Hi Guys and thanks for the info.
You had a pretty low ratio of free camps. Was that by choice?
Cheers
Good question TV. Before we left I thought about 1/3rd each in Free, NP CP's, and did budget for an overall daily cost of $20 so even though we had a lot less free camps than projected our daily spend was less than forecast. Also the numbers are a little skewed as I included all nights spent in National and State Parks although out of those 100 we didn't pay for 28 of them.
Some places, like Tassie and SA, there seemed to be heaps of free camps whereas the NT and WA were less so. If we were in a caravan and wanted to spend nights in roadside stops that would be a lot different but that wasn't the type of travelling we were after.
Some areas were there is little free camping around the 'attraction' like the gorges on the Gibb River road you can camp some klm's away but it can be a false economy if you have to drive 40k's each way to save $20. Particularly if you want to spend a few days in the area.
We preferred not to use Caravan Parks but sometimes they do serve a purpose, particularly in southern WA where the weather was unsettled and having games rooms and camp kitchens took some pressure off the 4 of us living in a 3x3 meter space.
Also you need to access washing machines and 240v to recharge batteries from time to time, and we stayed in heaps that were only $20'ish a night so it's not a bad compromise.
But all in all most of my favorite camps were free; on the banks of the Gibb River just past the Kalumburu turnoff from the GRR, Boat Harbour Beach in the north of Tassie, Ophir just out of Orange, and my all time favorite was Quongdong Point on the Dampier Peninsula north of Broome where we had our own private headland and beach for a week.
Trev
