Travelling with food or not.

Part of the fun is visiting the small shops and supporting them along the way.

Derek, just pack your addictons :) .....silverback

There's not much in the line of tucker out there. Bits 'n pieces maybe. Nothing so to speak at Camerons Corner, Innamincka, Birdsville...unless you just want a tin of baked beans and so on....around the Alice you can stock up again. Don't want to buy too much at Uluru....need a chequebook to pay for purchases...lol

It all depends on how much your willing to pay for food items. If the buck isnt a issue so much then as mentioned, support the locals - but if its a bit tight and you dont want to pay $12 for a toasted sanga... bring your own: Personally I like to mix up a bit of both - that way if you run into trouble and need to sit it out somewhere for a while at least you can survive without gold nuggets falling thru your pockets... assuming you happen to get into trouble where you can get to a shop... \

just food for thought

Innamincka and Birdsville both ahve good outback shops where you can get everything you need in tins and packets; and depending on the day of the week, limited fresh veg and fruit, and for meat, they usually have a freezer full of supermarket meat.

Alice has huge Woolies and Coles (better than our local ones).

We carry a months supply of frozen meat, fish and chicken all cryovaced. My wife does up some stews for when we are travelling just have to heat them up when we stop for the night. Also carry a months supply of tin veges. Then we buy fresh fruit and veges, meat bread milk etc along the way. We have found it is difficult to get fresh quality meat in the smaller towns, most of the bread is always frozen. It's a good idea to check the use by date on milk we were caught out once with sour milk, luckilly we had a supply of long life in our emergency rations.

We normaly go for 3 months at a time and most of it is spent in national parks and isolated areas and this system has worked for us.

Anyway enjoy your trip

After many years of travelling & camping our food thing has changed a bit. Our most important consideration is meat & we virtually fill the 3 way with frozen, cryovaced stuff before leaving home. Experience has shown that meat sourced in the outback is
of poor quality & goes off almost immediately. We can get up to 2
weeks out of that & then buy only in small quantities as required.
We used to take dried veg in little packets but it is now very expensive so have reverted to tins. No preparation & quick to cook. Longlife stuff is fine but often a nuisance once opened, & we only carry it as a backup alongwith a few tins of beans/spag,
which usually do the return journey. Alice has big supermarkets,
but the meat thing still applies, lamb is worst. Those plastic jars
of fruit are good with custard as desert. Get the bottles with screw tops. Cardboard liquid containers are a disaster..avoid.
We always carry some nibbles & water/drinks in the car, especially
if taking the kids. Dont spend time boiling the billy for morning
tea, fill the thermos at breakfast. And most importantly.....
have fun....:)). oldbaz.
Almost forgot...climb the Rock if you must, but walk around it too,
& do The Valley of the Winds walk at the Olgas.

As most above said, we usually carry about 2 weeks of food, mainly dried (pasta, flour, biscuits etc) and tinned (meat/vegies/fruit). About 3 weeks of meat made up in cryovac bags in meal sizes. Fresh fruit usually only lasts one (maybe two) weeks, while potatoes etc last a little longer.

Long life milk and rye bread last longer. Have powdered milk as a back up.
(Except on rough corrugations for a couple of weeks, long life milk can turn to cream.)

So we do stock up as we go after the first week for bread. If needed do make the ocassional damper.

So we do buy as we go, but keep stocks at about two weeks worth, just in case.

We have found that tinned "tiny taters" are a must have in our camp cupboard - can be used as is, make potato salad, put in with roast in the Cobb - mash - very versatile - also packet soups - single serve - which can also be used as a casserole base or sauce base for over steak or chops - or simply as a starter on a cold evening - we have also found two fridges works best for longer trips - one as a dedicated freezer - the other as daily fridge.
We also buy some things as we go - depending on where we are - and plan ahead to make sure we never run out.