Our trip is over.  Five years in the planning and it went so fast.  And of course already we are planning our next one - with a lot less lead time.

Time to really consider everything and decide whether it worked like we hoped or whether we need to tweak it for next time

Tag Along Tour

The tour was well organised and Wylie our guide was great and the majority of the people on the trip were really lovely.

But we've discovered a tag along tour of that duration isn't really our thing.  We started much later in the day and finished much later than we personally prefer and the tour group size was too big for that type of trip.

Vehicle

Other than our little suspension issue the vehicle performed really well.  The new tyres were great for the terrain and we had no flat tyres.  As expected the corrugations loosened many nuts but with daily (and sometimes multiple times a day) checking everything stayed attached.

Road Warrior Paint Protection

This was a great little invention and definitely protected the car from scratches from all the trees.  It has taken a bit more work than expected to get it off as it was supposed to come easily off with high pressure water, which it sort of does but not really "easily".   One side of the car is a couple of hours work as it has to get really wet.  $100 to protect the paint on the car and camper vs $6000 - its worth the bit of effort.

Next time we know that we can put in on the car a bit earlier as it is definitely not coming off with rain.

Jackson's Carry Me Camper

What a trouper.  With all the corrugations we only had a couple of screws start to come loose - one in the fridge slide and a couple in the kitchen storage area.  All fixed with a few turns of the screwdriver. 

For this trip we packed a lot differently than we normally do. 

We carried 80 litres of diesel in 4 jerry cans and these were put into the second fridge area.  This was initially a bit of a concern because we were worried that they would move or leak or damage the water tanks beside them.  We built a little stopper to stop them sliding towards the fridge and fouling the mechanism.  We covered the stopper with foam for cushioning and inserted it into the back of the fridge slide which meant that it didn't move and nothing moved past it. We put foam in between and on every side of the jerry cans and then ratchet tied them to the storage side wall which meant that they had very little potential for movement and no rubbing.  This gave us a small amount of space between them and the water tank and in this section we stored our swimmers, medication and first aide kits. On top of the jerry cans we had an garbage bag for the rubbish that we could not burn (which turned out to be just 1 can).

Because we carried a lot of food this trip we put 5 days in the kitchen drawer side and the rest in the big box and small box at the very back of the storage side.  Every 4 days or so we pulled this out and restocked.  

On the kitchen side we labelled 3 of the drawers (Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner) and only put these meals in them.  This worked really well as it made meal prep a lot easier.  Because there was only a few days of meals in each, it made meal decisions pretty easy as well.

Fridge

We only have 1 fridge which can be run either as a fridge or as a freezer.  For this trip we decided each morning whether we would have it as a freezer for the day.  This involved taking out everything we didn't want to freeze and putting it in a cooler bag with an ice brick (usually the meat we planned for dinner) and then turning the fridge onto freeze for the day (powered by the solar panels and the car).  At the end of the day we would turn it back down to a fridge and put back in the fridge items.  It worked BUT it was a lot of effort. For the next trip I think the purchase of a little fridge would be good.

Water Filter

We purchased a 6 litre gravity water filter which could have been a life saver.  When our suspension broke and we faced the very real possibility of being stranded in a very remote area for a few weeks we were able to filter 60+ litres of water from a nearby pond system in 30 minutes. We were able to fill our tanks completely giving us the reassurance of being able to survive for at least 3 weeks.

The alternative would have been to either fill the tanks with potentially contaminated water and then boil it before we used it OR boiling 60+ litres of water to fill the tanks.  This would have used a lot of our gas which then would have left us with not enough gas to cook our meals.

We also filled our tanks with water sourced from other wells along the way and we filtered that too.  Happy to say that we did not get any type of "Bali Belly".

Soda Maker and Powdered Cordial

This worked superbly.  We were able to have a drink or two most nights whilst keeping the weight in the vehicle down.

Food

Separating the food out into meals worked really well and we will definitely do this from now on.

We took a lot of lunch food but because we were able to buy frozen bread, sliced meat and sliced cheese at the community stores we didn't eat most of it. We took a lot of flour for making bread but the late arrival into camp at night made it difficult to prepare it (and we were able to buy bread) so didn't make as much as expected.

Cous Cous was absolutely horrid and will never come on a camping trip again.  The powdered potato was a lot better than expected (once it was doctored with butter, garlic and herbs) 

Washing 

For this trip we washed every day.  Each morning we put our dirty clothes into the washing bucket and drove for the day and then hung them up when we stopped. Usually we take a small folding washing line but this time we couldn't because it had the potential of rubbing on the jerry cans and we could not work out anywhere else for it to go.  Each night we had to put up a washing line and because of dingo's and other issues we were advised not to leave our clothes out at night which meant moving it to the lines within the camper sides after it had stopped dripping which was a little tedious. But it worked and our clothes usually dried the next day whilst we were driving.  It helped that we packed mostly quick drying clothes.   

12v Kettle

A 12 volt kettle takes a really long time to boil - at least 20 minutes to do 750 ml, so it definitely is not the way to make your coffee in the morning.  Instead we put it on when we first got up and then used it for washing up or refilling the thermos.  When we stopped for the day if there was still sun we would put it on and make sure our thermos were full for either washing up or for starting the water for coffee the next day.  This meant that we could use less gas for heating water and also our coffee water heated quicker in the morning and we always had hot water available.   

We thought of it as a nice to have until it broke and then we realised how much we used it and relied on it for hot water without using all our cooking gas.

The cigarette lighter fitting has always been a bit temperamental and if slightly bumped would stop working (which was a bit frustrating) so we are changing that fitting to an anderson plug and having a slightly longer cord so it can sit comfortably on the small table.

Clothes

Since we planned to wash daily we only took about 7 days of clothes.  Temperatures ranged from -3 to 30 degrees and we had only a few days of rain in the whole trip. So we needed clothes to cover it all. We bought new quick dry shirts with our trip name on it and they were great (mostly black and dried quickly).  We wore mostly cargo pants because of the handy pockets.  Once we left the cold weather we moved the warm clothes to the back of the camper storage.  

Shoes
This was a whole other dilemma. (Yep Leanne took too many like usual). We took wellies in case it rained for days which it didn't so we didn't use them but we would still recommend taking them. We basically lived in hiking boots for the majority of the trip and Leanne's new hiking boots only just lasted.  A pair of thongs / sandals for days off and a pair of runners for the days when you don't need hiking boots.

Toilet Paper

As you saw from an earlier post there was a bit of a debate on how much did we need to take.  Happy to say that we came home with just 4 rolls of toilet paper left.    

Things to buy or change

As always you see things that others have or do and sometimes you change things next time.

Aquaheat Hot Water System - Hot water systems have come a long way since we last looked into them and this system looks like a great addition to our camper.  It can be used for showers or for washing up water and it has an inbuilt battery that can be used for at least 60 minutes of hot water. And we can recharge it from our solar panels or we can attach a propane cylinder.  And its not physically that big.  It would make showers a lot easier.

Butane Blow Torch - This handy little device is great for starting the fire.  No more matches and careful building the flame till it catches - instead hit it with a blow torch and instant mega flames.  Michael got flame envy so we bought one at the first Bunnings we came to.