Moving interstate with kids is a whole different beast to moving around the corner. From school enrolment and removalists to surviving the drive and helping kids settle into a new life, here are our rips to make the move easy on everyone.
Moving house with children is chaos. Moving states with children is chaos with a two thousand kilometre commute attached. Everyone warns you about the boxes. Almost nobody warns you about the bit where your seven year old sobs in an empty hallway because the house looks wrong without the couch in it.
Having watched families do this well and badly, here is what actually matters once the fresh-start excitement wears off and someone is standing in a half-unpacked kitchen asking where the Vegemite is.
Before the truck arrives
1. Kids need a countdown, not an announcement
Telling children the week before is unkind. Telling them six months out, then never mentioning it again, is worse. A visible countdown works better than either, because abstract dates mean very little to a child, while a calendar slowly disappearing under a forest of crosses makes perfect sense.
2. Let them keep something impractical
Every child gets one item that makes absolutely no logistical sense. A bike that barely fits, a rock collection, a broken lamp shaped like a frog. Let it go. Arguing about the thing costs more than moving it, and giving them ownership of that one decision buys an astonishing amount of goodwill.
3. School enrolment moves slower than you do
Enrolment across state lines involves different curricula, different year structures, and often different documentation. Start the paperwork months ahead, not weeks. Queensland and New South Wales alone have enough differences to catch people out, usually when you are already surrounded by cardboard boxes and running on coffee.
4. Quotes vary far more than they should
Three removalists quoting the same job can land thousands apart, particularly on long routes. Backloading, which means booking spare space on a truck already making the journey, often cuts the bill substantially.
Worth knowing before you start ringing around: Muval’s interstate removalists publish typical route pricing, so a Sydney move averaging around $2,300 and a Perth move averaging closer to $3,400 stop being surprises. Walking into a quote with a reference price changes the conversation completely, especially when someone has just cheerfully quoted you several thousand dollars more than the bloke before them.
5. Book school holidays at your peril
Everyone moves during holidays, which means the best operators fill first and prices climb. Moving mid-term costs less and books easier, though it hurts socially. There is no perfect option here. You are basically choosing which particular kind of pain you would prefer.
6. Purge harder than feels comfortable
Long-distance quotes run on volume. Every outgrown scooter and broken toy you transport costs money twice, since you pay to move it and then pay attention to storing it.
This is the point where you discover your child apparently needs 47 stuffed animals, and every single one has a backstory.
7. Involve kids in the purge, carefully
Children hand over more than expected when they choose the recipient. Donating to a specific friend, cousin, or charity works. Bin bags appearing while they are at school does not, and they will remember.
Moving week
8. Pack a car box, not a car boot
One clearly marked box travels with you containing bedding, pyjamas, toothbrushes, chargers, medication, and snacks. Interstate delivery windows span days, so plan for the truck arriving later than promised.
Because “the removalist said Tuesday” is not actually the same thing as having your child’s favourite pillow in your possession on Tuesday night.
9. Every child needs a survival bag
Their own bag, packed by them, containing comfort items and entertainment. Removing parental control over this one bag prevents an extraordinary number of meltdowns.
They get to decide what matters. You get to avoid hearing “Where’s my thing?” 900 times in the car.
10. Photograph the old house
Empty rooms, their bedroom, the backyard, the marks on the doorframe recording heights. Kids ask for these photos months later with a consistency that surprises parents every time.
Take more than you think you need. One day that battered old kitchen you could not wait to leave will somehow become “the kitchen at our old house” and everyone will want to see it.
11. Say goodbye properly
A last visit to the regular park, the good bakery, or the beach matters more than a party. Rituals help children close a chapter, and skipping them tends to delay the processing rather than avoid it.
Let them be sad. Let them be excited. Let them eat one last sausage roll from the bakery they have spent years insisting is the only bakery worth visiting.
The journey itself
12. Driving beats flying more often than you think
Flying is faster. Driving turns a wrench into a road trip, gives everyone something to look forward to, and solves the pet problem. Our 17 tips for family road trip bliss apply exactly as well to a one-way relocation as to a holiday.
It also gives everyone a little breathing space between the old life and the new one. And frankly, after watching your house disappear into the back of a truck, a few days of snacks and terrible car games can feel strangely therapeutic.
13. Break the drive deliberately
Two shorter days beat one heroic one. Stopping somewhere genuinely interesting reframes the whole move as an adventure rather than an ordeal, and Australian highways offer plenty of excuses.
You do not need to turn the journey into a bucket-list road trip. Sometimes a motel with a pool and a decent pub next door is enough to restore everyone’s faith in humanity.
14. Pets need their own plan, early
Flights book out, some airlines restrict breeds, and quarantine rules apply between certain states for certain animals. Sorting this in the final fortnight goes badly.
Your dog does not understand that the interstate removalist was delayed, the airline changed its requirements and everyone is having a stressful week. It just knows its humans are behaving weirdly.
Landing
15. Set up bedrooms first
Before the kitchen, before anything. Children handle upheaval far better once one room looks familiar, and getting their bed made before dinner on day one is worth the effort tenfold.
You can live out of boxes for a while. A child with their own bed, favourite doona and familiar stuff around them has somewhere to retreat when the whole house feels upside down.
16. Join something within three weeks
Nippers, footy, dance, scouts, whatever fits. Friendships form on fields and in halls far faster than in classrooms, and three weeks is roughly the window before loneliness sets in properly.
It does not have to be their lifelong passion. The first goal is simply to put them somewhere they will see the same faces next week.
17. Expect the wobble at month three
The first weeks feel like a holiday. Around month three, when routines settle and the novelty fades, most kids hit a genuine low point. Anticipating it makes it manageable, and it passes.
This is often when the “I hate it here” arrives. Resist the urge to panic and start searching real estate listings at midnight. Missing the old life does not automatically mean the new one was a mistake.
A few small things that help
Beyond the big items, some habits smooth the whole experience:
- Keep one familiar meal in rotation during the first fortnight
- Maintain bedtime routines exactly, even in temporary accommodation
- Set up video calls with old friends at fixed times rather than randomly
- Explore one new local place every weekend for the first two months
- Let the kids pick where to eat the first Friday night in the new place
Most of these cost nothing and do more work than anything you can buy. Our essential family travel hacks cover a fair few transferrable versions of the same thinking.
The honest bit
Interstate moves with children are hard, and no amount of preparation makes them easy. What preparation does is remove the avoidable disasters, which leaves room for the unavoidable emotional stuff that actually needs your attention.
Families who plan the logistics properly get to spend moving week reassuring their kids instead of arguing with a removalist while standing in a house containing 14 boxes labelled “miscellaneous”. That alone makes the planning worth it.
An award-winning travel writer and photographer, Aleney de Winter was fresh from school when she first set off to explore the far reaches of Australia with a two-man tent and a beaten-up Kingswood for company. Three decades, and two kids later, and she's still on the go, with her itchy-footed offspring in tow. 