a long list of amazing travel from Australia destinations planned for the future! Malaysia for five weeks in December (2023) and January (2024) is next on the list!

I look forward to sharing our adventures with you and hope that we can inspire you to take your dream trips, too!

We also enjoy regularly exploring our own Australian backyard (find our Aussie info at Australian Mountains To Sea) as well, we love all things outdoors and love learning more about the great world we live in.