Winter Trip 2017 - Summary

This year we were away from home for a total of 120 night (4 months). Six nights were spent free camping, five nights at Lloyd Jones Weir and one night at Granite Creek Rest area, both in Queensland. The return fare for a twin cabin each way on daylight crossings with the Navara and the caravan was $1,720. Total cost in caravan parks was $6,626 which averaged out at about $55.21 per night, inflated somewhat by two and a half months on a waterfront site at Tallebudgera Creek on the Gold Coast. We justify the extra site cost by the fact that we do not use much diesel.

We used 1,705 litres of diesel costing $2,188 at an average of $1.28 per litre which is less than the cost of fuel in Tasmania. The highest price paid was $1.369 at Forster in NSW and Gundagai Service Centre on the Hume Highway, while the lowest was $1.219 at Palm Beach on the Gold Coast. We towed the caravan for a total of 4,137 km at an average fuel consumption of 22.0 litres per 100 km, and did another 2,457 km touring around at an average fuel consumption of 14.0 litres per 100 km. The highest fuel consumption towing the caravan was 26.65 litres per 100 km from Coombah to Broken Hill with a head wind.

Internet coverage when free camping is generally no mobile signal at all. In the outback coverage is quite patchy and generally slow 3G. Even when 4G is available the signal is variable and also quite slow. I guess that it is due to a lack of available bandwidth, especially when overloaded with the increase in tourist numbers in the winter. This year we shared 10.4 GB of data per month on our mobiles which was quite adequate even when using the mobile as a WiFi hotspot, until one time that Windows 10 decided to do a big update download - then I had to buy extra data on the 4G dongle that I was hoping not to have to use. Of course updating the blog is not helped by uploading high quality photos. But I think that the result is worth it.

That's all for this trip - talk to you again next time.