25th, 26th, 27th and 28th July, 2009
It’s now been exactly 3 months since first hitting the road in Winmalee. We’ve seen a lot of fabulous things, met heaps of people and have learnt plenty. Thought now might be a good time to share some of our learnings:

If you are planning on doing a trip like this, do it with a 4WD. We’ve met heaps of caravaners that are towing with 2WD sedans and such and are missing all the lesser known sights like Palm Valley, Roma Gorge etc. It’s such a shame to do all this traveling and not give yourself the best opportunity to see everything.

Don’t skimp on storage boxes. We bought ours from The Reject Shop, which are great for at home and they also fitted exactly in our traveling space available. It didn’t take long before the corrugations took their toll, and they have all broken. The ones in the car are fine, but the ones in the trailer are scattered in dumps everywhere.

If you can buy or make a protective covering for any of your gear – do it. Once again, the corrugations have worn through everything. I’ve found old flannelette pillow cases are good, and also old sports socks are great for popping your mobile or i-Pod into for protection. Believe me, nothing is safe. Even the screws on our sunvisors have worked themselves loose.

Get yourself a cryovac machine. We bought ours at K-Mart and it cost around $130. It has saved us this amount and more already. Regardless of how well we planned our meals, and bought our meat, we always over estimated the amount of really good cooked meals we felt like, particularly on the stretches of overnight camps. Of course, the meat was either thrown out or we cooked it just because we had to. The cryovac machine has given us much more fridge life to our food.

Travel with those microfibre cleaning coths. They clean the dust off everything, and believe me, that red bulldust gets everywhere.

Have a spray can of dry silicone spray handy to use on all your zips.

There will come a time when you WILL want to wash your car.

Prepare your children for the trip. Get them as independent as you can so that when you are at these amazing places, they don’t wait for you to entertain them. They need to be able to get out and explore.

If you have a soft top camper – everytime you zip or unzip the canopy, dust off the zipper with a paintbrush and then spray it with some water (use on of those cheapo spray bottles). We’ve only just found out that this is the best method for a smoother slide.

People in Britz vans know nothing about driving!

Corrugations are all about tyre pressure and speed.

One person’s view of a “tough track that will take you 3 hours to travel” is not necessarily yours. Trust your own experiences and skill and make your own decisions, otherwise you will miss out on some spectacular sights.

WE MUST BE ONE OF THE LUCKIEST FAMILIES IN THE WORLD!