Camping with the Noonans

CAMPING WITH THE NOONANS

John Noonan

Published by Honest John’s Outback Safaris Pty Ltd at Smashwords

Copyright 2012 John Noonan

All Rights Reserved

Cover Artist and Photography: John Noonan

ISBN:  9781301353897

Website

http://jn.apostrophenow.com

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Contents

Introduction

Cutting to the Chase

Justify!

The Guiding Hand

Staying Alive

Necessary Equipment

OK, Where to put all this stuff!

Epilogue

Introduction

Figure 1:      Being Cool in the Cool Chamber, Grampians National Park, VIC, Australia. The author John, Taylor, Jacqui, and Tracey

There was a rumble out the back.

We were doing 80km/h down the last stretch of the Birdsville Track and the sun was about to start setting. The rumble was getting louder. Blast it, I thought, a tyre’s gone and we’re only a couple of kilometres from camp. What a nuisance! I glanced in the side mirror to see if I could observe shredding tyre…only it wasn’t the tyre. All the noise was due to the Rear axle coming out. All the way out. The car lurched and then veered to the right as the wheel and axle came completely away. I went for the brakes, but they had gone, and so we ground to a halt in a cloud of dust as the wheel and axle bounced past us and did a merry dance over a few small sand hills.

Tracey and I have been travelling about for years and there would be a drama that would happen on average at least once per trip. I have found out only recently that according to the laws of probability, something going wrong on any trip is an absolute certainty! It does explain a lot. It doesn’t matter how much preparation you do, you are bound to strike a problem of some sort. When children came along we still wanted to go on our trips, though now there were more things to go wrong. The fact that they took up space in the cabin was also a minor problem. However, having them come along also forced a rethink on how we were set up because we did have a somewhat luxurious camping style, and some of the luxuries looked like they weren’t going to fit in any more. Like my numerous slabs of beer.

Our trips away with our children seemed to be some sort of enigma to our friends for many years. No one had ever wanted to come away with us! Some friends of ours, the Hewitsons, decided to corner us one night at their parent’s holiday house in order to find out what the hell we got up to when we went away. After an all night discussion they decided to come with us on our next trip. I became very excited at the thought of someone actually wanting to come away with us so I wrote up all our tips and ominously titled it So…You Want to Come Camping with the Noonans. On that trip they had such a good time, despite one or two obligatory problems, they signed up for the next trip that we were going on, which happened to be into the middle of nowhere.

A long time ago I travelled overseas as a backpacker, having temporarily left the workforce and spending six months each in south-east Asia and North America. Many people taking at least six months off usually do travel overseas – only a few would travel their own country. I travelled various parts of Australia in a whirlwind fashion before I went overseas, and when I came back I decided to travel Australia in more detail whilst waiting for the next overseas opportunity. As a result we have travelled all around Australia, but it took ten years, at four or five weeks at a time. The kids have now been to every Australian state, though not through design. Every year we would pick out a new destination, work out how to get there and back, roughly decide what we would see, and just go.

Over the years whenever we were on a trip, there were always some things that were unsatisfactory, whether it was equipment not performing properly, or chores taking too long to do, or the way we packed the vehicle wasn’t quite right. Improvements would be made that would go into production on the next trip. A few strangers we had met during our travels had seen the way our vehicle was set-up, with all its handy-dandy gadgets, and listening to all my war stories suggested that I should either take out patents or write a book.

Some people may be abhorred by doing any preparation whatsoever however setting up the vehicle and camping equipment beforehand was fun for me because I treated it as a hobby. It also removed much of the pre-holiday stress that comes with organising a trip and which apparently occurs to over 80% of holiday makers whether they go on camp or go to a four-star hotel. I don’t collect stamps and sometimes I watch too much television, so the inventing of gadgets and obtaining skills to make the camping experience more enjoyable can be viewed as a more productive use of my spare time. Though Tracey wishes I didn’t spend so much time in the garage!

I think that the biggest hurdle faced by people who don’t travel like we do is actually deciding to go somewhere really different every year to what they have been used to. Here are some reasons

- we’ll wait for retirement when the kids are gone

- there’s too much planning to be done

- there’s too much stuff to take

- it’s dangerous, and there’s been all those outback tragedies

- advice from the experts is overwhelming

- it’s easier to book a hotel and go on sight seeing tours

- it’s easier to do last year’s holiday all over again

- the children get carsick

Boring!

Whilst I have been through a few camping ordeals, there’s no need for you to go through them to have a comfortable low risk travelling holiday with your children. Note that I’m not advocating being blasé about going to remote places, and I admit that I still feel a little apprehensive taking my children into any desert.

So remember, you live in a free country, so you don’t need Passports, Visas or a Note from your Mother to go.

Figure 2:      Yes, it did happen. Remnants of oil leak from the rear axle housing after the wheel bearings collapsed and the wheel and axle came away in my trusty ute.

Cutting to the Chase

Figure 3:      Taylor and Jacqui at the Edge of the World plaque, in western Tasmania with no landfall to the west until Africa

This book is mainly about becoming self-contained and self-sufficient on the road. There is a lot of Advice.

Some of the things I recommend will be expensive, others will not. In my normal job as a Project Manager we have a saying in the industry for when we deliver something that goes Good, Cheap, or Fast – Pick Two. Basically it means if you want something real quick and top quality then you will pay through the nose and most people can’t afford to do that all the time when travelling, so something's gotta give.

It has been hard to write a book that is a panacea for every camping situation. It seems every other book tries to cater for all tastes and styles. So, I have made a conscious decision that this book is about family-oriented car camping trips where you travel about and check things out, rather than head to a specific destination for a week or two. In other words, you plan to drive from place to place with your family in your car. And, ultimately, any place, including the deserts or any god-forsaken place in the middle of nowhere, on your own, and without the luxury of towing a camper trailer or staying in accommodation most of the time. You are not just going to the Gold Coast for the September school holidays, and there are more than two of you (and probably no more than five – any more and you probably will have to tow something anyway). In an upcoming chapter I explain why we eventually purchased a camper, however it was done primarily to make overseas travel potentially cheaper for us, and not solely to get a better class of accommodation.

The focus is also on Australian conditions; however I would say much of the advice is still very applicable to other countries as well, except by and large you don’t have to worry too much from being stranded and perishing in a baking desert. On our 5 month trip to Europe the cheap campervan we had purchased had a major breakdown in Florence. Aside from the obvious annoying inconvenience, we were never in any danger of perishing because we were in the middle of civilisation, and we had ways and means of continuing the holiday whilst the van was being repaired – which took a week.

So if you are not the desert-travelling non-towing travelling type with no more than a few children, then obviously some of the advice will not really be strictly applicable to you. Though I’m hoping you will get some useful tips or this will be a useful reference guide for you anyway. The advice I give is largely prescriptive, and has worked for us after much trial and error.

Even if you never plan to visit any desert in your lifetime the following are the Key things or principles that I reiterate throughout this book, and if you follow these basic rules you won’t go wrong.

1.     Make sure you get a good night’s sleep by purchasing very good quality sleeping equipment.

2.     Make sure you always stay warm and dry and buy very good quality wet-weather gear and warm clothing

3.     Have a setup that is real quick to put up or pull down.

4.     Obtain as many skills to survive out there – bushcraft, first aid, 4WDing and motor mechanics to name a few. Fixing tyres, welding and soldering are also handy skills that won’t go astray if you are remote. If you are able to do most things yourself then you get around the issue where you have to pick two - good, fast, or cheap.

Justify!

I have never missed a family wedding. This included the one in Dubbo, NSW, where my cousin Angela was living at the time. Many people would not drive 800 kilometres each way for a cousin’s wedding because invariably it eats into the days either side of the weekend and they have to get time off work. We decided we would do a trip that would include the wedding as part of the itinerary. The journey took in areas such as eastern Victoria, the Snowy Mountains, Canberra, and then round to Dubbo via some obscure NSW roads, but never more than 1000 kilometres from our home in Melbourne. After we checked into the Designated Relatives motel in Dubbo we joined the rest of my cousins and uncles who were all comparing notes of when they left Melbourne. This morning at 5am, and Yesterday at lunchtime, was the general tone of the conversation. Of course, they had to ask us when we left, and our response was Oh, that was about three weeks ago.

It helps if you have a Reason for Going that cannot be countered by such negative comments such as Well, we could do that at the place we went to last year! Lazing on a beach, going shopping or getting some relaxation isn’t as good as Visiting Auntie Marian in the countryside. In fact if you have interstate relatives or friends why not go and visit them! They will appreciate the effort you made to visit and it is always a buzz to catch up. I also find most townsfolk appreciate the fact that we have bothered to travel to their out of the way township, and are usually all over us especially with children in tow.

When we travel around on our camping trips we meet many retirees. Most of them complain about why they didn’t do this when they were younger. I think the main reason is because they had children on their hands, or they used one of the excuses I described in the Introduction. One old thing commented to me once that she was doing heaps of stuff now because You spend too much time in the grave. These people are lucky. They are still alive, are healthy and fit, and have not had a debilitating accident or illness that prevents them from travelling and seeing things.

We also meet some people that have taken six months off to travel around Australia. This