Beach at Palm Cove, FNQ

This is it folks. We’re really going to do the big one, the iconic lap of Australia. The Big Lap is the holy grail of grey nomads. Our plan is as simple as this; we’re starting from Sydney in April, heading north and will be home in time for Christmas. Let me introduce us, I’m Rob and my partner of more than 20 years is Slava. You’ll be able to follow our adventure with tales of our travels each month in The Wanderer.

Technically, we started our big lap in October last year when we spent five weeks touring Tasmania, which you probably read about in the February and March issues of The Wanderer. Now we’re off to circumnavigate the ‘north’ island.

Last year we also spent three months touring Europe by motorbike – from England to Ukraine and return. We visited 26 countries, crossed 40 borders and rode more than 20,000km. Such was the nature of that trip we planned every overnight stop and booked all our hotel accommodation over the internet months in advance using www.booking.com. Our lap of Australia couldn’t be more different. It still involves some planning and preparation, but nowhere near what was required for our European adventure.

In one sense we have been planning this trip for years. It was always on our list of things to do in retirement. We bought and outfitted our VW Transporter campervan in 2009 (See The Wanderer, Feb 2014) with this trip specifically in mind. There are some decisions about the trip that we’ve already made.

We know when we are leaving home and when we’ll be back. We know we will be in the tropics during the dry season. We know we will be travelling anti-clockwise. And we have organised a couple of rendezvous points along the way. For instance, we will be in Byron Bay at Easter for the annual Blues Festival. We have booked a week in a resort at Palm Cove, north of Cairns, in June and we have booked a week in a boutique hotel in Margaret River, south of Perth, in November. That gives us a bit of a schedule, but that’s it for detailed planning. We’ll make up the rest as we go along. Oh, one other thing, we have decided not to do inland Australia. We just don’t think we’ll have enough time, so we’ll save that for a subsequent trip (or trips).

Some of you may wonder at our judgement in deciding to do such a long trip in a relatively small van. But that’s just us. If the two of us could tour Europe for three months on a bike with as much as you could carry in a smallish suitcase, we don’t require  a big van to carry heaps of stuff. All we need is something to transport us relatively economically and provide us with a dry place to sleep. Cooking can be done in the van, on a barbecue or we could just eat out. Lounging around can be done inside or on a beach, depending on our mood and the weather. We’ve got all the necessary acronyms including TV, CD, DVD, USB, GPS and WiFi. What more do we need? Okay, I know I didn’t mention the bathroom and laundry, but we’ve learned to get by with public facilities.

There are some things we had to get done before just driving north. Slava’s daughter and granddaughter live with us, so that’s the house minding taken care of. Most of our regular mail, like the bills, is now sent by email so we haven’t bothered with mail forwarding. We use a Samsung tablet and a laptop with a Telstra 4G mobile wireless modem for email and all the internet stuff that is such a part of modern life.

South west tip of Australia at Cape Leeuwin

I already have a couple of magazine subscriptions which I receive electronically and I’ve been hoping The Wanderer would arrive electronically one day. I’m glad to say that in January this year, that day arrived and we can now get our monthly Wanderer on the road anywhere in the world via the internet. You can now download The Wanderer from the Members’ section of the club website at http://www.cmca.net.au/. Make sure you have your own personal login username and password. If you haven’t, you can arrange these on the website in a couple of minutes.

We even switched our mobile phones to Telstra because it offers the best coverage and our plan lets us ring home for free. We’re mid cycle with servicing the van, so we’ll get that done somewhere on the road in line with the normal schedule. Likewise with tyres, we won’t start with new tyres but I expect we will have to replace them before we get home. The van registration is due while we will be out of NSW but we have renewed it three months in advance before leaving – which you can do in NSW – so that takes care of that.

Big Captain Cook, Cairns

We’ve got 12 months of travel insurance just in case (although it’s only good for individual trips of up to three months). We’ve also spoken to our financial adviser, so (barring another financial meltdown) the money should keep coming in regularly while we are enjoying ourselves. Speaking of money, we expect to free camp as much as possible and therefore we don’t expect to spend any more on the road than we would if we were at home. We’ll see how realistic that is, but that’s the way it worked out when we toured Tasmania last year. We’ve updated the maps in our van GPS. The upshot is we are not taking a single paper map. Based on our experience touring Europe and Tasmania last year, this is quite viable.

There are a few extra things we are carrying. In addition to the usual water hose with filter and an electrical cord, we’ve got an air compressor and puncture repair kit to supplement our spare tyre, a snatch rope and shackle in case we get bogged in the  sand on Fraser Island, a barbecue grill and I’ve packed a few basic multi-use tools like a shifting spanner, pliers and one of those screwdrivers with interchangeable bits. We’ve just fitted a new Redarc BMS 1215 battery management system that will look after our house battery whether we are on the road, charging up in a campground or sucking in power from our solar panels. We’ll let you know more about that as we go.

Most easterly point of Australia at Cape Byron

We’ve named the van The Vanborghini. As you’d expect, there’s a story behind the name. One day, not long after we finished the initial van fit-out, we parked in Balmain, Sydney, to do some shopping. When we came back, a Lamborghini had parked right behind us. Now Slava has a real thing for Lambos and she just stood there ogling it. I’m not the jealous type but I thought I should defend our van and started to point out the obvious advantages it has over any Lambo supercar, like the double bed, the fridge full of cold beer, the TV with built-in DVD, do I need to go on – you get the idea. Well Slava responded by referring to our VW as The Vanborghini and the name has stuck.

Seal Rocks, NSW

We hope you enjoy reading about our adventure over the next nine to10 months but we know you won’t enjoy it as much as we will. 

Sunset at Lake Munmorah, NSW

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Written: Tue 01 Apr 2014
Printed: April, 2014
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