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.