We are the St Amand family from Cairns in tropical far north Qld. Mark, Karen and 2 active boys, Trent & Scott (10 & 8).
We love camping, travelling and the great outdoors, so it was a relatively easy decision to decide on a trip arond Oz. ...well, not all the way around, as we 'only' have 4 months!
We started the planning this trip about 18 months ago, and there has been a fair few changes in 'operating hardware' for the trip.
We used to have a really old homebuilt camper trailer, however, the camper top was past it's use-by date, so the old camper is now a garden box trailer. We then went back to tent camping for a while in our old flogged-out tent, however, one wet camp was the final straw.......I was over having flogged out gear that made camping a chore - over it I tell ya...!!!
We researched options for making camping life easier. After much deliberation, we aquired a new Jayco Hawk Outback camper trailer in December 2010. We collected this from the Gold Coast in January 2011 (in between the floods down south and a nasty cyclone...) with the trusty old Hilux 3L diesel slug. This was OK....the old girl pulled it alright, but in her own time.....
For the big trip, I was planning on making quite a few vehicle modifications, and It was concluded that, combined with the distinct lack of urge pulling 1.3T, it was not worth ploughing the $'s into the old Lux, so approval was granted by the minister for everything to purchase a new dual cab ute. Decided on new, as we will keep it for many years, so depreciation does not matter (I could debate for hours on this....). Anyways....A new Isuzu D-max 3.0 Turbo Diesel dual cab 4wd is in the driveway, and I'm happy as a pig in poo :)
We have done quite a few 'shakedown' trips locally, and have everything setup the way we want it now.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteHope you have an unreal trip guys.
ReplyDeleteFor those long days in the car, here are a few discussion topics that you might like to work through together:
- best tyre pressures for bitumen / gravel / off road driving
- optimal daily dosage of Ginkgo to improve memory
- worst camper trailer of all time
- are Cooper tyres really as good as they look in the ads
- best type of camper trailer if you were only travelling on road
- how lost would you get if you didn't have the GPS and had to rely on Karen reading maps
- how many days will it be before you threaten to leave one (or both) of the boys behind at a campsite
- will Nut ever get another job or will he end up on the dole when he gets back
If you get through these and need some more let us know.
Very jealous, wish we were going with you.
Grant and Toni