Big Lap Departure - 12 months travelling Australia in our JB caravan - Ep 1 - Perth to Shark Bay
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 ก.ย. 2024
- This episode we leave our home city of Perth (in Western Australia) for the start of our big lap around the country. We say a difficult goodbye to family and head north to our first farm stay, we also visit the Pinnacles National Park and Milligans Island campground. We were keen to leave the cold of Perth behind us so we pushed north fairly quickly. We contended with getting to know how quickly we could get through the water in our water tanks and the power setup in the caravan on overcast days. Thankfully we had a great start to the trip!
Fatfield Farm Stay. Location: 135 Marine Drive, Jurien Bay, Western Australia
We stopped at Fatfield Farm Stay on Night 1 of our big lap. It’s a two and a half hour drive north of Perth and is ideal for families. We found them on the WikiCamps App. The hosts Pauline and Phil were very inviting with an incredible ability to remember all of our names, in addition to the other family of seven staying, who had five boys! It’s a paid campground ($20 per night, no power/ water) on private property and we had our own huge gated paddock with sheep, chickens and turkeys wandering around.
We enjoyed our first campfire of the trip with marshmallows. The boys splashed in the muddy puddles and doted on the animals. In the morning we enjoyed feeding the sheep, hunting for freshly laid eggs, picking vegetables from the garden and tasting honey from the hive. Highly recommend staying at this lovely farm, either for a night stopover or a few nights as a getaway from Perth. Our kids loved it so much! Happy children, happy parents!
The Pinnacles Desert Lookout and Drive, Nambung National Park. Location: Pinnacles Drive, Nambung (21km south of Cervantes, 198km north of Perth)
The boys enjoyed their first visit to the pinnacles, an area where thousands of limestone pillars up to 4m high, rise from yellow sand. There’s a 4.5km drive trail with a lookout about halfway through. There is also the Pinnacles Discovery gift shop and information centre located near the entrance car park, trailer parking is also available as no trailers are allowed on the drive trail.
The pinnacles are fascinating structures formed naturally. Originally the area above where the pinnacles now stand were sand dunes, when it rained lime leached from the sand and cemented itself in to the lower levels of these dunes forming a soft limestone. The upper levels of the sand dunes formed hard layers of calcrete. Over time vegetation grew on top of these upper levels of calcrete forming an acidic layer of soil and humus. The plant roots exploited the upper levels of calcrete forming cracks that they and quartz sand could work its way down in to, to form channels. When the vegetation above the calcrete upper levels of the sand dunes died, and the wind helped blow it and the sand in the cracked dune layers away, what remained were the various limestone layers of the sand dunes which we now call the pinnacles. The pinnacles continue to form and deteriorate.
There are other attractions to visit in Nambung National Park including Hangover Bay, Kangaroo Point and Lake Thetis and we hope to get to these next time we visit.
Milligan Island Campground - Green Head. Location: Pt Louise Road, Green Head (32km North of Jurien Bay)
We stopped at Milligan Island Campground for a night on our way North ($20 p/n, no power or water). The site has around 30 bays on the leeward side of the dunes.
When morning rolled around, the boys were able to explore and they enjoyed wandering around the dunes and collecting the various shells and other items that had washed up on the beach. There was a huge collection of unusual shells and other sea life that we haven’t seen at a lot of beaches.
The only downside of this campsite was the mosquitos present in the morning and from early afternoon. From here we pushed further north, in search of warmer weather.
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Good luck, sounds like it will be a great adventure
Thanks mate, really looking forward to the adventure.
Great clip xx
Thanks! It’s nice to have something to look back on. Our Shark Bay video premiere’s tonight at 5pm. We think it’s a great video show casing the region. Hope you can join us 😁
Nice set up. So exciting, looking forward to following your trip. Have fun!!
Thanks Kosta, good to have you on board.
Hi there ! Just subscribed, great start to your big lap and I’m looking forward to following your adventures. 😊
Hey Robyn, thanks for the sub! Hope you enjoy the trip with us ☺️
Beautiful part of the coastline, you’ve shown that beautifully ❤
Appreciate your feedback, we had the best time!
Nice to have met you all at Bingara. Travel safely.
Was a pleasure Kathy. Safe travels to you guys too ☺️
I hope it's the start of an awesome adventure and i imagine the memories you will make will be priceless and making videos of it will make it so much easier to remember them specially with the kids being so young.
My only concern is the RAM 1500 as they have a very limited payload rating, with the towball weight, bull bar and just the family you will be on or extremely close to your payload limit, i hope you have a GVM upgrade on that rig so you are legal and for insurance reasons specially as it is now your tow rig for the trip of a lifetime.
Can't wait for more content and more beers around the fire.
Cheers.
Thanks Damien, we have the same concerns about weight and to be honest, we don’t understand how a lot of people travel legally with the setups they have.
We have had our setup weighed professionally… twice. The first time we were over weight in both the van and car. We removed a heap of gear and then got re-weighed and we are now under on both.
We have upgraded the suspension in the vehicle including air bags, but it’s not a GVM upgrade. We found it difficult to find an upgrade for the DT. The solution we did find, did not increase the axle loads and we would have had to get a weight distribution hitch which would introduce other complications.
Put it this way, it’s something we are very aware of and are keeping a close eye on. Hope you enjoy our future content. Shark Bay is out on Friday 😁
Ahoy me hearties! 🥰🥰🥰
😂 He’s a cutie! ❤ Butter wouldn’t melt!
What a big family adventure you are all having touring round Australia. Blessings to you all, looks so much fun on the farm
Thank you for your kind words. It truly is an adventure! The farm stay was great, looking forward to finding other places like that one.
Really enjoyed the episode. I've subscribed and look forward to seeing you guys more.
Thanks very much for your comment, we really appreciate the feedback and it’s nice to know that people are enjoying it. Our Shark Bay episode will be released on Friday and the scenery there was absolutely breathtaking.
Safe travels guys, very envious of you all. Great video quality as well and a great edit. What is the camera you are using out of curiosity ?
Thanks for your feedback Gary. We shoot with a Canon R6 and a Mavic Air. We also have a GoPro but haven’t used a lot of that footage yet.
@@AussieFamilyLiving cheers mate. I recently got myself the R7 but haven't done any video as yet. Safe travels mate, now following your journey.
Great to have you on board Gary. The R7 looks like a good camera. Should be able to get some good footage. We wanted a full frame rather than a crop, hence the R6. Let us know how you find the camera 😁
@@AussieFamilyLiving will do.
How bloody exciting guys! We’re yet to head off on ours! Can’t wait, maybe we’ll see you out there one day!🤙🏽
Thanks so much! You’ll absolutely love it, hope to see you out there! We’ve met heaps of other families so far 👌
@@AussieFamilyLiving that’ll be one of the best things, making mates on the road! That’s why we love travelling
@@AussieFamilyLiving also just subscribed! We love supporting like minded peeps plus to get some inspo too!🤙🏽
@@GrabLifeByTheGourlays Really appreciate the support, we’ve met some great people on the road and they have kids about the same age which is a bonus! Kids occupy themselves and we can sit back and relax. So glad we took the leap!
How exciting, the start of the adventure. Good not to pre-book things. Go with the flow. Boys need to have time out of the car too. Great job so far. Enjoy!! From Geelong Victoria.
Thanks a lot for your feedback Graham. We think not booking is the way to go, but they both have their pros and cons. Our Shark Bay episode premieres tomorrow at 5pm WST. Feel free to join us, we think it’s a good one 😉
What mirror extensions are you using ? Are they performing okay ?
Hi Adam, we use the Milenco Aero 4. They do the job, had one of the nobs come loose once so far I think, but we saw this before it caused any issues. There is a little bit of vibration that goes through them causing them to shake more than your fixed mirrors, but not to the point that makes them unusable.
The ram is quite wide so we could almost get away with just using the standard mirrors, legally though we are required to have the towing mirrors.