Tasmania Trip Overview

Our intention this year was to have a 4WD holiday in Tasmania. It seemed fairly obvious to us that due to the climate, summer would be the ideal time of year to visit. Our second daughter, Chardae, had also been born earlier this year, so the timing was right for her to travel as we had previously taken Leah on her first long haul trip at the same age of around 7mths. As both David and I have aging family members living on the other side of the country, we also accepted that a stopover in Sydney to celebrate Christmas with them would also be manageable. My parents (Colin and Sandy Jacka from Sydney) also keen travellers decided to join us for the Tasmanian and Victorian legs of our trip. And so, we ended up with an 8 week itinerary from Dec 18 - Jan 30, right in the middle of school holidays traversing through 5 states WA, SA, NSW, TAS, VIC and then back through SA and WA again.

The Setup

We continue to use our 80 Series Landcruiser and this is now our 4th long-haul trip in this vehicle. We find it is very well setup for our needs and has earned our confidence, by proving to be the most reliable member of our "team" in the 4 years we've owned it. In recent years we have simplified our camping by using swags, but with the new baby we once again require the portable cot and hence the OzTent to put it in. Add to this a complete round of baby requirements, plus same for a 4 yr old, clothing to suit all climates, plus Xmas presents for the family, and you have some idea of how tightly we were packed. All this is of course additional to a fully equipped vehicle containing full recovery gear and spares, food & water, Twine shower system, Cobb Cooker, and everything in between that you can't do without.

The Work

Fortunately, we have built our business around our passion for travelling, camping and 4WDing. The advantageous are fairly obvious - we get to travel for work. The disadvantage is not so obvious to those on the outside, but painfully obvious to us - we don't really ever get a "holiday", as we are working every kilometre we drive and I cannot even nod-off to sleep along the way else I might miss marking a waypoint. To clarify this, I should explain... our field trips are planned for places where the ExplorOz website does not currently have adequate Trek Notes. So at the conclusion of our trips we bring new content to the website to publish. Recently, we have focussed on waypoint collection and accurate plot file recording using OziExplorer. David is far more capable of many hours behind the wheel so he is the Driver, whilst I am far more capable of many hours behind the computer screen so I am the Navigator and my desk is the laptop - literally.

The Daily Journal

46 days, 11,000+ km, 5 states

The journal contains a couple of paragraphs per day for the entire trip along with photographs, plot files & mapping images to illustrate. For ease of reading, the journal is broken up into segments. Follow the links below in order to read the journal in chronological order or read according to your interest.