Will seek this out Mudski, thanks.
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@Cuppa thanks for your input.
The T-Van is on the upper side of $ but I take your point about re-sale.
The wife retires later this year (I did last year) and so the 6 months is just a number in reality. I take your point about rushing. We did 3 weeks in the U.K. and it was a sprint. We really have all the time we want and are considering caretaking at various bird sanctuaries. The wife is a keen photographer.
I agree with the 'male thing' about moving on, so I will be working on taking my time.
You make a good point about taking 3 months just to get in the flow.
I will start with a 12 month plan now.
Biggest Dollars spent on any of our trips was fuel , wether on road or at home the cost of eating stays about the same if not cheaper on the road .
We had no itinerary and no real time frame on our big lap , we basically went down the road and turned left then kept going but we did use wiki camps a fair bit .
... if you are into birds of the feathered variety then the early dry is THE time to be in the North (as it happens I was the Secretary of the NT Avicultural Society for a time many moons ago now).
The birdlife on the flood plains and Billabongs is incredible before the migratory species bugger off... but watching the resident species like Jabiru hunting for tucker is amazing anytime.
We got lucky when we were last in Kakadu. Water in the billabongs had dropped to the level where wading birds could wade & do their thing. Result was wall to wall birds as far as we could see. Huge variety & in the hundreds of thousands if not more. Totally awesome. Watching pelicans hunt in packs was something we watched there that we had seen nowhere else.
Mc4by .... now that you've told us that you don't have time constraints ...... I bet you wont be ready to go home after 12 months, or if you are it wont be long after getting home that your feet start getting itchy again. :)
I'll also make a guess that if you are starting off with the intention of 'lots of back roads' that it wont be long before what may seem remote now no longer does. Setting yourselves up with something suitable for 'more remote' now will at least keep that open as an option. First time we did the Birdsville Track we felt *very* adventurous - it pushed our comfort levels ( mind you it was in a 2wd bus towing a trailer in November - when no-one else was silly enough to be out there) but now it's just another major dirt road to us.
@Cuppa I have just found your blog.
The reading has begun.
http://cuppa500.com/Blog/
This is the one I found. If there is another, please post it.
That's the current one - 'A Nomadic Life'
The other one 'The Big Trip' was our 18 month figure 8 in 08/09 in a small bus + trailer with a pair of dirt bikes - the link to it is below - at the bottom of my signature.
And this is a direct link to the Google Map I kept of the 'Big Trip'. Each marker is somewhere we stayed. Blue 2008 & Red 2009.