Learning the campervan life while traveling through NSW, VIC, and the ACT

First of all: Living the campervan life is not easy. More importantly, in Oz, it is not as much fun as the brochures, blogs, and all the other info sources make it sound like. Nope, this is not New Zealand, where you can pretty much stop and pull off to the side of the road wherever you are, living out of your self-contained campervan. New South Wales,Victoria, or the Australian Capital Territory don't allow that. Lesson learned.

I spent a good chunk of money renting in Sydney a nice campervan (just the full insurance cost about a grand) so I could live at least partly off the grid for almost three weeks while travelling in NSW, Victoria and the ACT. Reality soon set in when I realized that finding a spot to spend the night is not as easy as one might be led to believe. 

First night out "camping"

It all started out on the wrong footing on the day that I picked up my 8-meter vehicle from the Let'sGo office 18 miles from my airport hotel, the Moxy. I had ridden my bike to the rental place and then drove back to the Moxy to collect my luggage for the trip (bike case and rolling duffel would patiently await my return to the hotel before my departure back to the US after Christmas). I also stopped in a big shopping center to get provisions for the first few days (Woolworths and Aldi are the preferred chains, apart from Cole's, and they usually are right next to one another—go figure). All this took up a lot of time. So, when I finally headed south of Sydney it was already relatively late in the afternoon.

Chilled pet food right next to your lamb chops and T-bones ...

The plan was to drive an hour or so to leave greater Sydney and then find some scenic coastal spot to set up camp for the night. I had installed a generally recommended app, CamperMate, that lists all kinds of options for nomads on wheels. What I did not realize beforehand was that most of these campsites close their offices at 5 p.m., and unless you're pre-registered you won't stay there. Unpaid campsites exist in National Parks and areas "out bush," but to get to them you need to go off-road, which my rental agreement specifically forbade.

Sorry mate, no camping here, there, or anywhere close!

While New Zealand allows "free camping" in self-contained vehicles all over the place (in designated areas along beaches or scenics areas, on the outskirts of town or often in established city parks), Australia has just one universally understood word for such activities: verboten! Obviously not wanting to violate local laws, but also realizing that sunset was only an hour-and-a-half away I started to panic a little. I had stopped at several caravan parks only to be turned away ("no vacancy," "closed for the day") and was simply hoping to run into something.

Having forgotten to buy a bag of ice, on that first evening I walked across the highway to a Subway and asked for a cup of ice. Big, empty stare. But then the friendly mate went into the freezer and came out with ....

... this stalactite that had developed over time on some drippy pipe (my intestinal system is rock solid), and he had the presence of mind to think of it and handed it to me with a big grin, wrapped in a paper bag. My G&Ts lived off this thing for almost two weeks! 

First night campervan picnic. It improved from here!

With maybe 45 minutes off daylight remaining I happened to spot on the other side of the divided highway that I was traveling on maybe a dozen campervans parked in what looked like a parking lot. I made the next possible U-turn and drove back. Yep, those folks were obviously here for the night, and I decided to follow suit. I asked one young fellow in a car with a rooftop tent whether this was a legal spot, and he said he'd stayed here before without any issues. Good enough for me, as there weren't any other options. I parked in such a way that my door faced a nice little lake, and made myself comfortable.

Thankfully, I came prepared. Three cordials for US $14 ...

Over the next three weeks I developed and perfected a routine whenever I arrived at my spot for the night. The refrigerator had to be switched from car battery to the propane tank or the campsite's electrical hook-up (high tech gadgets can be annoyingly cumbersome!), I'd put the shades up in the front cabin for privacy, and when there were hook-ups I would attach electricity and fresh water and grey water lines. That first night, the independence of having a self-contained unit with toilet and shower came in handy. 

Switching the power options on the fridge was frustrating, to say the least.

Australians love to travel with their campers! You should see the fancy Toyotas and Fords that pull decked-out off-road worthy-trailers. There's some serious equipment out on the highways! While some of these folks go truly off the grid (which a motorhome cannot), most seem to stay in commercial holiday parks. I started to learn to find these places ahead of time with my app (as well as another, pretty worthless app called WikiCamps that every time took 15 seconds to load and didn't provide direct links to many of the parks it listed) and make reservations a day or two in advance.

US $175,000 of rolling fun

Gotta have that roo catcher and the CB, mate!

The first two caravan parks where I stayed (also called tourist parks or holiday parks) belonged to the Tasman group, and I paid about $15 to $20 for a non-hookup grass site. (I'll list all prices in approximate US dollars.) All these parks are laid out with some primitive and as well as developed hook-up sites, some with on-grass parking, others on concrete pads, some with trees, others a bit more exposed. But as I found out, the vast majority of the park's customers will rent small cabins that can cost from $90 to $150 a night, or even more, depending on what kind of cabin it is. That's where the term "village" is truly appropriate as they essentially are planned communities that take on the function of motels. It seems that some folks own their spot as often a formerly mobile trailer was incorporated into the cabin, replete with a small front yard.

I don't think that I stayed in a single park that did not have way more cabins than parking spots for trailers and campervans. Every park featured a similar layout with a camp kitchen and an amenities block, as it is called. That's where the bathrooms and showers are located (with at least half of them featuring piped-in elevator muzak). Upon check-in I would be given a map with my site number, the location of kitchen and amenities, in most cases the code for the electronic keypad to enter the latter, and all kinds of other useful information. Only one park charged for hot showers; all the other seemed to even use the same fixtures and cabins (built by Jayco, the company that had built my van as well). Both bathrooms and showers were immaculately clean, everywhere without a fault. (BTW, I never went to any public restroom in Australia that didn't have toilet paper and was as clean as what your bathroom at home would look like. Totally amazing.)

The camp kitchen is a communal area with at least one large refrigerator (often several) for folks to store food in, toasters, hot water boilers, sinks, and gas or electric ovens. There are always BBQs (usually free to use) that upon the pressing of a button will heat up a large stainless steel wok-like surface on which one can cook one's dinner. There are tongs and scrubbers and implements to clean up after you prepare your meal, and everybody does. For your laundry needs (traveling with four kids in a caravan requires more than my bucket to wash out my daily kit) there's a separate area with washers and dryers. For the kids there's generally a play area, some parks have pools, and there are plenty trash cans and of course a dump station. Bicycles may be operated at speeds of less than 8 kmh. 

After the first two nights I sprang for improved sites with hookups since the price differential was less than $5, and having electricity meant that I could run the AC (and on a few nights the heater), switch the fridge from the small propane bottle to outside juice, could recharge my laptop, and drink fresh tap water. Depending on the location and level of fanciness, I paid each night between $30 to as much as $50, with most of them in the low $30 range. Most of the reservations I made online, but a few parks don't have that option and so I had to call them. Sometimes it happened that the online system would not show any availability and apop-up would ask me to call the office directly. I was worried about the two days of Christmas and made a reservation for Dec. 24 and 25 about 10 days in advance because a lot of folks had told me that this is a really busy time.

So, this was really not what I had expected when I had started to plan this trip. My fault for not digging deep enough and assuming that Australia would be like New Zealand. But going to these caravan parks also gave me a chance to interact with Aussies much more than I would have had I stayed every night in an isolated spot. They are a gregarious people and love to talk, and striking up a conversation doesn't take much. These conversations with camp neighbors were fun and interesting, and once in a while they would provide an answer to a question that had been building in my head for days but that Google wouldn't be able to answer. Nice folks, all around, and everybody is quiet and courteous.

To make camp life a little nicer, my van was equipped with a side awning t oprovide shade and a certain sense of hominess. I had been using it for a few nights, setting up my table and chair and enjoying happy hour after the day's initial driving and then my daily bike ride. On the day I got to Merimbula, I went through my usual routine of setting up camp. When I unfurled the awning, it suddenly started to sag on the aft side and making terrible noises. I was barely able to fold out one of the ground struts to support it. As it turned out, the whole thing had been held in place by five tiny lag screws in three brackets, and only the two in the front bracket were still in place! Those three screws must have rattled loose while driving on Australia's sometimes very bumpy highways, and when I started to unfurl the awning the two little guys of course couldn't keep everything together. I don't even want to think about what could have happened had the whole contraption become detached and flown off the side of the van and into the windshield of a following car!

Fortune was on my side in that I was in a caravan park in a town—driving anywhere would have been out of the question with the dangling awning. I went to the park's reception and explained my situation. It turned out that the woman behind the counter just happened to have a phone number for an RV repair guy, and we called him. Dan was his name, and yes, he could come by in a day or two. Goodness! I texted him a few photos, and he suddenly agreed that he could come by within the hour. A big sigh of relief! Dan showed up, assessed the issue, agreed that this should have never happened and that I was oh-so-lucky, inserted new screws, and reset the whole thing. (I had tried to contact my rental company with no success.) How much do I owe you, I asked? AUD $130, or about $90. Not exactly cheap, but he did  come out on a house call and fixed the problem, and I was glad I had gotten some cash money while in Sydney as he didn't take cards. I had three $50s; do you have a $20? Nope. Alright mate, AUD $100 ($70) will be fine. He never sent me the promised invoice, so that repair came out of my pocket without reimbursement from the rental guys.

Aussies are known for their barbecuing prowess. When I had rented the van, I had asked whether I could also rent a small propane grill for my dinners. No, we don't offer that. So, on my first day after several inquiries, I had found a Bunnings (similar to our Home Depot or Germany's Hage Baumarkt) and had bought myself a Weber-like small charcoal grill (plus charcoal and lighter tabs as well as trash bags since the van didn't have anything like that). Travelling Aussies have fancy barbies built into their trucks or trailers, or they simply use those wok things in the tourist parks (or in many public parks). Most places where I stayed had absolute bans on open flames (everyone lives in fear of those horrible wildfires that have made the news over the past few years), but for once I violated the law and made some delicious meals on my tiny little Weber, with a bucket of water right next to me and no inattentiveness.

It wasn't until fairly late in my trip that I learned that one can also camp—for a very moderate fee of around $15 for full hookups and with a basic amenity block and laundry—at many towns' showgrounds, which one could compare to our fairgrounds. I don't know whether that's the case all over Australia, but it certainly is an option in Victoria, many parts of which are agriculture and livestock based. Once or twice a year, folks come to town with their horse trailers and campers to attend the fair or the rodeo, and then  the town has this area that is open year round for folks on the go. I found out a bit late about this but stayed in one of the showgrounds, in Albury. 

All the parks were rather easy-going in regard to when I arrived and left. Even though 2 p.m. might have been advertised as the earliest check-in, I never had an issue arriving a little earlier. I usually tried to get on the road by 10 a.m., the usual check-out time, drive for two to three hours to my next destination, buy groceries before getting to the park, and then set up camp. That usually allowed me to get out for my ride before 3 p.m. In my next blog entry I will write about what riding was like, so here I just want to say that it would take me an easy four hours to cover 25 to 30 miles—navigation, taking photos, taking a wrong turn, suffering in a hill, and finally spending a bit of time in a brewpub all took their toll. So, it was seldom that I made it back to camp before 7 p.m. Time to hit the shower and then my G&T for happy hour while massaging photos and uploading them to my Strava and FB feeds. If a bit of daylight was left I'd continue reading Robyn Davidson's TRACKS, the account of her solo journey across the Outback with four camels. (I'm still stuck half-way through the book, which isn't really all that voluminous.) Dinner would get started when no outside reading light was left  and finished when it was dark—sometimes sitting outside, when it was warm enough, more often inside to escape both wind and cold. It'd be close to midnight by the time the lights went out.

As you can see, living the campervan life is really not all that easy. Everything takes a little longer: buying the food for the day, setting up camp, doing the daily wash, making reservations, breaking camp. And getting used to the vacation parks was another thing, but once I wrapped my head around the concept I started to enjoy it, helped by friendly neighbors, fulfilling happy hours, and the occasional kangaroo visits. Come back in a few days when I hope to write more about what I saw from the bike.

Jürgen