The Mud Map Blog: Sydney Trip 2014, Pottsville to Burrum Head and then on home.

Our 3 week tour of the east cost of Australia was coming to a close and as far as I could tell it was a 100% successful family holiday with a little bit of adventure thrown in. Kirsty and I had figured out our setup and pack up rhythm by the time we hit Pottsville. With this being our first camping trip as a family I knew we would have some lessons to learn, in order to have a stress free camp. When I was doing 'this' Kirsty would be doing 'that' so at the end we could bring it all together with as little mental torture as possible.

You can listen and learn from others all you like but your own experiences are the ones you remember most clearly. The kids stomping through the red morning mud at Mapleton that would stain everything it touched, for weeks, was a biggie. The best way to pack the tent when wet I had to learn on the fly, remembering to plug the fridge into 240v whenever mains power could be found.
Just the little things really.

Also having information at our finger tips instantly provide invaluable. At camp I had an older laptop which could handle a few bumps and thumps which was tethered to either my phone or a Telstra 4G Personal Hotspot device which I acquired before the trip. The laptop ended up just being something the kids could stream Peppa Pig on from iView.

In the car I had my Samsung Galaxy Note 2 which was also my navigation device. It has both Navigon turn by turn street app and OziExplorer loaded with Hema and custrom georefferenced maps of all the areas I was planning on going. Both apps are designed to work offline so they are great for remote locations. We had paper backups as well but they didn't get a look in.
I also had an iPad for use inside the car while travelling and Kirsty had her iPhone 4s. All devices were on the Telstra network so network speeds were high (usually 4g) and drop outs were rare.

My Samsung Note 2 running Oziexplorer
Clearly this is not the correct windscreen mount, I have an excellent iBolt mount for this phone but its currently in a location that is unknown to me. This is just a cheap iPad mount bought from Jaycar but is actually really good.

The Note 2 has a monster screen on it for a phone but as a navigation device, its a bit small. My plans are to have a 7" tablet as the navigation device with OziExplorer on it. I will look at a turn by turn street solution in time but the Samsung with keep me covered until then. Navigon was supplied with the phone and its works fine for street navigation.

So anyway, on with the road trip from Pottsville to Burrum Heads. This part of the journey was fairly boring. Nothing to report, we just smashed out the klms to get ourselves closer to home.