We’ve finally made it to the fun stuff, planning the actual lap of Australia. Over the past 4 weeks we have made the decision to take a family gap year and travel the country, we’ve sold a house, ordered the caravan and bought and sold a car. That might all sound like a lot of fun, but to be honest it has been a really stressful period! So many decisions, so much running around. Would we sell the house? Would we find the right car? Could we sell the old one? All of that got sorted and we’ve finally made it to the fun part, where are we going to go, and when?!
In this weeks episode we’re talking about Clockwise Vs Anticlockwise, time needed in each state and territory and we’re going to draw our Wikicamps Competition. Check it out in the video above, or on our Youtube channel here:
Episode 5 now playing on YOUTUBE: https://youtu.be/xDg00_CW3rE
We sat down with the kids this week to look at the map of Australia and talk about the places where we might like to go. We started by pointing out places we have been before and then talked about all of the different states / climates our great country has to offer. We asked the kids what they knew about Australia already, and what they think they might like to see. Central Australia, the outback and Uluru were top of their lists!
Australia is a massive country. There is so much to see and do, even with 12 months at our disposal, it’s impossible to fit it all in. We had to find a way to maximise our time, nail the best possible weather and ensure we make it back in time for the 2020 school year for the kids here in Victoria.
To take a full year we had to depart just after Christmas, meaning we will be hitting the road right in the middle of summer.
The first decision we had to make? Did we want to go clockwise or anti-clockwise?
There is a lot to consider when it comes to direction, the most common things we have heard are:
- Prevailing winds mean that anti-clockwise is the best way, reducing wind resistance.
- Driving anti-clockwise means you are on the left of the road, or the inside lane, and you save travel distance!
- South Australian summer will scorch you so avoid it at all costs!
- The East Coast will be really busy during the summer holidays it’s best to avoid it.
For everyone that offered one of the opinions above, there were others that disagreed. In summary, based on all of our conversations and research, it doesn’t really seem to matter which way you go around Australia. Wind changes direction, seasons change even within themselves from day to day and everywhere can be busy during peak periods. We have also tried really hard to try to track down someone who has a KM amount saved for the anticlockwise lap! No dice yet but will keep you posted!
We live in Melbourne, and as mentioned we have to leave just after Christmas 2018 to do a full lap over a year including 2019. So we really have two choices.
Brave the crowds of the east coast or tackle the extreme heat of South Australia??
Coming from Melbourne, we feel that heading up to Sydney isn’t as exciting as heading west to a different climate and seeing things we haven’t seen before. We’ve only been to SA for work before, and to WA once for a small road trip around Perth and Freo. There is so much out there to see and do. Also, given we are starting our trip in Ballarat for Christmas, given we are out in Western Victoria already, keeping going that way does make sense too.
For these reasons, we’ve decided clockwise will be the direction for us for our lap of Australia in 2019.
The next big question was how long do we spend in each state or territory. We want to move around the country at a leisurely pace, but we also don’t want to get to the top of the country and then have to jam the second half of our lap into a very short window. We needed a rough plan that we could work too, and we came up with our Itinerary Plan No.1. We posted it on Facebook to get some input.
Things we have kept in mind when planning the itinerary:
- We want to do Central Australia in Winter
- We want to avoid wet seasons
- We want to avoid cyclones
- We want to explore central Queensland and the Dinosaur Trail
- We would like to go to the tip of Australia
- We want to ensure we see the entire mainland this trip
- We had been to Tasmania earlier this year, and being from Victoria it’s an easy holiday on it’s own in the future that we can’t wait to do again. We will tack it on this trip if we can, but likely it will be it’s own trip sometime in 2020.
After we mapped this all out we thought let’s go out to our followers online, and the various groups on Facebook that have all of these experienced caravaners, campers and big lappers. Nothing beats crowd sourced info and wow did it start coming in thick and fast. Groups like Caravan Camping Australia, Aussie Big Lappers and Nomads of Australia – the best bits among others have been incredibly helpful to us in our planning phase. Both comments and feedback plus research over past posts.
Firstly, thank you to everyone who provided insight into our plan. We started getting tips, must do’s, must avoids, ratification of direction, challenges to direction, recommendations on timing and so much more. It was a roundly positive experience and there is honestly no better way to gather so much info in such a short period.
With all that info we revised our plan, and so without further a due, here it is!
So we have made some tweaks to our itinerary, and we’re really happy with it. General checks and concenus via crowd sourcing comments in Facebook groups like those mentioned above show it’s a solid plan with the biggest issues being the heat of South Australia, missing the WA wild flower season and too many people in the NT on School Holidays. Other than that, it is looking solid so we are really happy.
We have had so many tips, things to do and see keeping track of them has been really hard. We have started using Wikicamps to help track recommendations, but adding them as favourites in the app. We simply search for the recommendation, add a note and save it as a favourite. Then as we travel we will see these and can check them out. Should work out fantastic and please do keep the tips coming through!
On that note, it’s time for the draw of our competition, to win one of 4 free copies of Wikicamps. We had almost 100 entries in the draw, and the results can be seen in the video above. Congratulations to those that won, a copy of Wikicamps will be on it’s way to you shortly.
Have you heard of wikicamps? Check out our short video on how we plan to use Wikicamps to plan and track our lap of Australia in a caravan:
Next week we’re getting the house ready for rent. We’re renting it out for the 12 months we are gone, and there is so much to do. We’ll share what we’re storing, what we’re culling, how we will handle mail and the boys will be given their first look at their storage containers for the big trip.
See you next week for Episode 6: Getting the house in order!