I’m already back a few weeks now but I finally got round to doing some number crunching.
In 94 days I traveled 21,351km by car and bought 2,961 litres of diesel. On average we traveled 227km a day, wheres the largest distance we traveled in a day was 615km. We spent $4,259 on fuel and on average a liter cost $1.44. Read more…
We have prepared quite a few more nice meals on the road since our last ‘Camp Cooking’ post.
Enjoy the pictures.
We’ve had high expectations for our trip and food is no exception. Most of our ‘testing’ trips were quite short and we weren’t forced to consider whether food was perishable or not, as we were always within a few hours of civilization.
We decided to buy a camp oven, which is basically a large fireproof pot with a lid and special handle. It is designed to be placed directly on the fire or on hot coals. It is made of spun steel which keeps it light. You can also put hot coals on the lid, creating heat from above and below. This allows you to do baking or roasting whilst on the road, and when it’s not used for that its great to heat the dish washing water. Thus far we’ve baked multiple loaves of bread, made pizza (with our own dough), had fresh scones for breakfast and had roast lamb shoulder or roast veggies. We made all this on a normal fire out in the bush.
Another cool piece of equipment is the Biji Barbie. This is a large frying pan style hotplate with three legs that can be locked in. It is designed to be put directly on the fire or it can even be placed on top of a gas cooker if there is no fire available. It makes grilling sausages or meat very easy as you can start cooking as soon as the fire is started (rather than waiting an hour for hot coals).
Finally we couldn’t be considered worthy patrons of Grind Cronulla without making efforts to provide quality coffee every morning. We use Grind beans, an old coffee grinder we bought at some antique store and a stove-top coffee maker. We have freshly brewed coffee every morning while on the road and we even figured out that the stove-top coffee maker works beautiful on any BBQ hotplate. The only problem is ensuring fresh milk is available. If not take it black, or go Thai and use condensed milk.
We have made quite a few changes to our Landcruiser ‘Bruce’ since we bought it. One of the first things we added was the roof top tent. A very nifty invention which sits as a gray box on top of the roof when not in use. When we set up camp it only takes us a few minutes to set up camp.
We also made a few changes to the boot of the car. We started out with just a few storage boxes and a car fridges but by now our boot features a proper shelf system that incorporates the fridge and the water tank. Everything has its spot. We can store all the equipment and luggage for four people.
One of the first things we had to get for our adventure was a suitable car that can take us where ever we want to go. After some extensive research on the internet and a few chats to people who have experience with 4-Wheel-Driving we decided on a Toyota Landcruiser. It was clear from the start that our budget doesn’t include a brand new one and so we started looking around on all the used car sites for something suitable within our budget.
Just before Christmas we found it, a gorgeous looking Toyota Landcruiser 80 Series. It as already done a few kilometres, 235,000 to be exact, but after a thorough check through our mechanic he gave us the thumbs up and we bought it.
Meet ‘Bruce’:
