Everyday Life Part One
Trip Start
Mar 19, 2009
1
9
21
Trip End
Ongoing
Carnarvon, Western Australia, Australia
Monday, April 27, 2009
Everyday life - what not to wear
Before we left New Zealand we did a lot of trawling through the internet to see what other people had to say about their travels around Australia. There is a heap of great info and all sorts of people have written about all sorts of topics. I found a lot of this information really helpful but I couldn't find any really basic "outback travel for dummies" type info. So if you have stumbled across this blog and are planning to do some camping through Western Australia, for what they are worth here are some thoughts. Bear in mind that there are only two of us travelling in a 4WD with a tent, doing a lot of bush camping. If you are a family group or travelling with another sort of set up you will be facing a whole different set of issues!
Going feral - your feet are always dirty (as is the rest of you)
The devil's radio - Carnarvon triple 6!
. The bush camps, and a lot of the official campgrounds, are just sandy clearings so you are always walking in sand. The red dust gets everywhere - even after a nice, hot shower - by the time you have walked back to your tent you're dusty again. You really need to wear sunscreen every day here so you put this on in the morning all over, get wind blown and covered with dust all day + a bit of sweat + bushmans insect repellant = by the end of the day you're feeling pretty crusty. You can't spare any water for washing so you just have to learn to love it. Swimming can get you clean but then you are covered in really thick salt which dries you out so much that you resemble a crocodile.
I am finding a container of baby wipes works all sorts of magic and I keep a pack of the moisturised makeup wipes in the tent - great to give yourself a bit of a wipedown before bed!
What to wear - my thoughts so far:
I am not a shorts person so I packed three skirts, 2 pairs long cargo pants, 1 pair of jeans, 1 pair of ¾ length pants and assorted tshirts and tank tops. I also packed a couple of sun dresses
Emus on the main street in Denham, Shark Bay
. The South West of WA is really cold in March - Rob and I both had to buy a wamer layer, a $20 fleece hoody for me and a lovely $15 sort of swandrii jacket with quilted lining for Rob. We have worn these items every day, especially appreciated in the desert where it gets really cold at night.
I have worn the skirts and pants mostly - the long pants down south and the skirts north of Perth. You get up in the morning and it's quite chilly so you put on a skirt or pants + tshirt + hoody. You can wear a dress + hoody but by about 9.30/10am you need to take off the hoody as it's now getting too hot. If you are wearing a dress you then need to lather yourself in sunscreen (see above) which has its own drawbacks, especially if you are bush camping & there is no shower at the end of the day. So I have been tending to cover up with tshirts and pants.
Of course if you don't mind shorts that this would be the way to go.
The long pants come in handy as once the sun goes down and the flies have gone, the mozzies come out. We haven't had much of a problem with these yet but I am sure we will come across the little blighters. Rob is a mozzie magnet for some reason so by 6pm he is wearing long pants, long sleeved shirt, socks and his jandals. He also covers his exposed parts with Bushmaster insect repellant which is a vile substance - so all in all he's a hot package all right. I am looking pretty gorgeous myself I must say so we are in good company together.
As we also spent some time in Perth, I packed a "nice" dress & shoes but of course these haven't been worn since. They may get an airing on my birthday in June if we aren't busy swatting flies in a bush camp somewhere instead....
Comments
Awesome!
Nice list of tips for traveling in the Outback. You might want to post it up in the TravelPod forums under the Australia category:
http://www.travelpod.com/forums/index.php?showforum=84
Louise Brown
TravelPod Community Manager