From east to west Australia, our one month roadtrip with a hired 4wd bush camper. Ou Australia road trip.
The 4wd bush camper
The car is a Toyota Landcruiser 3l turbo. It has a TGM roof top tent (RTT) and awning, an Australian brand. There is a recovery kit with the strict minimum: a small air compressor, a lamp that works on 12v, a small axe, swivels, and slings. But no Maxtrax plates! And also no GPS.
It has a double battery but the electric connexion is made weirdly. The second battery is a good Optima yellow 75Ah, but there is only two 12v DC connected to it, and one is used for the fridge. The 220v is connected to the ignition battery, thus you can’t charge anything during the night or while the car is off. Same thing for the USB connexion next to the driver, it only works when the ignition is on, and it isn’t efficient.
The camping equipment
This was the camping equipment to choose from a 4 person package. We took the fridge, 4 chairs, the table, an Oztrail tent with two camp-beds, also the 20 liters water canister, the 20 liters fuel canister, and the annex that you can zip on the RTT to have a small room under the RTT, next to the car.
We didn’t take the two plates gas cooker with the gas tank, it was way too huge.
All this equipmenttakes a lot of place in the car. Hopefully, I packed as minimal as I could, andthat we are only four people traveling in the car. Not much place left with allthat equipment, our luggage, the food and water. One seat at the back is usedfor equipment, bags and water. The car is fully loaded!
It was pointless to take the annex for the RTT as we haven’t used it. We didn’t use it for two reasons: 1. When the roof top tent is open, it is opened on the back of the car. It isn’t the best side of the car because it is then complicated to reach the stuff in the trunk. 2. The spare tire is at the back of the car, and this spare tire takes most of the place under the opened RTT. So, obviously, the annex is useless.
It would have been better to have the opening of the RTT on the side of the car. We don’t have this kind of RTT, so we didn’t realize all the inconvenience of this configuration.
The Oztrail tent is quickly set up and the camp-beds are comfortable as we aren’t lying on the floor.
Well, we did have a bad time trying to understand where to put some bars in the tent, but then realized that they weren’t absolutely necessary to keep it upright. These bars are now stored in the back of the car and we never used them.
I think this is it for the car!
It did make us realize that our Land Rover Defender is really well equipped and that my husband has done quite a good job with all the electric connexions.
Check out here our packing for this one-month Australia road trip.
This was my Australia road trip plan before arriving in Brisbane mid-December:
Brisbane, Noosa Heads, Fraser Island, Sydney, Wilson Promontory National Park, Melbourne, Adelaide, maybe kangaroo island, Coober Pedy, William Creek, Ayers Rock, Port Lincoln, and then I didn’t really plan to join Perth.
I told myself I would have time during the trip to see the second half of planning. I do remember googling about 7’000 km for that, including the route to Perth. Now I can say: what the hell?!
This is what really happened for our one-month road trip in Australia: in 3 weeks we drove more than 8’000 km from Brisbane to Perth.
Unfortunately, we had to skip some places. It was a hard decision but it was a necessity. It was a necessity because of time and also because we weren’t allowed to drive in some regions with the rental car (yes, there was a list of forbidden roads!)
The real route map
Brisbane, Noosa Heads – Sunshine Coast, Brisbane, Gold coast – Surfers Paradise, Port Macquarie, Sydney, Wagga Wagga, Mildura, Port Augusta, Coober Pedi, Port Lincoln, Streaky Bay, Nullarbor, Norseman, Esperance, Albany, Margaret River, Perth.
It is a great experience to travel around Australia. And, of course, a road trip is the best option to see this country. Conditions are rough in certain regions but the landscape is unique.
We saw wild kangaroos, emus, wombats, snakes, and lizards. Wild birds with crazy voices. We saw great white sharks in Port Lincoln. We experienced bad weather, and chilly nights, extreme heat, and millions of flies. But we’ve experienced the kindness and awesomeness of Australians!
Free camping
Most of our nights were free camping. The real route map is mostly to see where we’ve been but not especially stopped for the night.
I did download a very useful app to help us find camp ground spots. The name of the app is Spaceships Travel. There is also Wikicamps that is available.
It’s still not very clear for us if you can stop wherever you want or not. We did sometimes stop in unknown places with great lookouts, not always mentioned on the app. But the app helped us not losing time searching for a nice place to stop overnight.
We also slept in hotels and a great YHA in Port Lincoln because of the lack of place on campsites when arriving in some cities. But we never booked in advance, not knowing when we would arrive at destination and which destination.
This is the end
We are now ending our road trip in Australia with a well-deserved few days stop in Perth.
To see the pics of our adventure, do follow me on Instagram @offtrackfamily
Have you traveled through Australia? What did you experience?
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