A British family has travelled to Australia and back to attend a family event - without flying. Shannon Coggins was emotionally reunited with her sister Ellie in Sydney having made the huge journey from Castle Cary in Somerset to the land Down Under via train, taxi, boat, bus and many other modes of transport with her partner Theo Simon and daughter Rosa. The trio took months to make it to Australia using many different kinds of transport before spending a quarter of a year exploring the sizzling hot country through home swaps.
Once they had drunk their fill of life in Oz, Shannon, Theo and Rosa decided to head back to the UK - a trip which took them three months and had them back home in June. The family, who gave up flying in 2002 because of its impact on the climate , left home on 16 August to travel to Sydney for the wedding on 28 December. In total, they were out of the country for 10 months.
"It was fantastic. Setting off was hard because it was saying goodbye to my sister. At the beginning we were all depressed," Shannon told the Mirror of the family's decision to leave Australia and begin the long journey home.
"(At first) my husband couldn't walk with heavy loads because he had a cyst. Then we got into the swing of it and utilised tech on the way back. We bought sim cards from the countries we were in, meaning we could now book taxis out and about.
" While they could've raced the 10,000 miles back to the UK in a few weeks, the couple instead decided to take it slowly .
