Yesterday I wrote about how we had started to scale down our kit for camping on the Whitsunday Islands. We decided to also seek counsel from those locally who really know how to pack light for camping on these islands – Hayley and Neill Kennedy of Salty Dog Sea Kayaking.

Advice from the wise

Hayley agreed that campers often overestimate or underestimate what they need to take for island camping. Underestimating the amount of water is a common mistake, and packing things that aren’t really appropriate for a tranquil National Park wilderness experience is another – like the big ghettoblaster one group of teenagers wanted to take. Continue reading →

After chewing over the travails of motoring out for our first island camping trip, clearly one of the difficulties we had was all the gear-schlepping involved. Despite appearances, we had thought carefully about what we needed to bring before leaving Berry just over a week ago, gradually removing things that seemed unnecessary or choosing a more compact version – such as shifting from the big 3-4 man tent to the little 2 man tent and from the unwieldy 50 litre 3-way fridge to the slightly-less-unwieldy 35 litre fridge.

What was tricky was that we were packing for three different types of camping:

1. ‘One night stand’ car camping during our trip from the NSW South Coast to Central Queensland, driving to a new campsite each day
2. Longer term car camping on the mainland during our 6 week trip
3. 2-4 day island camping trips, only accessible by boat

(and by car camping, I don’t mean sleeping in the car but being able to drive right onto a campspot and camp alongside your car).
Continue reading →