Chapter 2: Planning the Trip
It is now March 2023. We are sitting at our dining table, pouring over a map of Australia. The map is so large we probably won’t be able to fold it up the same way again. We forgot how big this country is living in suburban Melbourne. On the plus side, there’s only one road around most of it. Like most Australians we cling to the coast, waiting to escape at any moment.
If we’re really going to do this, it’s time to make some plans.
What kind of trip is this?
T wants it to be a camping trip. If you’re reading this and you know him at all, you know that there is a strong streak of his father’s notorious frugality in him. This comes in handy a lot of the time. He is the one who compares our service provider bills and switches them to get the best deal. He is the one who rings the bank and tells them we need a better interest rate or we’re leaving. He makes careful, conscientious decisions about large purchases and tells me all about the process whether I care or not.
I knew it was always going to be a camping trip because that’s the cheaper way of doing it. You will note I don’t use the word “holiday”. For a good reason. More on that later.
How long should we go for?
We talk about this question for a while before realising it is not the right question. The real question is how long can we afford to go for? And before we can answer that, we need to decide exactly what kind of camping trip this is going to be.
Should we take our own car, buy a new one or hire a car?
As mentioned last time, we have a Mazda 3. It’s a great, sturdy car, perfect for 99 per cent of the driving we do around town. It’s not at all suited to driving four people across Australia. What I mean is you could do it if you were 20 and going to a music festival or AFL Grand Final on the other side of the country and you just needed to get there. It’s not comfortable, its certainly not big enough for four people to camp from, and this is about the journey, not the destination.
Its vomit-inducing to say but it’s true.
T concedes this but is adamant he does not want to buy a new car either.
That left…
Hire Car and Camping Trailer or Campervan?
We drive out to Suburb I’ve Never Heard Of to check out hire camper trailers and campervans. As we wander down the aisles of gigantic white monoliths, we discover that campervans have come a long way since our youth. They have toilets and showers, TVs, solar panels, heaters, air-conditioning and other fancy stuff built in now. But they can’t go off-road and the rules are strict about where you can take them.
A car and a camping trailer means you have the option of parking the trailer and using the car to go off-road. But it has a lot more set up time, limited space and less facilities.
Backing a camper trailer more than 50 cm fills me with dread. It seems like a superhuman feat that only magical people like Sam Kerr and Dolly Parton can pull off.
We talk it over with the kids. They are firmly on the side of the Campervan.
They still don’t know it doesn’t come with WIFI.
When should we go?
Since The Decision, I have managed to negotiate the following conditions:
1. Under no circumstances will I homeschool the kids. Even typing those words is triggering.
2. I don’t want G, our 12-year-old, to miss more than a week of school. Unlike A, our 9-year-old, he goes to an expensive private school and it will cost $500 for every week he’s not there.
Winning these negotiations means our only option is the long summer holiday over Christmas and New Year. G will finish school early in December. A will finish a few days before Christmas. We decide A can miss the last two weeks of school since all they do is watch episodes of Bluey and old movies anyway. This gives us most of December and January. Two of these will be the Christmas/New Year period. More on that challenge later.
How long should we go for: take two
Since we’re now going in peak holiday season, we need to book the Campervan sooner rather than later. We do some Googling and discover Britz has the monopoly on Campervan Hire for four people in this country. They have three types of Campervans available: Brand New Never Drivens, One Year Olds, and Clinging to Life. This is not their actual names but is based on how hard they have travelled.
We settle on a six bed One Year Old and plug in some dates. The price comes back over $17,000.
I gulp. “I bet France is cheaper,” I grumble.
“It’s only money,” T says nonchalantly.
