We have been offered a pitch on a friends hobby farm near GinGin to set up the van and test out all that we need for free camping. We currently have mobile solar panels and are testing how much energy we get from them.  In due course we will be adding rooftop solar panels as we believe a mixture of both is the best solution. We also need to look at how we can increase our water supply for those times we will be free camping with no access to additional water.

We haven’t posted anything recently but that doesn’t mean to say nothing has been happening behind the scenes.  We have been following blogs of Grey Nomads currently on the road and researching on a variety of aspects to travelling around Australia.  We would both love to finish work and start our journey tomorrow but common sense has prevailed and we know we need these next 12 months to equip ourselves with everything necessary to have the most successful trip possible.

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Last year we planned a road trip to Karratha for our nephew’s wedding which was happening in June this year.  We were going to take a week to drive up and stay at hotels along the way,

However, a couple of weeks before departure, we found and fell in love with Saffy!!

We cancelled the motels and booked into caravan parks.  This saw us staying overnight in Dongara / Carnarvon / Coral Bay / Nanutarra / Dampier / Kalbarri.

The caravan was extremely comfortable and very user friendly.  It pulled like a dream and the Patrol performed very well, apart from chewing up the petrol.

We met some wonderful people along the way and the wedding was spectacular and we had so much fun catching up with family.  We sure didn’t want to come home and could have very easily just carried on exploring this great country we live in.

Below is a selection of photo’s from the trip.

Ever since Ray’s first visit to Australia in 2005, we have talked at length about the idea of spending a couple of years travelling around Oz.  Ten years of dreaming has finally come to a sense of reality and we are going to do this!!

We have been to a number of Caravan and Camping shows at Claremont Showgrounds; 4WD and Camping shows at McCallum Park in South Perth, and numerous weekends spent traipsing in and out of caravans at most metropolitan dealerships.

Within a month of arriving in Perth in 2008, we had bought a 1993 Nissan Patrol GQ. It was in excellent condition and Ray was over the moon with his dream Aussie 4WD.  Then came the dilemma – did we want a motorhome/bus conversion/5th wheeler or caravan?  A few years of research later and we decided it was going to be a caravan.

Coromal/Billabong/Jayco/Roma/JB/Nova/Jurgens……………and then finally we did it, we bought our beautiful Avida Sapphire!!

We are Grey Nomads in training!  Saffy is the name of our 21ft Avida Sapphire Caravan and we have completed our first trip away in her.  A family wedding in Karratha (Dampier to be precise!) saw us travelling for two weeks and we absolutely loved the lifestyle.

We now plan to do as many weekend trips as possible before our next big trip to Adelaide in July 2016.

Then if all goes according to plan, we will commence our Big Aussie Nomad Dream trip in December 2016.

This blog will document our experiences leading up to and during the BAND trip.  We hope you will find it interesting,

perhaps inspirational and definitely full of humour!!