After five weeks on the road we’ve completed our inaugural caravan trip and are back in New Zealand for two months – a wedding, and various pre-arranged diving, fishing and boating trips to be attended to. We’ve left the caravan at the dealer for storage, and the Landcruiser in a lock up near Brisbane airport.

So what have we learned to carry us into the next phase when we return in July and head to less travelled parts for six months or so.

• I can cook scones on the barbecue
• You can drive a couple of hundred kilometres and go from incessant rain to five year drought
• Caravan parks are the equivalent of the gladiatorial arena, but in this case Caesar is sitting in a deck chair with a beer
• People who have been caravanning longer than you – in our case that’s pretty much everyone – have lots of helpful tips
• Beware things that want to kill you – actually, we already knew this

Drop bears are killer koalas – or so we’re told. Further in-depth research (google) reveals they are a hoax. Though let’s face it, with so many other deadly creatures it isn’t much of a stretch to believe in carnivorous bears that drop from trees and devour tourists. I’ve made a mental note to adopt the generally accepted protection of spreading Vegemite behind my ears whenever we are walking in the bush.

We think that after five weeks we’ve covered a lot of ground and we have – over 1,300 kilometres towing the caravan, and more driving about unencumbered. How humbling is it then, when we look at the map and see just how far we’ve travelled. You have to laugh.

And here’s the 3,000 km bit we did by car last year – see my previous blog agoodsetofknives.blogspot.com for more on that trip.

So there’s a whole lot of gaps to fill in, starting 9th July 2019 and going for several months. The plan is to head up the Queensland coast then cut inland to connect to the Stuart Highway which runs from Darwin (which I wrote about last year) in the Northern Territory, to Port Augusta in South Australia. We will drive south and experience a town called Alice, and the wonder of Uluru (Ayers Rock). Then, who knows?

And we all know weird stuff happens in the Outback of Australia, so anything is possible.