Our sojourn in Byron Bay this year could be rather interesting.
Three weeks ago Colin injured his knee playing tennis. It is slowly getting better. Bottom line – he can’t surf. Actually he can’t do many of the activities that he would normally do when we are yurting. I’m not sure how he will manage this.
A couple of months ago I rang to make a change to our booking here at Byron Bay only to find out that a computer error had occurred and there was no record of our booking. To cut a long story short there were no powered sites left – our options were, not to come, pay an astronomical amount to stay in a cabin (and tell them there were only three children instead of four) or book an unpowered site. The first two were not really an option so unpowered site it was.
In the van we had gas for cooking and to run the fridge. That left lights and power points as an issue. We decided to have a battery installed so we could have lights, then we had to install an inverter so that we could use the power point to charge computers, phones etc… Then we had to solve the problem of charging the battery so we bought a portable solar panel….. Many dollars later we are set up and able to camp wherever. We had always planned to set ourselves up not to be dependent on power, it just happened a little sooner than we had anticipated.
There is still a slight problem though and that is that we can’t run anything off our battery that draws too much power and that definitely and unfortunately includes the heater. Winter in Byron Bay is still cold and dark at night! So we purchased a small heater that runs off gas canisters – we’ll see how it goes. We’ll also see how it goes heating water in a saucepan on the stove instead of a jug and toasting bread under the griller and not in the toaster. We’ll rotate the charging of computers and iphones dependent on how much power is left in the battery. We’ll hope there is enough sun each day to recharge the battery. And we’ll look at all our tenting neighbours and tell ourselves that if they can do it so can we. And we’ll remind ourselves of our yurting mantra not to complain - our set up is still a lot more comfortable than many others. This is an adventure after all. And as I have often told my kid’s in the past, not all parts of an adventure are fun at the time.