On the road

We are planning on being away for 16 weeks, departing on 8th May, allowing a week to get close to Cairns. We have a booking at Crystal Cascades Caravan Park in Cairns on 18th May for one week. Apart from staying with Emma-Jean and Jason at Curraghmore Station, we have no other set plans. We would like to explore Cooktown and FNQ, then maybe head west to Karumba, Borroloola, King Ash Bay, Nhulunbuy and Gove in East Arnhem Land and possibly even make it to Darwin, in the NT. The rest of the trip may result in tossing a coin as to direction of travel. We both need to be back at work the first week in September.
We left home and travelled via Kyabram and had lunch with Corrie and Barry, as we would be away for Corrie’s birthday on the 25th May.
Night one was spent at Weiss Beach on the Murray River near Tocumwal. We have not been to the Murray since the flooding earlier this year, so were curious to see if there were any changes. There was still a large sandy beach area, but the level of sand had built up and there was a lot of long grass. Not much debris around and no firewood. One other camper further down the beach, so it was very quiet. After a long day on the road, we had an early night. It was a bit chilly, so we put the diesel heater on to keep warm in the van, and certainly needed the extra doona on the bed.
Night two was on the Bogan Weir, at Peak Hill (7kms west), south of Dubbo. Another cold night where the temperature dropped down to .5 degrees, but we were warm inside, and slept with 2 doona's and an extra blanket. There were about a dozen other vans in the campsite.
We like to free camp and usually find reasonable sites by using Camps Australia 11 book, and WikiCamps and HipCamps, which are online apps. The problem sometimes with the online camps guide is that without internet reception, we cannot access photos, reviews, or information, so we need to do some quick research while driving through towns or re-fuelling.
We are fully self-contained to stay off-grid and love the freedom of camping where we want to with minimal neighbours. Some ‘free camps’ have limits on the number of hours/days you can camp there, but we are not sure who monitors this as we have seen some sites that look like there are semi-permanent campers who have not moved for some time.
As we are driving north through Coonabarabran and Moree, we notice more and more pieces of raw cotton on the side of the road, as we are driving through cotton farming areas.
The next campsite we have selected is the Tareelaroi Weir, about 25kms east of Moree. Unfortunately, the Camps GPS directed us to the wrong side of the river, so we backtracked about 15kms to get to the campsite. The grass was very long, but we found a clearing near the Weir Regulator and set up for the night. No one else around. Before it got dark, we walked a short distance, but the grass was too long to walk far, and saw a black wild piglet run through the grass probably following mamma pig, which we did not see. Another early night, another very cold night.
Thursday 11th May, we were woken early by workmen arriving to work on the regulator at the Weir. We weren’t in their way, and they didn’t bother us. Breakfast, then hit the road by 8.30am, driving over the QLD border and refuelled at Goondiwindi. The Leichhardt Highway was very bumpy with lots of roadworks, which we have found on most of the highways on the trip so far. The Newell Highway was extremely bad and bumpy. We figured that the amount of time we slowed or stopped for roadworks probably cost us maybe half a day in travel.
Night 4, Friday 12th May, we spent at Gil Weir, on the Condamine River south of Miles. Apparently, you can only camp for 24 hours, but some people were set up quite comfortably for longer than that. The site had garbage bins, a boat ramp, and a drop toilet. We rarely use the facilities as we have our own onboard, and always take our rubbish (and some more) with us.
We thought we would test the off-road capabilities of the caravan, (joking) so took a ‘short cut’ of 132kms on the Fitzroy Development Road between Leichhardt Highway and the Dawson Highway, coming out at Bauhinia. We have travelled on many development roads before but this was the worst. It started okay with bitumen and did have a few bitumen strips, but there was lots of sand, corrugations, and rough sections. Before hitting this road, we switched on the dust suppression fan which pressurises the van, keeping the dust out. Very happy to report that when we arrived at the other end, there was no dust in the caravan. Definitely worth the cost and a marriage saver! We have used it before on the Oodnadatta Track and was very happy with it. However, when we opened the door, we did find 4 screws on the floor of the van, but can happily report that we found where they came from! The snip on the shower door broke but we had a spare. Apart from that, happy campers!
Campsite for the night was south-east of Springsure, called Staircase Range, which was not the easiest or best site we have stayed at, but was fine for the night. The camp was in a gully, and the track in was overgrown. The highway was only about 150mt away and was a bit noisy at first but quietened at night. We were the only ones there.
We have a small 3kg washing machine in the caravan, which only uses about 20 lts of water and about 15 minutes to run a cycle, so we did some washing and hung it out to dry, dinner, then an early night.Read more