Ideas for keeping cool while camping in NT

Spent 7 years in Lae, Port Moresby, Townsville and Darwin and one in Florida including a Summer working in the swamps. There is no answer to that sort of heat + humidity, except air con. If it is humid as well as hot, there is not much you can do in a camping environment. Cold shower before bed helps. Apart from that, motel!

Have fun

Magnus

Buy a screen tent, one where its all mesh and you can look at the stars. At this time of year its the only one you will be able to bear sleeping in. If it starts to rain just jump up and put the fly over.

Sean

I read somewhere that the station people up north have a drink of neat rum before going to bed....Not sure what that does but maybe it lowers your blood pressure and keeps you relatively cool.

Have taken an electric house fan with on occasions and run it off the gennie but that is a bit of overkill.....:o)

I travelled extensivly thru the NT for 2.5 years from Alice to Jabaru and never ever in 2.5 years experianced a night of 40degs or really anything over 25 degs , that is thru the build up and dry seasons .Most days were around 34 degs but in the build up humidity was very high .
Drink lots of water before bed , and wear cotton clothing so it "breaths" Don't sleep near water and remove ALL rubbish at least 100m away from your camp site so as not to arouse the interests of the croc's .
Don't roll out swags or sleep bags untill your going to get into them .....snakes love hiding in them .Also heaps of sand fly repelant is a must !!!!
Miss it soooo much we are taking off up there again in July .

12v Aircondtiioners on eBay
No idea how well they work or any other details, but could be woth investigating.

Jack

travelled the top end april-may 03 and it wasnt the warm nights as I am used to them but it was the total absence of breeze through my campervan. A 12v fan which are widely available would have got the air circulating and made a big difference I am unsure of their power drain

Consider modifying your diet...........

No red meat (or its products eg sausages).shellfish (including prawns,crab etc)
Eat lightly ie small, lowfat meals.If you must indulge, drink lots of black unsweetened tea after the meal.Sleep in webed hammocks under a large (airy)mosquito net.................au natural

I have lived in Broome for 15 years so am all too well used to hot humid nights during the wet season. First of all as someone already mentioned it never gets to 40C at night here or in Darwin. In fact it rarely gets to 40C during the day. (Well it did here on Thursday but dropped to 33 an hour later when the sea breeze kicked in.)
I manage a transport company and one of our drivers had a portable aircon with a flexible pipe that carried away the heat. We used it in a tent once and it worked great but we had to run a gennie all night. if you going to be staying in caravan parks or have a good gennie then they would be the go. Otherwise I would use a 12v fan like a truck or car fan. You need to have the air moving around you.

I think your heading up there at the worst time. If you left it for a month or so the monsoonal weather would be here so you would at least get more cloudy rainy days. Then again you might get stuck or not be able to access many places.
A computer fan would be useless. You need to get air blowing across you not circulating in the tent. A mist sprayer would be uselss too because water wont evaporate when the air is already about 99% humidity. Thats why evap coolers don't work here either.
But probably the best advice I can give you is get up early so your that tired at night you just zonk it anyway. Station owners up this way are up at 4.00am when its cool and in bed by 7.30pm at night.

Get a tent with four mesh sides which will remain cool during the day and will remain that way for when you go to sleep ( RELATIVELY COOL ! ).
Get a 12 volt fan for the bush and a 240 volt oscillating fan if going to any powered sites . You don't need mist sprays , the temperature loss when your body sweat evaporates will cool you .
When you get away from the coast , it gets quite cool at night . When I used to fish the Classic on the Daly river in April , it was so cold we had to wear parkers on the run down the river at 7.oo am .
Willie .

Strongly recommend you get yourself a 12V fan (the type that can be purchased from any auto shop) and make up an extension lead which can run from the car battery to your tent. The current draw is virtually negligible. Don't buy a real cheap fan though as they don't last and quickly develop an annoying knocking sound as they oscillate which can drive you mad when trying to sleep. Then you need to figure out a way of mounting the fan in your tent so that it blows air over you and not just at your feet. We fitted the foot of our fan to the bottom of a small bucket which we simply sat on the floor in the corner of the tent. This raised the fan about a foot above ground level. When packed up, the fan and the lightweight power lead all went into the bucket for easy storage.

We managed a busy hotel resort in Darwin and consequently had to do most of our camping during the low season which was the easiest time for us to get away. This meant a lot of very hot, humid nights in the tent. After a particularly hidious weekend trip my husband refused to go camping at this time of year again unless we could figure out some sort of cooling system. The fan proved to be a very effective option because the biggest problem is actually the humidity more so than the heat. Inside a tent, the humidity is so heavy it becomes very stifling to breath...the fan moves the air and overcomes this problem. All our camping buddies soon followed our lead.

Another tip too, a heavy canvas touring tent may not be the best solution. We copied a lot of locals who use the dome type tents, minus the outside fly. The lightweight nylon fabric of the tent proper breaths much better than anything else on those humid nights. A good quality silver tarp erected over your tent will provide daytime shade without compromising ventilation. If you go down this road, make sure you get a tent with plenty of windows (usually front and back opening).

Hope this helps. Once we perfected our set-up in this way we enjoyed many pleasant wet season camping trips and even found we could enjoy a comfortable afternoon nap even on 40 degree days.

:o) Melissa

The 12Volt Shop have a large range of 12v fans (they look like computer fans but are bigger).
And don't be to strayed from the computer fan idea, some of those really pack a punch. Our guys use them in the workshop here to keep cool, when you have a small room with 15 or 20 computers generating heat and three blokes working on a humid 38c day you need all the help you can get. If you have 3 or 4 of them you will feel a breeze in a confined place like a tent. But like all cooling you will need somewhere for the air to go. Possibly setup a couple of fans on one side of the tent sucking the air into the tent, then a couple on the other side blowing the air out of the tent through a window or somthing.

All I can say is I spent from March to June travelling from Exmouth to Cairns and it was hot. For all those who say it's not that hot at night in Kakadu we had 36 degrees 95% humidity at 2.30am and it's the hotest I've ever felt. We never found anything that really helped except a good dose of patience... and wearing ourselves out til we passed out.

Don't know where you got the idea of 40 degree nights in Darwin. I lived there for 20 years and only once on one day did the temprature struggle to get to 100 degree F (37 degree C). The nights are usually quite plesent. In fact night out bush can be quite cool.

You are going at the worst time. When I first arrived in Darwin (1971) an old bloke said to me you never get use of the humity, you just bear it. When we drove out 20 years later I remembered what he said and thought to myself that he was 100% wright.

Enjoy your trip.