Planning a caravanning trip is exciting, where to go, what to see, how far to drive each day without doing yourself in and then there’s the really important stuff: “Where can we empty the toilet?” Or “How many days can we go without emptying the toilet? Oh shit!” Then there’s, “Where can we fill the water tanks?” And “Where is the next supermarket?” Or even “Do they have supermarkets out there?” At least Wikicamps makes finding dump points easy. All of the above depends on whether there are towns where you are going. Then there are the grog shops to … Continue reading Up the Guts – Getting down to the nitty gritty

Are you absolutely stuffed after a long day of driving? Then why not pick up a chook. Costing somewhere between $7 and $10 there’s nothing better than a hot roast chook picked up from a supermarket as you’re passing through town. It serves as an easy dinner on a day of long driving and hopefully with enough left over for a quick sandwich for next day’s lunch. Toss a bag of coleslaw into your trolley and dinner’s done. Yep, that’ll make hubby reckon that he’s married the kitchen goddess of the scrub. Continue reading All hail the humble chook!

Batteries and Battery Charger. Your battery provides you with 12volt power when mains power isn’t available. The battery charger takes the power from other sources (your car or solar panels) via the Anderson plug and feeds it into the battery. You may have two batteries to allow you to freedom camp and stay off grid longer. Continue reading B is for Battery

Last winter we had our coldest ever night on the road at Stanthorpe in Queensland. Which was probably our own fault for staying inland and a thousand metres above sea level in a town that is notorious for cold nights. But at least it prompted us to finally make the decision to fit a diesel heater in the van. We returned home had the heater fitted and like idiots set off into to foul, yes foul weather, with head colds. The diesel heater paid for itself that week, it gave us sensuous enveloping warmth without thinking about it. (Note to … Continue reading The Heavenly Warmth of Diesel Heat

No matter how large a van is you really don’t have much storage space and what you have must be used wisely. Personally, I do worry about storing potatoes under the fridge, but here’s some sage advice from Toothless Johnno “Don’t store you bike helmet next to the hot water service”. Continue reading A Storage Hint

Jan 2019 We’re getting ready to go away and Woody checks the caravan batteries only to discover that they aren’t charging from the 240volt power lead. He plugs in the portable solar panels and poof, they go up in a puff of smoke. The mobile caravan repairman arrives and finds that the solar panels need a new regulator but it’s probably time that they were replaced anyway. The batteries? Well they are a much simpler problem, the plug wasn’t connected properly!   Continue reading Battery Blues?