Monday, September 30, 2019

August / September Drone shots

For DerryGoRound, I splurged and bought myself a Mavic Air Drone. I had seen a heap of photos from other big lappers and, as Tanya is the expert photographer, I though I could find my DerryGoRound niche taking drone photos.

It has been lots of fun, although it has been tough finding places where we are allowed to use the drone. I have been using the Open Sky app to make sure I don't break any laws (or cause any accidents).

I haven't crashed it yet, unlike our towing course instructor who was taking some drone footage of us reversing the caravan and crashed his drone into a light pole; maybe he was distracted by our dodgy reversing technique.

Here is a collection of some of my drone images. It's still early days yet, but some nice results and a cool way to document our adventure.

Here we have Fraser Island, various shots of the van, NSW/QLD border at Jennings and some family residents.
(click on the image to see the album)


I still have so much to learn, including how to take 360 photos and a heap of other features. Once we get west there should be a heap of other opportunities to explore and play.

Monday, September 9, 2019

August Panorama's

During August we saw some spectacular scenery, so of course I had to take a few panoramas; you know the long photos that you take by swinging your iPhone around in an arc.

Here is a link to a Google Photos Album with some of the better panoramas, from beach shots to mountain lookouts. Australia is certainly a spectacular country and needs to be seen in the flesh to be truely appreciated.


Thursday, September 5, 2019

DerryGoRound by the numbers August

The maths nerd in me put together a whole heap of stats and graphs for our first full (ish) month on the road. So here we have DerryGoRound by the numbers August.

States: Queensland and NSW

Distance travelled: 3354km
Playgrounds visited: 18

Fires: 9

Purchased lunches: 5
(pies, chip sandwiches, Hungry Jacks (to get a free zoo ticket), sushi)

Restaurant meals: 2 (dumplings at Red Earth Estate, Pub Lunch Special Armidale)

Accomodation

We used five different types of accomodation

  • Staying with friends/family
  • Caravan parks
  • Free camps
  • National parks
  • Other (cheap camps Bendemeer and Red Earth Estate winery)


Much of our time was spent with family and friends as this was the main reason we travelled south along the coast. Including more than a week staying with family in Toowoomba.

Money

Total spent: $3780.01
$ per KM: $1.13


  • Petrol was our largest expense, which is to be expected. We pretty much used 98, as I have calculated it is more efficient than 91 and therefore hopefully cheaper in the long run, we are getting between 22 - 25 L per 100km on 98 as opposed to 26-27 on 91.
  • Luxury includes any meals out or lunches purchased on the road, birthday presents and anythings else that isn't really a necessity.
  • Alcohol included some expensive bottles of wine purchased at vineyards we visited.
  • Education included some online subscription that are one off expenses.
  • Miscellaneous included firewood and National Parks passes (NSW).
  • We also purchased some extra clothes and maintenance items (new tow ball) during the month, which shouldn't be a common occurrence.


I imagine our food and accomodation expenses will increase as we spend less time staying with family and friends, but hopefully we can spend more time in free camps.

Well that is about it for August. I am more than happy with our $ per km, let's just hope we can keep it up.

Sunday, September 1, 2019

DerryGoRound month 1 (August) Mymaps version of our trip

Here is the Google My Maps version of our August adventures, including driving route, images, some of the things we did and more details of our dates.


We covered just over 3000km and stayed with lots of family and friends, as we move north we will pretty much be on our own until Townsville in a couple of weeks.

Very soon I will be doing a DerryGoRound August by the numbers post.