Planning our First Extended (3months) Trip with little Kids

Hi!
OK, I'm not going to be that much help with advance planning, as we are also planning! But maybe we can help each other.

What sort of setup are you going with? What sort of power?

What is your sleeping arrangement for the littlies? We have just got double bunks for the camper, and are looking at getting a Phil & Teds portacot if we end up taking a little one, as they are AWESOME.

Lia

Hi Aaron,

Good on you! My parents spent a year travelling around Oz in a camper with my brother and I when we were 1 and 2 years old, a lot of people thought they were crazy but they said it was a great experience for us and them and not as hard as you might think. 25 years later and I'm married with 2 little ones of my own and we'd like to do the same thing in the next couple of years. We do lots of camping with our boys but only short trips so far.

I have a couple of little tips for camping with kids for you though... I never go away without a big round plastic tub... for baths, storage, play etc.
Also, a big bottle of baby powder (it practically dissolves sand and dirt off their skin for a quick clean up) and of course an endless supply of baby wipes!
One of my favourite things about camping is that there's no tv! But I have to admit that a recent trip from the Sunshine Coast to 1770 was made much more bearable by a portable dvd player in the car (and you have a lot more driving to do than that!).

Good luck and enjoy :)

Hi Aaron

I cant help you much on the kids side of things, being a bit beyond that stage. However we have just returned from four months travelling in WA. Link to the blog for the final leg of our trip is
here

Something that we east coasters don't hear much about is the weather in WA. Like you we are well set up for camping off the beaten track, especially in dry conditions. We found that once we hit the WA coast about Exmouth we had wind which pretty much stayed with us all the way south, inland as well as the coast. As we moved south rain and cool-cold conditions were added to the wind making camping less than comfortable at times.

Having experienced that kind of weather we soon realised why there seem to be an awful lot of caravans on the WA roads, and fewer people using camper trailers or tents. Just something to consider as you plan a trip with small children.

Cheers,

Val

Hi Aaron,

In terms of sleeping, we have recently passed on our Kinderkots - they have been fantastic for general travelling as well as camping.

Kinderkot link

We keep to a similar routine interms of naps, food, etc when travelling, with the off long driving day. Driving at night can work really well, just generally slower due to roos, etc obviously.

We have just this year branched back into more remote camping after a few years of the more civilized trips with caravan parks, etc (kids now 3 and 4).

Good luck!

T

Hi Aaron

We have done two large trips with our kids 1st for 5 months when the kids were 5 months and 2 1/2 years old, then again for three months when they were 9 & 11. First trip we did in a camper trailer the second in Oz tents. We kept to the tents as we can travel any where. We tend to keep our gear to a minimum as the more you carry the more you have to pack - this takes away from the enjoyment.
Keep kids gear in three different bags and vary them around so they dont have the same toys all the time, especially for the younger one.
We travelled for two hrs in the morning for juniors sleep and two hours in the afternoon for both. this kept travel moving without the boredom.
If you can do the Anne Badell you'll be quite surprised how interesting it is, plenty of water at the time on WA side. We do a lot of outback travel so I'm more familiar with that than the coast. Kids will love it and become best mates.
I can't speak more highly of taking the kids on the road. As a school teacher I used to think how can you take the kids away from school that long now I know where the biggest school ground is - our country.

cheers (Mrs) Burra

We did a "test trip" of 10 days in northern NSW (waterfalls, clarence river etc) earlier this year when the girls were 10 mths and 2.5 yrs respectively. We enjoyed it enough to tackle a 6 week cape york+gulf trip in July-August.
We found it was absolutely essential to use the kids sleep time as travel time. In fact we'd sometimes leave a place a day earlier than we otherwise would in order to match up travel with sleeping. This is obviously a bit of a compromise for the trip but of course travelling with young kids there'll be lots of compromises.

We have used a blackwolf tent and have everything on/in the car so far but would probably consider at least a trailer or camper trailer for future big trips to save packup time (setup time tended to be ok as it gets drawn out over a few hours as stuff comes out of the car).

If we had longer than 6 weeks we would definitely have taken things slower and stayed put in one place a bit more - but on the other hand it was good to get back home after 6 weeks in the car with the kids so I'm not really sure I'd be keen on 3+ month trips until they are a bit older.