Anniversary Update

May 1, 2023

FROM THE OUTSET I must tell you that this is not a ‘Jo type’ blog. It’s far less interesting – unless you want to know something about how much this lifestyle costs.

Jo said to me: “Why don’t you do a kind of anniversary post for the blog? But don’t go repeating anything, that’d be boring, and don’t write too much, you know how you babble on.”

So where do I start? That’s actually a real question. My first day of retirement was 1 August 2020 and we started out with the caravan that first day. Last day of work was Friday, first day travelling was Saturday. So, to me that’s the logical starting point.

The quandary lies in that we didn’t actually get the house rented out and start full-time living in the van until 1 May 2021, so is that the more appropriate start date?

I struggled over this for a while but then I thought about the Queen’s Birthday (ahhh… King’s Birthday) and Labour Day holidays and they seem to be pretty arbitrary. Even the date set to celebrate Jesus’ birthday is pretty meaningless – no-one had a clue when he was born so they just settled on a date. Heck, even the coronation of King Charles the III is just a convenient date, ask him how long he’s been king and I reckon he’ll tell you he’s been king from 8 September 2022.

Good enough for them – good enough for us. So, here’s the decision: We’ve been travelling since 1 August 2020 and we have chosen 1 May as our anniversary date. 1 May – Mayday, the return of spring… Well, maybe not in the antipodes, but you get my point.

We’ve covered some ground over the past two years and nine months, 59,704 kilometres in fact. That’s the equivalent of over three traditional ‘laps’ and we’ve only really had a respectable look around three states. We’ve still got a lot of Australia ahead of us.

Jo’s blog keeps everyone up to date regularly and I’d be lost without it. Jo says, “Remember when we went from Penneshaw to Chapman River?” And I say “Hang on a sec, I’m concentrating on something really really intelligent.” She always waits patiently because she knows how I get so involved intellectually in really really intelligent stuff, and while she waits I sneakily hotkey to the blog, quickly read about where we were and what we did, and then say. “Yes Dear, I remember that so well, what do you want to know?” (She’s quite impressed with how good my memory is)

The thing is, it’s no point me writing what we’ve done or where we’ve been because you already know all that.

BUT…

Jo didn’t tell you all the really, truly interesting stuff like how far we’ve travelled, how much fuel we used and how much it cost did she?

Exciting, isn’t it? You really want to know about this stuff don’t you?

Here’s the good oil…

Total distance travelled: 59,704 km

Total cost of fuel: $15,022.99 … To the cent, impressive hey!

Total fuel used: 8,843 litres of diesel

Average fuel economy: 14.81 Lt/ 100 km

Average cost of fuel: $1.70/ Lt

Cheapest fuel: $1.02 at Redland Bay on 9 April 2021

Most expensive fuel: $2.93 at Marree on 16 August 2022

Jo has kept a record of our accommodation costs over the past two years too and I suppose that if you’ve read this far then you probably are considering these costs. So to standardize I’ll annualize the costs and include the stats on accommodation too. Averaged over the past two years, the annual stats are:

In summary, Fuel and accommodation costs per year for us travelling have totalled $11,549

Cost of fuel per annum: $5,585.28

Annual travel distance: 18,494 km

Total fuel used per annum: 2,899.73 litres of diesel.

Average fuel economy: 15.68 Lt/ 100 km

Average cost of fuel: $1.93/ Lt

Cheapest fuel: $1.25

Most expensive fuel: $2.93

Annual cost of caravan park accommodation: $ 5,964.00

Total nights travelling: 365

Total nights in caravan parks 154

Average fee/night $38.73

Average fee/week $115

So, 42% of our time has been spent in caravan parks over the past two years. Over periods when all is going well and we haven’t had commitments to keep us in cities to access services, we estimate that only about 25% of our time would be in caravan parks.

When we set out, we thought we would go wherever man and van could go. You can’t see Australia by sticking to the black. So, we headed off defiantly against the corrugations, potholes and mud and proudly went where man and semi-off-road van probably shouldn’t go.

We haven’t actually been bogged so that’s a bonus. Probably got close to it though. We were camped by the river on Bogeywong station in NSW (where the family lived in the early fifties) and the skies darkened. I got us away from the river up near the main road, just as the rain started and at 11 PM made the wise decision to get off the dirt. It took hours of slipping and sliding our six tonne (plus a bit, but that would exceed our GCM wouldn’t it?) before we made it back to the black.

I actually thought the Oodnadatta track was ok and the Finke River road was maybe even a bit better than that. They certainly weren’t the worst roads we travelled. That title belongs to the road from Hamilton Station to Dalhousie Springs with the road to Lambert Centre of Australia just as bad – except it’s a whole lot shorter.

I reckon we handled all that pretty well, but those roads really are not kind to caravans or even four-wheel drives and when we got back to Adelaide we had to get a new set of tyres and a new set of caravan suspension – yes, fully replaced. Ah well, no free lunches so you should plan on a few extra costs, and you should expect these, don’t bemoan them, it’s a small cost of the lifestyle. Costs will probably include items like:

Replace a water tank that fell off near Lamberts Centre of Australia

(Insurance covered it but our excess was) $600

Replace suspension in the caravan that the roads just destroyed $4,000

Upgrade to lithium because AGM really just isn’t up to for us $11,000

Miscellaneous fixes/ improvements around the van $2,000

Miscellaneous driver error costs (covered by insurance but excess still costs $1,200

Routine car maintenance at regional garages (two services but likely to cost up to twice as much) $1,000

A set of tyres (even if they’re looking ok, the roads can shorten their lives or just plain destroy them, so best to budget for them. $1,200

The old tyres were BF Goodrich KO2’s, they lasted 68,408 Km and I reckon that’s ok for them. We put on Maxxis RAZR AT’s and I think they should be ok, I’ll let you know when they get to 70,000km (can’t wait can you)? I can already tell you that they’re a whole lot better in the wet and they’re also a whole lot quieter.

So, if you have ploughed through this far and are considering the costs, then as long as you don’t do a lithium battery upgrade after you leave home you might see costs like:

Fuel and accommodation costs per year $12,000

General maintenance/repairs etc – not less than $ 5,000

There’s certainly a cost to really seeing Australia this way, it’s not as low-cost as might be expected. Is it worth it? Absa-bloody-lootly!

We’re really living the life, no doubt. And our health and fitness just keeps getting better, (except for when we’re sick). I know we’ve had a few health issues but with kayaking, bush walking, fishing, photography, campfires, camp-oven cooking, getting firewood climbing sand-dunes (and rolling down them) we’ve never been better.

Now I’d really like to share a whole lot more with you like my really cool Oricom tyre pressure monitoring system, and how I’ve set out my canopy… so much to talk about.

But I’d better stop now. Jo was right, I do kind of babble on.

So… until next time.