We hope you all had a great Easter break, and had the chance to get away with the kids to the great outdoors, cos we certainly did, and had a great long weekend camping.
We had the chance to go to a property in the Riverland of South Australia owned by a neighbour of ours. The weather was just perfect.
We packed up and headed off from home for the 2.5 hour journey with the van loaded up, batteries charged, fridge cold, and motorbikes on the back of the Ute. Not sure who was going to have the better time, me or the kids.
We arrived at the camping area on this property that is literally in the middle of nowhere. This is my ideal location for a weekend’s camp. There is no telephone reception, no TV reception, and very little radio channels to choose from. The only way to find the camp is with GPS co-ordinates handed over by the owners.
To our amazement there were about 40 people that had made the trek up there. What is normally a quiet place in the country side, surrounded by red dirt, saltbush, kangaroos, and wombat holes, resembled more like a caravan park in the Flinders Ranges, than a property in the middle of the Riverland.
There are no facilities here, making it all that more enjoyable for the kids. Within minutes the red dirt was the kid’s new best friend. You wouldn’t believe how quickly a 3 year old can cover himself in dirt.
After setting up camp it was time to get the motorbikes of the Ute and go exploring. I had made up some trainer wheels for the 3 year olds motorbike which have been re-engineered to take the constant battering of rocks hitting them.
The weather was perfect, I can’t remember once thinking about the temperature the entire weekend. The days were claim, with beautiful blue skies, and the temperature in the mid 20’s.
With the lifting of the fire ban, it was time to break out the camp oven (Dutch oven), and
Cook one of my wife’s all-time favourite meals, beef curry in the hot coals. We put it on at about lunch time, and had it slowly cooking all-day. It was amazing.
As there was no power I parked in full sun so as not to cover the solar panels on the roof of the van, I made that mistake last time we stayed here to park in the shade of a large native. We didn’t run out of battery power, but it’s nice to know you have a fully charged battery at the end of each day. For information, we have two 90 Ah batteries, charged by two 60 watt panels on the roof of the van. This set up seems to work really well, and we would be able to be self-sufficient for many cloudy days. As long as you’re not running a fridge or similar power hungry device off the batteries.
The only downside of the trip was the road in and out. The last 15 kilometres of the trip is over an unsealed road. Last trip the road had just been graded, which wasn’t too bad. This time however the road was not so good, and badly corrugated, not to mention the continual potholes. We averaged only 20 km/h over this last stretch, so as you could imagine it took the edge of the trip, but all in all it was a fantastic weekend.