Life on the road

I am sitting in the tent hiding for the wind at Cape Keraudren nature reserve, it is an awesome spot but windy at the tide changes.  There is no water or power, no showers, long drop toilets but there is free wifi hotspot for some strange reason! Anyway making the most of it to post this blog about life on the road as I am sure some of you will be interested in more detail about this trip than just where we have been. 

Survival essentials

Travelling like this without going bonkers essentially comes down to being organised, hunger management (avoid meltdowns) and getting sleep (avoid more meltdowns – mainly by me)  The latter is the trickiest, in the towns and cities you are often next to busy roads and in the bush there is the wildlife and other campers! but we get enough to survive.  Being organised comes down to having a place for everything and making sure things are accessible when you need them! The first few weeks were spent asking “where’s the such and such?’ with answers like “no idea” or “what am I, your mother?”. Hunger management comes down ensuring there is always crackers and peanut butter on hand.

Day to day stuff

Along with all the exploring, swimming etc. there always seems to be something that needs doing on the days when we aren’t travelling, whether its domestic chores like cooking, dishes (the boys miss the dish washer), washing clothes (some camping grounds have coin operated machines), grocery shopping, collecting firewood or teaching the kids.  Any time left over is for writing in my journal or the blog, reading books and now fishing! Cooking without an oven (except for the camp oven) is a bit limiting and we generally eat meals like risotto, meatballs and spag, nachos, pasta and something, curries, sometimes pancakes and pikelets if we have fresh milk on us.  We have small 30L fridge that runs off the battery/solar when we don’t have power, it works really well.  Generally we can get about a week’s worth of meals between towns with the fridge and storage space.  I have my yoghurt maker with us which is great always having yoghurt on-hand!
In the evenings we sometimes play cards (last card is getting a bit dull) or watch a movie on the laptop, or hang out with others around campfires.  Generally we hit the hay early, say 8.30 or 9pm but we adults get up early to watch sunrises or I go for a walk.

Teaching the kids

On the long haul drives Leon discovered reading books is actually fun! So that is bonus for starters.  The basis for the teaching is their log books where they record the location, weather, observations and then some activities about that place, for example a poem, description writing, a process diagram (opal mining), a life cycle. It was easy to find activities in the National Parks due to the new wildlife and geology we were experiencing at each one.  Now we have hit the coast it we have to think harder, John is currently doing a longitude and latitude activity and will do tides soon.  We have also taken advantage of any park ranger talks or activities in the towns we come across.  The heat up the top end was a challenge to both us and the kids in terms of sitting down and doing the school work, we tried to make the most of the cool mornings but that was also the best time to go walking.

People you meet

They say there are 350,000 people travelling in Australia at this time of year, with at least 80,000 moving site on any given day.  We have meet people on their big trip, short trippers (e.g. they fly to Darwin get a rental and drive around for 3 weeks), sun seekers just camped in one spot for the winter and school holiday trippers.  All ages are represented but I would say retired folks dominate the statistics (the infamous grey nomads).  There are people in swags, tents, camper trailers, campervans, caravans, the massive fifth wheelers and some house buses.  There are some overseas tourists but mainly Australians, haven’t meet many kiwis.  As I have mentioned before we do meet other families along the way and some we bump into again.  When we meet people we often don’t find out their names so they get christened a name for later reference, such as mince-lady, shell-lady, cactus-man, Horsham-man, “excuse I want take a photo of that”-man, you get the picture.  Generally everyone is really friendly and helpful and you pick up tips about good places to visit, for example it was swag-man in Alice Springs told us about this place.