Fridges...who needs em

Ive been thinking the same thing the last few days.

I travelled around Australia without one for 18 months in the late 80's.

But I went without cold beers.
Margarine and butter on sandwiches.
Tomatoes
Decent bread
Lettuce
Meat

Unless of course you could buy some in a town and use it that night...

But I never had a GPS or a UHF either.

I got by. But I tell you I would have killed for a fridge when it was 45 degrees in the Kimberley and 60 degress in the Subaru and all I had to drink was warm water......

Hi David

Most of our camping food stuff is already non-fridge anyway.

Our small fridge contains mostly non- necessary stuff like drinks as is.

I've never felt the need for one, l have an esky for weekend trips and an 80litre icebox for longer trips.

I have family that have fridge/freezer combo's for their trips away but my ice box/esky still works just as well, just requires a little more forward planning for meals regarding food lasting and keeping fresh.

Is a little like how l feel about campertrailers, why have all the mod cons when you can have just as much comfort with a well set up camp and a good quality tent....ease of preparation and setup time is fine but for me thats half the fun of camping and getting away from it all.

Back in the 50's/60s when we use to travel the Nullarbor (Jan/Feb) we use to use Newspaper to keep things cool like the butter etc., we never carried fresh meat, our meals pretty much came out of cans.

We would wet a couple sheets of the paper and wrap that around the butter/ milk or whatever needed to be kept cold and then wrap dry sheets around the wet ones and it would keep cool all day.

We never had fridges back in those days!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh so loooong ago.

Cheers

D

Fridges are for those that own modern vehicle having features such as Electronic Stability Programs, Traction Control etc ;-)

It's just another optional luxury item....if you're pumping out 180 Amps through that alternator, you might as well plug something in and use it. :-)

Andrew

Ah yes, the fridge....

Of course you can get by without one; on short trips an esky is ample.

Long or remote trips need menu adjustments like cured meat, tinned food, fruit and vege that last like apples, sweet potato etc. Dried food, especially beans, lentils etc. Include fishing in your itinerary :-)))

Another point is cost. Some may argue the convenience of a fridge. But it doesn't stop there, does it? You need some sort of auxiliary power supply, therefore the cost isn't a fridge only.

Then you wonder whether you wont be driving anywhere for three days or more and maybe I need three batteries, or two batteries and solar panels, or a generator (but that would mean I can't go to National Parks).

A fridge slide. Custom-built _Affordable_Storage_Drawers.aspx to accommodate the fridge. A fail-safe electrical monitoring system so that if something goes wrong with your set-up you wont end up with a flat battery/fried electricals/warm beer LOL

Well, I know I've just put myself off the idea LOL

Hmmmm

After a number of breakages of electronic gear recently I want to agree BUT..................going on extended treks into remote country it is handy to have a fridge/freezer. Sure we could hunt for our supper but gun laws and other restrictions have stopped that. The old propectors with the wheelbarrows did it tough!

A talking GPS is a must when we country folk go to the Big Smoke. We have only had one for a few months and it has paid for itself in less stress finding places. GPS Mapping is essential when Off-Track or looking for a way out on a plain where there are 7 tracks going in all directions.

All the modern gear is here as a sign of the times. Turning back the clock to the age of the dinosaurs is futile. You might as well go back tp the 60's and buy a soft top Nissan Patrol G60 and enjoy the elements.....LOL

Cheers

that brings to mind......

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Aye, very passable, that, very passable bit of risotto.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
Nothing like a good glass of Château de Chasselas, eh, Josiah?
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
You're right there, Obadiah.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Who'd have thought thirty year ago we'd all be sittin' here drinking Château de Chasselas, eh?
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
In them days we was glad to have the price of a cup o' tea.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
A cup o' cold tea.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Without milk or sugar.
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
Or tea.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
In a cracked cup, an' all.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Oh, we never had a cup. We used to have to drink out of a rolled up newspaper.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
The best we could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth.
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Because we were poor. My old Dad used to say to me, "Money doesn't buy you happiness, son".
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Aye, 'e was right.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Aye, 'e was.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
I was happier then and I had nothin'. We used to live in this tiny old house with great big holes in the roof.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
House! You were lucky to live in a house! We used to live in one room, all twenty-six of us, no furniture, 'alf the floor was missing, and we were all 'uddled together in one corner for fear of falling.
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
Eh, you were lucky to have a room! We used to have to live in t' corridor!
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Oh, we used to dream of livin' in a corridor! Would ha' been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woke up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House? Huh.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Well, when I say 'house' it was only a hole in the ground covered by a sheet of tarpaulin, but it was a house to us.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
We were evicted from our 'ole in the ground; we 'ad to go and live in a lake.
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
You were lucky to have a lake! There were a hundred and fifty of us living in t' shoebox in t' middle o' road.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Cardboard box?
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
Aye.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
You were lucky. We lived for three months in a paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six in the morning, clean the paper bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down t' mill, fourteen hours a day, week-in week-out, for sixpence a week, and when we got home our Dad would thrash us to sleep wi' his belt.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at six o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of 'ot gravel, work twenty hour day at mill for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would thrash us to sleep with a broken bottle, if we were lucky!
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
Well, of course, we had it tough. We used to 'ave to get up out of shoebox at twelve o'clock at night and lick road clean wit' tongue. We had two bits of cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at mill for sixpence every four years, and when we got home our Dad would slice us in two wit' bread knife.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
And you try and tell the young people of today that ..... they won't believe you.
ALL:
They won't!

We have been the route of the "Icebox does all" solution.

Perhaps OK for a weekender, but on extended trips you cannot beat a compressor fridge.

No more waterlogged foodstuffs from defrosted ice....yuck!

We often take the Evakool Icebox for beverages, but for food, definately the fridge for us.

Ah, I remember my old checklist:

2 canvas waterbags on the bullbar
Cordial, so the water was drinkable
Big tin of Sunshine Milk to go with the weetbix and coffee
Tinned sardines
Hamper Corned Beef in that funny yellow tin
Plumrose hot dogs
Fray Bentos in the plate sized tin
Parsons rice cream for dessert

Anyone got some more??

I'll keep my 2 fridges these days....

I vote for putting him down ;-))

It can be done.

I knew a bloke in FNQ who had an old chest freezer, minus motor/compressor on the back of his trayback Tojo.

For months at home prior to his trip he would freeze blocks of ice in the functioning chest freezer at home. His theory was to seriously freeze them for a long time to get them solid. When he went away he loaded them into the chest freezer carcass and reckoned he got 11 days out of them in the heat of FNQ.

Bit too hard for a nancy boy like me though.

A fridge is waaaayyyy down the list of priorities for me. I can easily survive for weeks in the bush without one.

I'm not sure what a fridge costs? say $1000 for a good Engle.
That can buy a lot of diesel, some extra bar work, pay for a vehicle service every 20000k etc.

You do get used to it to, not having a fridge, and when you get back to civvyland, theres nothing quite like a cold beer.

As for booze when I'm away Vodka and orange juice and straight bourban.

Cheers

Another bloody fridge question.....................