Settled into the Caravan

Our 20-day caravan trip will take us from Melbourne in Victoria to Perth in Western Australia. That’s some 2,173 miles … as the crow flies, so to speak. But we will be dilly-dallying along the way, so I expect our miles will vary quite a bit from that number.

After picking up our Jayco caravan from Let’s Go Motorhomes in Tullamarine (near the airport), we set off to provision it for the road.

But before doing that, we stopped by Let’s Go’s mechanic and had a tire replaced. The tire would have been fine more than likely. But knowing that we’d be driving far — and with part of it through the Nullarbor where there’s essentially little in the way of civilization — we are glad Let’s Go agreed to replace it at no charge to us when Mui expressed concern over it.

That done, we drove to Costco in Epping. Yes, the mega box-store is in Australia as well. Not that we could buy much there since we don’t need 48 rolls of toilet paper … 🤪. But it was a good place to pick up a couple of cases of bottled water, a couple of bottles of wine, some snacks to alternate with our home-cooked meals. You know … the good stuff!

Onto Aldi next for small-quantity groceries. Then to KMart for inexpensive trash bins … why there aren’t any in the caravan already is beyond us!

Provisioning completed, we drove to the Big4 Melbourne Holiday Park in Coburg for our overnight. Holiday parks in Australia are basically a mix of caravan, tent, and cabin sites. This one, being near Melbourne, is quite popular … packed, you might say! We plan to dry camp where possible on this road trip, but we booked a campground for tonight so that we could have water and electric hook-ups while we unpacked and got settled in.

When we decided to do a caravan trip in Australia, we booked a 4-berth Class C … primarily for the over-the-cab bed so that we would have somewhere to store our luggage. Turns out that we were upgraded to a 6-berth. Not that the size is all that different from a 4-berth … maybe a foot longer. Anyway, finding a place for everything was no problem. And I can easily say that we are settled.

Hope to have some fun stuff to share as we head west across Australia. Looking forward to the adventure. Can’t say the same about the weather. It was 107F in Perth today. Luckily, we don’t have to deal with that kind of temperatures quite yet!Read more