Christmas as a Nomad

The Blom family re-live their experience of Christmas on the road in South Australia

Words and Images by: KIM BLOM-JANSSEN N58424

Innes National Park, SA

You all know that feeling, when you drive off in your motorhome, leaving your house behind. The thoughts of, “did we close all the windows? Is there rubbish lying around? Did we bring everything we need on this trip?”. It takes a few kilometres until those questions pass your mind and the further you are away from home, the more the holiday feeling starts to settle in. What is done is done, you won’t turn around now and if you’ve forgotten anything, well, you’ll just have to buy it.

And so this is how our trip to South Australia started just before Christmas last year.

For months, we’d thought about soaking up the Queensland sun, but in the week before, a weather forecast check changed our plans. Rockhampton looked good, but temperatures were expected to get above 22 degrees overnight. South Australia was also on our wish list and still hot during the day, but the nights looked better with temperatures set to average between 16 and 18 degrees. So in an instant, we set our sights on the southern state. We had already ticked many destinations from our list, but in the nine years we had owned our motorhome, we had never been to Adelaide. So with the motorhome packed, and the kids ready (we have three children aged between six and 12 years old), we set off. We spent the first night at Jerrys Plains in the upper Hunter Valley, a great, spacious reserve with a beautiful tennis/basketball court you can use, all for free. Note to self: don’t forget to pack the tennis rackets next time. The kids loved it, with lots of space to run around and kick a ball. When we were eating our dinner under the big tree, we saw a group of kangaroos hopping past. What a great way to start a holiday. We had forgotten about home already.

Stopping in at Peterborough, SA, en-route to Moonta Bay

BOUND FOR BROKEN HILL

Over the next few days, we set forth for Broken Hill. We love free camping, not only because of the freedom and space it provides, but also because it gets expensive to stay every night in a caravan park with three kids. On average, we pay $80 for a powered site for the five of us and our motorhome. We’d rather spend money in local towns, at the bakery or the butcher and so on. We are very fortunate in Australia to have so many beautiful spots to camp for free.

The kids love stopping at a local pool to cool off, which is another way to support the local community. Cobar has a fantastic big pool, complete with slides and water park. We’ll be going back there for sure. When we arrived in Broken Hill, we thought of visiting the Royal Flying Doctor Service Bruce Langford Visitor Centre. It’s a great little museum with handson experiences for the kids. It had been a while since we were last there, but when we parked the motorhome and got out, I heard a hissing sound. Not good! Where did it come from? Was it a snake? Then I saw one of the rear tyres had a puncture and was leaking air. While my husband tried to patch it up with duct tape (can’t travel without it), I googled tyre places in Broken Hill. There was one only a few kilometres down the road towards town. We set off as quick and safe as we could, and we made it there! Luckily, they found a tyre at the back of the shop that fitted our motorhome. It was a bit dusty, but isn’t everything dusty in Broken Hill? Well, not everything as it turned out. We went to the racecourse for an overnight stay, and found a beautiful patch of green grass that cost us only $15 a night. The next morning we were woken by the horses training and running around the track. What a great little oasis in the outback. We decided to give the museum a miss and travelled further west, bound for South Australia. The outback journey may be long and straight with not much happening, but we love it. The scenery changes and we relish the feeling of being small and nature so overwhelming. The kids kept busy in the back spotting and counting emus. They saw more than 40 on this trip. The best time was when we were singing to the Twelve days of Christmas and spotted an emu at the exact moment we warbled about an emu up a gumtree. What a coincidence, or maybe we were just singing that song a lot.

Moonta Bay Caravan Park

CHRISTMAS AT MOONTA BAY

When we travel, we always keep an eye on the weather forecast and we saw that Christmas Day was going to be a 40 degree day. So we called ahead to some caravan parks on the Yorke Peninsula to spend those hot days by the water, instead of somewhere along the way in the outback. We got a spot for three nights at a caravan park in Moonta Bay. We could only stay until Boxing Day as it was fully booked afterwards. But that was long enough for us. We had a great Christmas. Although it was hot, with the aircon running inside we kept our cool. The kids loved the free water park next door. Perfect for those hot days.

Playing in the shallows of Stenhouse Bay, Innes NP

The busiest time of the year for camping is definitely between Boxing Day and New Year’s Eve. We knew we wouldn’t have much luck finding a caravan park, but we found a campsite at Innes National Park and booked it online. So we drove all the way down to the southern end of the Yorke Peninsula. We had some beautiful days there. Wow, Innes National Park is impressive! The only thing we were unprepared for were the marsh flies, which wreaked havoc on our walk around the historic town Inneston. Having sought refuge in our motorhome after being aggressively chased, we later learned that insect repellent will keep them at bay.

New Year’s Eve was a quiet evening at Port Julia, at a great camping reserve run by volunteers. After that, we drove to Barossa Valley to meet up with friends from home. We went for lunch at Maggie Beer’s Farm Shop, the food was delicious. We bought some goodies to take home, although not all made it home, it was too good not to eat. Of course, we also visited some wineries, more goodies to take home.