Here’s FIVE WAYS our amazing desert trip differed to 3 years on the “Big Lap”

No Caravan

Firstly and most importantly, we didn’t have our caravan with us. Towing a trailer of any kind is not recommended when crossing the desert. Still, many do tow camper trailers and sometimes even small vans. But for us, it was not worth it. The extra stress on the vehicle, trailer, tracks and the people involved does not sound like an enjoyable trip and even our relatively small 16ft caravan was far too big to be towing up and down the over 1100 sand dunes and tight tracks of the Simpson Desert. 

 

Fewer Capacity for Everything

Not having our caravan meant that we had very limited capacity to take everything we needed. It came down to only taking the absolute essentials needed to complete the trip. 

Extra fuel, food and water took priority over luxury items and toys such as body boards for sliding down  those dunes. 

 

Where to sleep?

We also had to decide where we were going to sleep for this trip away from our caravan. We’ve tried swags in the past when the boys were smaller and it worked great, however, we had long since outgrown the simple swag. We’ve also tried ground tents, and they work great when setting up a base camp. But this time around we would mostly be setting up and packing up every day and the idea of doing this with a ground tent was not appealing to me. 

At this point we had never tried a roof-top tent but after a bit of research it looked an ideal fit for our requirements. A family-sized rooftop tent to suit four people. Easy setup within under a minute. Only slightly longer to pack up and a bonus of being able to keep all our bedding stored in there ready to go every night. 

We tried it out on a couple of short trips prior to hitting the desert and we were instant fans of rooftop tenting. We have been in it through heavy rain and wind and it’s always been a safe, cosy and pleasant experience for us. We love it so much that we will be looking at taking it away with us even with the caravan in tow. If we can manage to make the weights work that is. 

 

Pre-prepared food

Normally on our caravanning big lap we didn’t pre-plan our meals. Instea

d we just did what we do at home, stock up with supplies and cook what we needed as we went. But due to the limited space issues we decided for our desert trip we wo

uld prepare meals at home and freeze them ready to heat and eat on the road. This worked out well for us. Not only did we save on space required to store raw ingredients and extra water usage, we also saved a lot of time not having to cook from scratch. This gave us more time to spend with the families around the campfire at night. 

 

Where to go?

One last thing to deal with being away from our caravan was to find a way to deal with toilet requirements. For most of our trip we would be remote bush camping with no facilities at all. Being long-time caravanners we are very familiar with dealing with chemical toilets so we got ourselves a porta potty and this worked out well when coupled with our awning shower tent, it gave us a private space to take care of business. Very similar to our caravan ensuite just a bit breezier and a better view of the stars at night. This was also quick to set up on the side of the road or track when nature calls, and with two young kids on board that was quite often. 

 

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