ADVENTURE AUSTRALIA

Adventure Australia, was a name Estelle and I gave our self's, as planning was getting closer to departing.

We were eager and knew that we would head off on what was going to be the best adventure we have ever been on together.

I remember being at work at a mine site in the Pilbra WA, thinking I needed a change and Estelle and I had been talking of traveling Australia, (since our first date actually). Estelle was half way through her grad year as an RN, in Vic.

What would we need, and what sort of time frame should we give our self's, were the first obvious questions.

Obvious answers.. a lot and a lot..

I started with selling my daily driving car and invested into a second hand Toyota, a VDJ 76 wagon, v8 turbo diesel .

It was the best car we could afford and to be honest it's an amazing car still today.

The only trouble with it was it was in central QLD. I was in north west WA, so we did the only thing that made sense.

After a week of night shifts, I jumped on a plane from the Pilbra, headed to Perth, Perth to Melbourne, where Estelle met me. We found our self's still awake at 3.00 am the next morning.

After a night out and two hours sleep, we stumbled onto a flight from Melbourne to Brisbane, Brisbane to Moranbah. Jumped aboard the beautifully shiny car and started our drive south, 2,000 km in three days. A few toilet stops at a couple of Goldcoast theme parks. In all it was an emotional roller coaster, when on arival home, I had to lug myself onto a flight back to Perth then on to Tom Price, WA. All that in 6 days.

So that had the car sorted.

Then for accommodation of some sort. I looked into camper trailers, ranging in price and quickly discovered the more spent, the better the trailer.

Aiming to buy a second hand trailer, saves it from depreciating too dramatically within the 1st 12 months of use.

So the plan from day one was to sell on return.

We found the perfect trailer, 2007 kimberly kamper, hard floor, with all the fruit. Perfect. It was in Sydney. A couple of days before we headed off to check this thing out I had a quick look on the caravan sales. You wouldn't read about it but the exact same trailer was only 20 min from home. A phone call later and a bit of a barta, we turned up with a wad of notes for basically a brand new trailer, 35% cheaper then a new one, (not a scratch on it). The poor thing didn't know what it was about to be put through.

Over the next five months or so we trialed the camping trailer and car, with a few added pieces, it was pretty good.

gas hot water service, a 60 Ltr Engle fridge and few other creature comforts, it seemed to be working well. We purchased a small aluminium fishing boat, a 3.5 Seajay Nomad, along with a 20hp Honda out board.

If your going to the effort to get to some of the most remote parts of Australia, you may as well go fishing when you get there.

The purchace of a large paper map, a pin board and a heap of pins kept us entertained for hours and hours.

Plotting out a ruff rout in an anti clockwise direction around the continent, pinning places to explore along the way.

I found myself putting pins in national parks, followed by a sticky note, after a quick google search of the parks, there i had it a map that once looked like Australia, now more so resembles a native echidna that had gotten himself in trouble in a yellow sticky note factory.

Another great tool we used was a spread sheet, it became apparent to us the further we got into writing our spread sheet the more we learnt about what sort of funds we were going to need. on the sheet we had:

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- fuel price / consumption

the average usage of the cruiser while towing was going to be 25 ltrs per 100 km

and then we worked on $2.00 per ltr for fuel

with a ruff distance traveled of 45,000 km

so that's going to cost us $50 every 100 km, there for 450 x 50= $22,500

( these are a great ruff plan to get you thinking and being relatively generous is a good plan at this stage in planning)

- accomerdation costs along the way

even though your camping and camping is free you have to have a think about it

if your away for twelve months your not going to free camp every night

national parks no how to charge campers so....

nights per month in what camping area

national parks around $20 per night 5 nights

remote private camps $30 per night 10 nights

caravan parks $35 per night 1 night

free camp $0 15 nights

- food food, well you have to eat right. We found it fun to eat cheap and more so to shop cheap, there is always a cost effective alternative when at the super market and you can save an amazing amount of money by spending an extra 15 min looking, also if your a hunter or fisherman you can live and eat extremely well for not a lot of extra coin.

-break downs heading away on a trip your going to have some problems along the way its inevitable and your crazing to think you wont, you also know your own car better then any one and you will be able to judge the amount of money your going to need put aside, bring in to this section all your servicing as well, 45,000 km your going to have a major service before you head off and then 4 services along the way followed by another major on return.

-bills Again keep in mind that you still have bills coming in and its worth taking the time to pay them in advance and to get them all emailed to you, so as you can pay them while on the road.

So once you have scared the shit out of your self with the figures, now you can continue saving or modify you plans to suit your budget.

It's also great to put in your income for the time your away. Things such as renting your house out, holidays from work this will help soften the blow.

So there we had it our low stress life style was ready to start. We both handed in our resignation letter, (this is the point where you start asking your self if your actually crazy) and we headed off on twelve months of awesome.

We had a few small obstacles to find our way through over the year. Dealing with broken wheel studs and a hand full of shock absorbers, burning out winches and killing batteries, along with cooking one of our fridges.

That's all part of it.

Having a couple of goals along the way was a great thing as well. One objective was to reach the four extremes. That being the most northern, southern, eastern, and western points of Australia; Wilson's Prom in the south of Victoria, Byron Bay on the east coast, Cape York in far north Queensland and Steep Point on the west coast.

Not that they are at all difficult, it was just something to look forward to along the way.

To conclude, we had an amazing year, experienced some of Australia’s beautiful and remote parts, caught plenty of fish and met some amazing people. I know it opened my eyes to Australia and traveling and hope following our social pages it pushed people to explore their back yard and their own limits.

Hope you enjoy the read and it helps in planning your next adventure.

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Cheers Aussie