So it’s been quite a while since I’ve added to my blog. The reason is that my collecting has taken a bit of a back seat to planning I’ve been doing for a 4 1/2 month road trip.
Shortly, I will be heading off on what I’m calling my 2026 Big Lap. I will be doing a lap of Australia with my car and caravan. This trip will work out at around 19,000km of towing plus no doubt quite a few kilometres of side trips without the caravan.
So what was involved in the planning?
- Firstly I made a list of locations that I definitely wanted to include.
- This then gave me an initial mapped route.
- Using the WikiCamps app, I then started to see what my overnight options were while keeping my daily driving distances relatively low.
- I like to avoid covering old ground from previous trips, so in the early stages I tried for a route that took me through new places.
- Then I started doing more research – watching TV shows like the ABC’s ‘Back Roads’, reading about destinations in Travel & Caravan magazines and comments/ideas from friends. This added more places to my list of locations to include.
- Further enhancement of the route followed with yet more study of camping options.
- Then I started looking at timing – the only ‘set in stone’ dates were when my son & his family were going to fly over to Perth to join me for 10 days.
- I put a length of stay against each place I was stopping and then worked that back from the Perth date to get my departure date.
- Finally with all the stops basically locked in, I went back over the camping options for each one. I checked that they were still available, whether I might need to book and what alternatives were available. (This proved important because 1 week out from leaving I found that my camp site for the 2nd night was unavailable because of ground conditions).
All of the above was just my planning of the route, which ended up as 75 camping locations and an average travel distance between camps of 254 kilometres.
Having planned the route, I then needed to work out what to take.
- The trip starts in Winter and in the first week goes through some quite cold area, but then I move up above the Tropic of Capricorn into warmer winter weather. Then as the trip progresses I move into Spring and finish only a few days before Summer. All this means I need to pack clothes to cover all seasons.
- I also intend to do several side trips without the caravan, so need to carry a swag for overnight accommodation on those side trips.
- I will be doing my own cooking most of the time, so what food I take from home and what I buy as I go needed to be worked out. For the early stages of the trip I have prepared and frozen a number of curries & stews that I can easily just reheat – these will be especially useful when it is cold or wet as my caravan’s cooking facilities are outside.
- Fuel may be a concern on some stages, so I’ll carry 40 litres of extra diesel and have empty jerry cans to double that if I’m concerned.
- My caravan carries enough water to last me for a week, but I’ll also have provision to add another 40 litres to that if I’m concerned.
- Then, because I’m taking my kayak and bike – it was what do I need to pack for kayaking, biking, walking and swimming/snorkelling.
Finally it was all about getting the car and caravan ready:
- New tyres on the car, slightly in advance of when they were needed.
- Getting the car serviced ahead of time and working out where I can get it serviced on the trip.
- Adding a TPMS unit covering the caravan tyres.
- Checking everything to make sure there were no problems.
All of the above is now done – I just need to pack the car and caravan and then I head off on 11th July.
I’m looking forward to having time relaxing like this (image courtesy of ChatGPT).
