A Simple Travel Journal That Anyone Can Make: Steal the Idea!

I've always loved the travel journals you see all over Pinterest, packed with drawings and little cutouts. But there's one problem: they take up a lot of time and resources, neither of which I had during my big road trip around Australia.

Plus, it was meant to be a shared journal—a project I could do with my boyfriend, who probably hadn’t touched a drawing or craft tool since school. So, the framework had to be simple or I’d end up doing it all by myself.

And that’s how this travel journal idea came to life. It's simple but has a clear structure. We put it together as we went along, and it was so much fun!

Now, it’s a real treasure.

A simple front page for the second volume of this journal

THE ROADTRIP AROUND AUSTRALIA

Here’s the context of our trip. We were in Australia on a Working Holiday visa, so we had basically all the time in the world. We’d saved up by working in Sydney for a few months, bought ourselves a car (a 4WD with a rooftop tent), and hit the road ready to explore Australia. That’s it—no big planning!

The only goal was to make it to Exmouth (on the other side of the country) before whale shark season ended, which was around August.

We were so lucky with the whale sharks!

We had almost six months and wanted to find a way to document our adventure. When you see so many things in such a short time, you often end up forgetting half of it. So, we came up with this idea: to make a handmade travel journal that would not only capture our memories but also keep us entertained during our camping evenings.

The first days on the road trip

SUPPLIES TO MAKE A SIMPLE TRAVEL JOURNAL

These are the supplies we used to create the travel journal. We tried to keep it minimal since we didn’t have much space to store it while on the road:

• A5 drawing notebook with blank pages (A5 Visual Art Diary, bought for $5 at Kmart). We needed two volumes (it was a long trip!).

• Black gel pens (also from Kmart).

• Grey marker to outline maps.

• Scissors to cut out photos and a glue stick.

• A folded notebook page to use as a ruler.

• Printed photos from Officeworks, a stationery and office supplies chain with locations in many Australian cities.

One thing I would have loved to have is a portable printer like this one from Xiaomi or one of those Polaroid-style cameras that print photos instantly, would have been super handy! But since the journal project came up spontaneously, the rough-and-ready vibe worked for us just as well.

Working on the journal in the middle of the Australian Outback

THE STRUCTURE OF THE TRAVEL JOURNAL

This is what we did to create a framework that didn’t take too much time or effort but still captured the essence of the journey.

The idea was to dedicate one page per day of the trip, choosing just one photo that best represented each day, along with a short text explaining what we did. There were exceptions, but that was the general rule.

The overall structure of the travel journal ended up looking like this:

• Cover page of the travel journal.

• Cover pages for each new state or territory we visited, with a hand-drawn map of the route we took there.

• One page per day of the trip.

• Summary pages for places where we stayed for a few weeks (for work).

Crossing from South Australia to Northern Territory

The day we went to see quokkas in Rottnest Island ended up getting three full pages—we just couldn’t pick only one photo!

Sometimes rules are meant to be broken, right?

ELEMENTS OF THE TRAVEL JOURNAL DESIGN

The daily pages of the travel journal included the following elements:

• Day number and date (top outer corner).

• A vertical line detailing where we woke up to where we were going to sleep, including interesting stops along the way and the kilometres travelled.

• A representative photograph of the day with its location.

• A summary text of the day.

It was really simple!

We created the texts while we were on the road, which was just another way to keep ourselves entertained during those long distances in Australia. While one person drove, the other wrote. We chose the photos each day and prepared them in Canva to print whenever we found an Officeworks. Then, when we had some time, we’d sit down and get to work!

Some of the daily pages

And this was the result! The biggest proof of success is that we completed it! We have a travel journal that captures 509 days of adventures across Australia.

We managed to finish it because we had a simple yet well-structured system that fit the conditions and timing of our trip. If we had set a more ambitious goal, the project might have been left by the wayside.

Day 509! The next morning we were taking off to Borneo…

WHAT TO WRITE ON A TRAVEL DIARY

I’m a firm believer in being very selective and writing in a travel journal only about the most important things—the ones that made you excited or surprised. Those anecdotes you want to remember, the person you met who told you an interesting story… as well as feelings and sensations.

You don’t need to write much, because the more you pressure yourself, the easier it will be to put the project aside. Think about what would delight your future self and write for them. I like to focus on the details rather than the generalities, because when I read them again, they transport me to specific moments from that trip.

PERSONALISE YOUR TRAVEL JOURNAL

The great thing about doing a creative project like a travel journal is that you can personalise it entirely to your liking. You can add as many sections as you want!

For example, if food is very important to you, there should definitely be a spot dedicated to it on your pages. You can make lists, stick in mementoes, note the weather for each day, or ask the people you meet along the way to write something for you…

Experiment until you find your style, as it doesn’t have to be perfect!

I used a couple of pages to talk about my first time doing farm work

Now I encourage you to create your own travel journal your way. It's clear that it doesn't have to be complicated! Choose your system, and get to work. It will become a wonderful keepsake!

Post written by Mar Sart while in Australia. Last updated on September 2024.

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