Lessons from our Trial camping weekend In preparation for our big lap, we decided to try out our camper trailer last weekend and headed off to Bald Hill in the Avon Valley. This small campsite is situated a little over an hour from Perth off Toodyay road (Pronounced two-jay. It took me a long time to figure that one out!) The plan was to set-off from Perth at 3pm on Friday so as to get to site whilst there is still a little daylight. A pretty sound plan seeing as this will be our very first time putting up the Jayco. After numerous debates over tenting vs caravaning, we finally decided to compromise with a camper trailer. Benoit wanted us to spend the next 6months reliving his youth as a scout with the bare essentials; a tent, sleeping bags, an Opinel knife and a shovel. I, on the other hand, imagined a mobile home on wheels with toilet, shower and my Thermomix! There are many websites and blogs that go into detail on how best to travel and I will leave you to look them up if you are interested. We decided on getting a Jayco Outback Swan as it is small enough so we can go off-road, big enough to sleep our family of 5 and theoretically, easy enough to set-up in under 30mins. It took us closer to 2 hours to set-up on Friday!! As always, we were running late and did not leave till past 5, which meant that it was pitch black when we got to camp. The first challenge was to find flat ground in the dark on a campsite called Bald Hill. Ah yes, we were on a hill and maybe we should have thought of the implications before choosing that site. Alas, it was too late to change as we could not reach the 2 other cars already en-route to join us and we had another 5 families coming up the next day! Benoit heads off with our hand-cranked measly torch to do a site survey whilst I wait in the car with our very hungry little children. Lesson number 1 : arrive in daylight (not only will it make setting-up a lot easier, it will also significantly reduce the risk of hitting a kangaroo or other wild animal... I will save the bulbar or no bulbar roadkill debate for another blog entry!) Lesson number 2 : choose a flat site; this stands true whether in a tent or trailer. Sleeping on a slope isn't very comfortable, and having your wine glasses and plates of food sliding off the camp table is not much fun either! Lesson number 3 : keep torches and tools in an easy to access location in the car and not in the trailer. 3 lessons already and we have yet to set-up camp! We found the flattest slope on Bald Hill and did our best to prop the Jayco so it wasn't tilted. Lesson number 4 : re-read lesson number 2 and double highlight! jaycos are built to be light hence they are fragile. If the Jayco isn't completely on a horizontal plane, the angles will cause too much strain on the frame and in our case, will break the door! And kids, no jumping in the Jayco! Thankfully, car no2 with our camping guru, Nicolas, arrived soon after. He whipped out his battery operated power lantern "and there was light"! Lesson number 5: get a good battery operated lantern. Hand-cranked and solar powered lamps are eco but not at all effective. Gas lanterns with cryptic instructions are not easy to set-up (at least not for a first time camper) and they can fall and break, as ours did on day 2! Once we had set-up, we were eager to get dinner going. We had read so much about the marvels of dutch oven cooking and couldn't wait to try it out. We decided on simple roast potatoes. Lesson number 6: Dutch oven cooking is a science. How many coals, where and how they are placed will make the difference between a delicious dinner and inedible gunk! Roast potatoes became burnt mash on day 1 and the roast beef on day 2 was I understand not much better... Baked bread and cake is probably over ambitious and will be removed from the menu for now. Benoit has promised our friends a make-up dinner when we return in 6 months. Dinner by the toasty bonfire, a couple of bottles of wine and whiskey and then off to bed. Cleaning up the mountain of dishes in the middle of the night was obviously out of the question. We decided to take the ostrich approach and chucked all the food and dishes in the shower tent to deal with later. Washing dirty oily overnight dishes with cold and minimal water the next day was horror akin to cleaning Amelie's poo! Lesson number 7 : meal schedules will be adjusted so we cook, eat & clean when there is still daylight. We were not sure if the untreated rainwater in the tank @ Bald Hill was drinkable, but it was the color of tea and we decided not to attempt to drink it. I did use it to try to clean the dishes but Camping Guru came to the rescue with his electric shower. Nicolas has a 90litres reservoir of clean water in his car and we emptied the tank over in 1 day, just for dishes! Lesson number 8 : water is scarce and we need to come up with ingenious ways to get more and use less. It was a wonderful weekend spent with friends chatting around the fire, hiking, playing ball & petanque… we even set-up the slack-line and yoga gym! We still have a lot to do to prepare for our trip. I started to write-out the list of all the sexy camping gadgets we needed but thankfully, Benoit put a stop to it. Lesson number 9 : just because someone else has it, doesn't mean we need to it. just because it makes life easier, doesn't make it is necessary. A big thank you to all our friends who joined us for our trail camping weekend in Avon Valley. Avon valley campsites Jayco Outback Swan in Trailer mode The campsite with Jayco set-up
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