100 day road trip up and coming ...
Right so covid permitting here's the plan.
What
100 days of a road trip with 2 kids, 1 tent, 1 ford ranger ute with a fitted out canopy (have a look at the photos if your not from Oz to see what I mean).
Where
Hopefully up thru QLD with an epic 2400km trip to Boodjamulla (Lawn Hill) NP in 4 days. Stops at Monto, Lake Dunn and Neila before spending 5 nights at Boodjamulla (overlapping with Dunk's folks for 3 nights).
From there, we're heading north west towards Borroloola, Lorella Springs, Limmen NP, Mataranka (Elsey NP), possible Nitmiluk (Katherine Gorge) NP, Kakadu NP and then Darwin and Litchfield NP
After Darwin we're a little unsure as depends on whether WA border is open or not. Fingers crossed it is and we visit Keep River, Kununurra, Purnululu (Bungle Bungles), AWC (Australian Wildlife Conservancy) site of Charnley and Mornington off the Gibb River rd then Broome and hopefully Karijni and Ningaloo Reef on the west coast before turning around and making our way home somehow.
When
End of June to start of Oct. Kids miss Term 3 in school and we also take the 2 school holidays around Term 3 to extend the trip as long as possible with minimal schooling disruptions (well aside from 10 weeks - oops).
Preparations
In the last few months we've spent a lot of time
- planning and researching various routes and options, figuring out distances and a few rough itineraries to give us various plans A, B, Cs in case of covid, road closures, weather and all the other spanners that could hit us
- testing our camp setup completely. We have now reinforced every pole section on our Blackwolf Turbo Plus tent plus carrying a spare set of poles for each section just in case. Our camp kitchen, fridge, bedding, seating, gazebo should now cover most situations for a quick setup but also plenty shelter from sun/rain if needed.
- set up the canopy and ute to fit the following in:- fridge slide & fridge, spare spare tyre, 70 lt water bladder (which sits behind the back seats of the ute), 2 jerrys cans for water, sleeping bags/mattresses/clothes for 4, seats for 4, table, quick connect picnic table, cage around the fridge slide, various drawers and shelving for food, tools, etc, battery system for charging electronics (we're bringing devices for reading, laptop for photos, cameras, phones), hanging points for stuff, various safety equipment (like recovery tracks, shovel, comprehensive first aid kit, tools, UHF radio, Sat phone, etc). On top we'll carry 2 gas bottles and 2 diesel jerry cans for sections we can't get fuel. We also installed a top loader, self agitating, powerless washing machine (thanks for the buckets and lids Dion!).
