Chapter 3: Where to go
With the Campervan booked and the dates locked in (8 December to 18 January), I concede that this whole trip may really happen. I start to tentatively tell people.
“How exciting!” they proclaim.
“Do you think so?” I reply. “Which part?”
“It will be amazing,” they say firmly.
“But which part will be amazing? The bit where the kids complain constantly or the bit where we’re stuck in a tin can in 40 degree heat?”
I decide these people don’t know what they’re talking about.
I ask T what his plans are for where we are going to go. “We’ll work it out later,” he replies.
“When?” I say. “You know how busy camping is at Christmas. I’m not organising the whole trip. I’ve already got you to book the Campervan. This is your idea, so you are deciding where we are going in it.”
“Leave it with me,” he replies.
I tell my sister, L. She quickly concocts a plan to meet us for Christmas. She will have to wait for T to decide before I will commit to where we’ll be. She grumbles. But in the words of the great Tom Petty, I won’t back down.
That weekend, T is true to his word. We sit down at the dining table and block out a plan. We’ll take two days to get to South Australia, with a stop at his sister’s place along the way. Then we’ll spend around ten days on the South Australian peninsulas. Next is a few days to cross the Nullabor; the long desolate stretch of road that probably has the bodies of dead backpackers strewn along it just out of sight.
This brings us into Western Australia around the 19th December; my birthday. I haven’t spent my birthday in the car all day for years, it will be just like when I was a kid. But not in a fun way.
Western Australia is enormous and it’s still a day to get anywhere from the border crossing near Eucla. We decide to head south towards Esperance for Christmas. We will explore the south-west of WA until the second week of January, when we’ll head up to Perth to see Dad. Then its seven days to drive back across Australia through Kalgoorlie to Melbourne.
To book or not to book
A debate sparks between us over just how much of the accommodation we need to book. T thinks aside from the Christmas/New Year period, we should just wing it. I hate this idea.
I think we should plan everything. That way when the kids inevitably ask, “are we there yet?” we know where “there” actually is.
We agree to spend Christmas in or around Esperance, but we end the discussion to ponder our thoughts on the booking situation.
I decide I need to shore up my argument with more evidence. It’s time to ask people who have done this kind of trip before what they did. I remember the office manager at A’s school took a term off to drive around Australia, so I consult her.
“Greatest thing I’ve ever done,” she proclaims. I ignore this statement and ask, “but did you book the camp sites?”
“Oh yes, absolutely. Book everything you possibly can.” I smile smugly. I knew it.
L concurs. She’d driven from Brisbane to Perth earlier in the year. “There’s no peak season anymore,” she tells me. “All the grey nomads from 10 years ago are still out there because they can’t afford to get back into the housing market. There’s heaps of people out there now. I couldn’t believe how crowded the free camping was.”
I ask my cousin, who recently drove from Melbourne to Brisbane over two weeks with her husband. “Book it all,” she says. “We winged it and then from 3 pm we spent the whole time arguing about where we’re going to stop for the night.”
This cinches it. We’re booking it all. T is not convinced. I suggest he ask among his acquaintances like I did.
A Lucky Bay Christmas
In the meantime, L and I concoct a plan for Christmas. We decide we’ll try and secure two campsites at the famous Lucky Bay Campground. It has a spectacular-looking beach and friendly kangaroos that come past every evening for margaritas. This will make up for being forced to listen to Cold Chisel and INXS from the stereos of other campers. Music is stopped in time in country WA.
We learn bookings for Lucky Bay open six months in advance. I put a reminder in my phone to check the booking site around 20 June. The day arrives and Lucky Bay is already almost full. At this rate, we’ll never get a site for Christmas. I make an executive decision to just book it for the week from the 20th. We’ll work out New Year later.
More decisions
T knows when to pick his battles with me and comes around to the booking idea. We make more decisions:
- How long do we want to drive for in one stretch? We decide we don’t want to drive more than 600 kilometres a day.
- How often do we need to resupply with food? I decide to try for three to four days.
- How often do we need to charge the Campervan at a proper caravan park? The Britz people recommend every night but this does not work with our plans. The van comes with a solar panel but T buys a bigger one to give us more flexibility.
- How long will the kids last before we have to take their interests into account? This is tricky. We don’t know what they’ll be interested in out there. Water parks and trains are few and far between. But we know the kids love staying at Big 4 Holiday Parks. T takes out a membership and we plan the trip around the Parks.
We discover the membership comes with a 10% discount on Britz camper hire. It saves us nearly $1,800 immediately and the kids are excited about the go-karts.
Not bad for $50.
