Camp Cooking # 1

In the lead up to our trip I (Nic) have been unnaturally obsessed with camp oven cooking, (never having done it before) and obsessed with camp cooking in general (probably because we ate so much crappy takeaway in those last couple of hectic months!)

So I’m really very excited about my first forays into the world of camp oven cooking.

The first night was a bit experimental, but the next night we had an asparagus frittata closely followed by some muffins! The muffins were a little overcooked, but they looked the part!


As did Tim shovelling the coals around.


A fairly major issue is that as of 1 November, it seems that there will be nation-wide fire bans. So we might get a chance to make some surreptitious beach campfires, or else I will have to give the heat bead camp oven cooking technique a go. I will report back!

And in the beginning

We’ve finally made it! After such a drawn-out leaving process of finally leaving Perth and then again finally leaving Denmark & then Albany – we have made it to a campsite. We have slept in the camper trailer, we have had a campfire, we have cooked on the camp oven, we have unpacked, used and loved the Drifta Kitchen – so many firsts.

We’ve been at Cape Riche, about 100km east of Albany for a couple of nights, and it is a great spot. The landscape is beautiful low coastal heath, with some wildflowers still about, and the water is turquoise and the beaches squeaky.


Its also been blowing a gale most of the time we’ve been here, so we haven’t yet been fishing. That is one first that will have to wait. Instead Elsie got her feet dirty showing us her v.impressive 4wd mud and rocky trail prowess when we went to check out some nearby sandy sea cliffs.


We’ve had an interesting time so far with our extensive range of camping gear. First it was the expensive car fridge which is currently not working, then it was the water-tank under the trailer that seems to be blocked, and then it was the gas stove that needs a different hose to attach to the gas bottles we’ve got.

A tip for future travellers… instead of spending the 6 months before you leave painting the toilet and building a fence, maybe it would be a good idea to invest some time in checking that everything works before you head off!

Apart from that it has all been bloody great. I don’t think it has really sunk in for either of us that this is what we are going to be doing for the next 10 months. It still feels like we’ve gone off camping for a long weekend. On the odd occasion when it DOES sink in we grin at each other like idiots!

The coffee table book

So we are looking for an idea...

The coffee table book that we can write/ take photos for on our trip around Australia. Then, once we've taken the publishing world by storm, the book will pay for the whole trip!?!

Some of the ideas we've talked about so far:
* a visual book with photos of our feet in a range of different soils/environments/situations (Cam)
* a gourmet camping cook book with stories and photos of where we cooked each meal (Sue)
* a guide to the op-shops of Australia (Shola)
* a quirky look at the roadhouses of Australia (Sue/Shola)

My rather more predictable idea was to do a picture/story book about all the fabulous sustainability projects happening around Australia. Tim's predictable idea is to do a guide to fishing spots around Australia.

Anyone got any other ideas? (For a cut of the enormous profits!?!?!)