This family spent four months travelling to Australia mostly on public transport

It takes most people about 24 hours to cross the world from London to Sydney. For the Carols, it took four months.

Theo Simon (left), Sharon Carol (right), and their daughter Rosa (centre) travelled through 20 countries on their way to Australia.

Key Points

• Theo Simon, along with wife Sharon and daughter Rosa, travelled from England to Australia almost entirely overland.
• The four-month journey saw them travel through 20 countries, including Russia, China, Laos, and Indonesia.
• They are part of the "no fly" movement, comprised of people who give up air travel to lower their carbon footprints.

Nineteen-year-old Rosa Carol took the first flight of her life this year. She’s already chalked it up as her last.

Along with her father Theo Simon and mother Shannon Carol, the recent high school graduate has just crossed 20 countries and two continents by car, bus, train, and ferry.

After arriving in the Timorese capital of Dili in early December, the group was one boat ride away from their destination of Australia. The problem, it turns out, was that no one would give the three travellers a ride.

“If we’d gotten there a couple of weeks earlier, we almost certainly would've found a yacht that we could have hitched a lift with. But we only found two boats, and in both cases … we were unable to persuade them to take us,” Theo told SBS News.

“We had to decide: ‘We've come all this way… we've got to take that flight.’”

The Carols spent four months this year making the halfway-around-the-world journey from their home of Castle Cary, a small town in the southwest English county of Somerset, to Sydney, Australia.

That’s 17,150 kilometres, as the crow flies. But the family chose not to fly at all, where they could avoid it.

The Carols crossed two continents by car, bus, train, and ferry. Credit: Supplied

They’re part of a growing movement of people who are opting out of air travel to reduce their personal contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. Researchers have calculated that aviation contributes around 1 billion tons of CO2 per year – more than the emissions of most countries – and around 100 times more CO2 per hour than a shared bus or train ride.

A recent study further calculated that aviation contributes around 4 per cent to human-induced global warming, and is projected to cause about 0.1C of warming by 2050 if aviation continues to grow at pre-COVID rates.

The so-called “no-fly movement” is trying to address and raise awareness around these impacts, opting out of air travel and encouraging others to do the same.

Environmental researcher and freelance journalist Sacha Shaw recently made it from Darwin to Dubai using a combination of passenger ships, trains, buses, motorbikes and hitchhiking, and transiting via more than 10 countries, including Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, China, Tibet, Nepal, India, Pakistan, and Iran.

“There are so, so many ways to travel without flying,” he told The Guardian.

About 16 years ago, Theo Simon and Sharon Carol decided to try to boycott air travel for good.

“Back in 2007, when we had a look at our carbon footprint, [Shannon and I] decided that we couldn't fly again – because of the huge impact that flying has compared with anything else – which effectively meant we probably weren't going to travel,” Theo explained.

“Our daughter grew up, and we started to have the idea: What if we went across the world to Australia without flying?”

“Then Shannon's sister was going to get married and it was like, ‘Okay, we're going to get there for the wedding.’”

The Carols travelled from Castle Cary, a small town in the southwest English county of Somerset, to Sydney, Australia. Credit: Supplied

The family of three left Castle Cary on 16 August, making their way to London before boarding a train for Amsterdam. From there they travelled via Romania, Turkey, Georgia, Russia, Kazakhstan, China, Laos, and Indonesia, among other countries, before finally arriving in Timor Leste.

After months travelling overland from the UK, the one-hour and twenty-minute flight from Dili to Darwin was a drop in the ocean, when compared to the almost 24-hour transit between the UK and Australia that many travellers opt for.

“That was our intention,” said Theo. “To go all the way by train, bus, and ferry, basically using public transport as the cheapest and lowest impact way that we could make that journey.”

Taking the long way around posed its share of challenges, though. Land border closures blocked them from entering Azerbaijan; flooding in Tbilisi, Georgia turned what should’ve been a 20-minute trip into a three-and-a-half hour journey; Ukrainian refugees had to help them purchase a train ticket in Russia and, during that leg of the trip, Russian authorities pulled Theo aside for interrogation.

“I got taken to a different carriage on the train and interrogated for 45 minutes,” he explained. “[They wanted to know] where we'd been, who we'd seen and stuff, which is obviously related to the war.”

While boycotting air travel poses its fair share of challenges, the Carols say that the pros far outweigh the cons. Credit: Supplied

Even these tribulations have proven beneficial in their own way though, Theo added, as “they kind of keep us in touch with reality, they’re character-building, and they make us remember what other people go through in their daily life.”

In any case, he says, the pros far outweigh the cons. So much so that, after the wedding on 28 December and a stint in Australia, the Carols are planning to travel home overland too.

They just need to decide the route, and whether it’ll be by cargo ship, sailboat, or some other means.

“One of the things it's highlighted for me is that actually, in a lot of the world now, it's really possible,” said Theo. “We're looking forward to it.”