Hello, My name is Mike and I call myself The Grey Roamer on-line.
I am a "Grey Nomad" and I have been on the road full-time since December 2008, when I retired, sold-up, bought a Jayco Penguin Outback, hitched it to my 2008 Kia Sorento 4WD and hit the open road.
I will admit that some wise heads would call a Penguin-type rig a 'caravan' but according to the Jayco literature the whole range of wind-ups such as the Penguin, Hawk, Eagle etc. are officially described as Camper Trailers, so while I recognise that a camper trailer is generally thought of as being the 'tent-on-a-trailer' style of rig, I can only say in defence of the Penguin Outback, that I haven't been able to find anywhere so far where it won't go.
In the last 2 1/2 years it has been up the Great Central Road, across the Plenty and Donahue Highways, up the Oodnadatta Track (twice) across the Savannah Way, down the Gibb River Road, up the Balladonia Track, into the Bungle-Bungles, up the Tanami Track and down the Buchanan.
I concede that the Anne Beadell or the Canning Stock Route may be beyond my capabilities, but I would suggest that this is more due to my towing vehicle than my camper.
I stumbled across this forum by accident only yesterday, had a quick look and saw a few references to Jayco's and the like and decided to throw my hat into the ring. I started off from Perth, where I had been living for 25 years prior to retirement and as of today, I have been on the road for 884 days and let me tell you it seems like only a couple of months. I spent the majority of the first ten months travelling, covering 27,000 kms in that time, but since 30th October 2009,(563 days) I have slowed right down and spend more time camping and less time driving. In that time I have only covered 24,000 kms. My intention is to keep travelling until I fall off the perch sometime, hopefully, in the distant future.
I have tried a couple of other forums, but they seem to be dominated by people with campervans and caravans rather than camper trailers, so hopefully I will find more like-minded correspondents on this forum. I have to confess that at the end of a long run, when the temperature is in the high 30's, and the flies are teeming, that it might be nice to have a "normal" caravan or campervan, so I could just pull up and open the door and get into bed or make a cuppa, rather than have to set up the rig, but I am more than happy to trade that off against the ability to go to places that the caravan or campervan simply can't access.
I have been recording my travels in a blog, which because of the places I get to where there is simply no mobile coverage, can often go for several weeks without a post, but I try and update the blog when I get the opportunity. If anyone is interested, you can find my blog at http://www.thegreyroamer.blogspot.com/ and I am more that happy to receive e-mails at leif47@y7mail.com
I am currently in Alice Springs after travelling up the Oodnadatta Track and I am leaving tomorrow morning to head up the Tanami to Halls Creek and then on to the Gibb River Road. I guess I won't be in mobile range for about 6 weeks (I like to really take my time), but I look forward to diving deeper into this forum once I hit civilisation again.
It would appear that I can only insert photos from a website, rather than simply upload them from my computer (is this correct?), so I will have to wait until I create a set of albums in the gallery before I can do this. There are heaps of photos on my blog, however.
See you soon
The Grey Roamer
See you soon
The Grey Roamer
