What an adventure we had last weekend staying O’Reilly’s Campground in the Lamington National Park. We certainly found out why it’s called a “rainforest”…..we copped a A LOT of rain, mud, more rain and freezing cold temperatures. It’s fair to say that we weren’t at all prepared for the conditions and staying in the safari tents meant that we all learnt pretty quickly about forgoing our normal creature comforts….including warm body temperatures!
Even with the non-ideal weather conditions, we still managed to fit in the Treetop Walk, an evening with the Glow Worms and the Birds of Prey Show… with some more rain and mud included.
What we learnt during our visit:
There are a lot of insects, fungi and bacteria that help to breakdown the leaves and branches and help turn them into plant food.
Glow worms aren’t actually worms at all - they’re the larvae of a mosquito-like fly!
4am treks with kids to the campground toilets in torrential rain and gale force wind aren’t fun at all.
As part of our trip to Queensland, we were super keen to experience some ecotourism resorts. We learnt that O’Reilly’s have owned and operated the guesthouse on site for 3 generations and have a deep connection with the area. As part of their commitment to #ecotourism, they have an environmental policy to minimise the impacts of their guests, use local producers and products where possible and help guests to understand and appreciate their environment.
Whilst we’re still working out if we are a glamping sorta family….let alone a camping sorta family, we still loved switching off for a few days and spending time exploring nature. Once again we were reminded of why we’re so keen to learn to live more sustainably and look after our planet.
We’ve been hanging out around the Gold Coast for the last couple of weeks and whilst we’ve had fun doing a lot of the typical family holiday things we also wanted to find more sustainable activities where we could combine some fun along with teaching our kids about the environment. So we headed off to the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary. We visited the animal hospital where we got to see a turtle being operated on, we got up close to some wildlife at the scales and tales show and took a walk through the extinction trail. During our visit the kids learnt all about the impact that humans are having on native wildlife, the importance of conserving our natural environment and the vital work being done at the animal hospital.
When we asked Stella and Ivy what they learnt at the wildlife sanctuary, they said:
🚮To clean up the rubbish from the beach so turtles don’t choke on it.
🚘Drive carefully so you don’t injure any wildlife on the road.
🐨 Blinky Bill taught us to Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.
And we’ve made it in the Tesla from #sydney to #byronbay. So far we’ve travelled 760kms and the trip has been smoother than expected. Using an #electricvehicle on this #ausroadtrip means that there will be longer drive days where we will need to plan our charging stops to make sure we don’t run out of battery….although that would make for a funny #travelstory
Luckily On this trip up the East Coast we haven’t had any issues finding a charging station when on the road. Our favourite so far has been this one. We decided to spend the night in Port Macquarie to break the trip up because we all know travelling with little people in the backseat can test everyone’s patience but also, we’re in no rush and that’s the point of #slowtravel.
So we approached Port Macquarie after departing Avoca beach with 30kms left on the battery, luckily @cassegrainwines was located in the perfect spot. We rolled on in, plugged in the Tesla and treated ourselves to a round of wine tasting while the car took an hour to fully charge. Even better, the lovely folk at the winery were kind enough to provide our girls with some entertainment while we sipped on some wine….although the passenger was able to indulge a little more than the driver.
This lovely winery is also committed to environmental practices by using rainwater and composting waste to use on the vineyards. It’s so refreshing to see businesses like this taking the environmental impacts seriously.
Let’s hope we have more charging stops as enjoyable as this one!
#evroadtrip #electricvehiclecharging #electricvehicles #roadtrippingaustralia #ontheroad #sustainabletransport #sustainablefamily #sustainableliving #sustainabletravelling #ecoliving #teslaowners #teslaownersclub #sustainablewinery #cassegrainwinery #austravel #vanlife #roadtripstories #familytravelblog #familytraveltribe #byronlife #teslachargers #teslafamily #teslaroadtrip
The adventure begins part 3
Off we go…The adventure begins part 3:
A big part of this trip was taking the opportunity to reunite with family and friends in NSW for the first time since the WA borders opened….yes we have some very strong opinions on that one but we won’t voice them here 😅
But we’ve been wanting to explore more of the east coast for a long time so it made sense that this would be the beginning of our slow travel adventure and the perfect opportunity to start learning about #livingsustainably.
The big difference with travelling like this is that it takes a lot more planning as we need to be mindful that our car will only make it so far running on the battery….can’t wait for those anxious travel days of checking how much battery we have left. 😆 But we don’t have to worry about stopping and paying for fuel.
Luckily with an engineer in the family, a spreadsheet was pulled together with the calculations of how far we could make it before needing to stop and charge the car.
There are lots of handy ways to check where we can charge the car along the way so we’ll post those as we go along.
Stay tuned to see where the adventure takes us as we take to the road on our @teslamotors
The adventure begins Part 2
The adventure begins part 2:
We had a big passion for using an electric vehicle for our trip up the east coast of Australia. When we started researching our options, it became clear that it wasn’t going to be as easy as we initially thought: A couple of hurdles we came across were:
🌱Due to supply chain issues the production of Electric Vehicles is very slow at the moment which means there a long wait times for new cars.
🌱Because Electric Vehicles are in such high demand (yay for all of those people keen to make the switch), it also means that second hand EVs are like gold dust to find.
🌱It was ridiculously expensive to hire an EV.
🌱A lot of EVs have a limited kilometre range, others have limited space which isn’t ideal for a family of four travelling long distances.
After a couple of months of searching, we were lucky enough to find our second hand Tesla Model S for sale in Sydney so we snapped it up and it was ready for when our plane touched down.
We’re very excited to be stepping out of the comfort zone and testing out a new way of travelling.
#tesla #teslaroadtrip #teslaadventure #teslaowners #teslaaustralia #sustainabletravel #electricvehicle
The adventure begins Part 1
The adventure begins part 1:
And here we go starting our #slowtravel adventure. We were hoping to find a more sustainable way to get from our hometown of Perth to Sydney but with electric cars being very difficult to find and the very slow journey across the Nullabor not looking overly inviting with two small children, we really didn’t have any other option but to fly. We considered catching the Indian Pacific train but lots of other people seem to be keen on the train trip and there wasn’t any availability until 2023….we didn’t have the patience to wait that long to start our trip. Interestingly the Indian Pacific don’t currently have any sustainability initiatives in place.
So instead we booked a plane ticket with @virginaustralia for this leg of the journey but we made sure to select the carbon offset option which means that our share of carbon dioxide from the plane journey will be offset by planting trees. Another reason we like flying with Virgin is because they partner with @ozharvest to donate leftover food to people in need.
This certainly isn’t the most sustainable way to travel but Australia is such a big country which makes it difficult to get from one side to the other sustainably. We’re all about small steps making a difference and if more people choose to carbon offset when flying there would be less CO2 released into the atmosphere.
#sustainableroadtrip #australiaroadtrip #familytravel #carbonoffset
These wheels are made for road tripping…..#slowtravel family roadtripping that is. Starting in the south coast of NSW and venturing up the coast to Port Douglas.
#evroadtrip #sustainableroadtrip #sustainabletravel #teslaroadtrip #teslaowners #teslaaustralia #travelfamily #ecotraveller #travelaustralia #electricvehicle #teslavideo #tesladriver #roadtrippin #familycar #sustainablesteps
Follow along to see how the Tesla handles the adventure.
