1-2-3 PACKiNG TiPS

Andrew Dibb - “Tent with a View”

Joe Ludwig Margreth van Aartsen - Kosciuszko National Park

Matthew Leitch - tank remains when previous owner stores the bike for 10 years with fuel in the tank....

By Liezel Samuel, Member #4412 1-2-3 Packing tips: 1 GS, 2 people, 3 months around AUS

Where is our packing list Dad?” Really? They are 19 years old; we are going to Airlie Beach for a week – and they need a packing list?

For Huw and our three children, the discipline of packing lists started when Huw was a Scout Leader from 2011-2016. The paperwork for all camps or outings was accompanied by a packing list. Unsurprisingly, Huw prepared a packing list for our 6-week family trip around the world at the end of 2014. We wanted to travel as light as possible, each carrying their own backpack. Benefits of having a packing list are: (1) You pack all the items you (will) need (2) You leave behind anything you will not need Our 2014 packing list became our foundation packing list and Huw adapts it every time we leave the house for more than 3 days, irrespective of the mode of transport. The 2016 Frigid Digit was our first overnight camping trip with the GS and required careful planning to fit two people’s camping gear, bedding, chairs, food and warm clothing. As I mentioned in Part 1 of our Trip around AUS in October 2021 – Huw’s philosophy is: What does not fit inside the panniers, does not go (he loves a challenge). My feet did not freeze that night and I managed to eat my yoghurt & cereal breakfast wearing gloves while waiting for the sun to dry the tent the next morning. So according to me, all went well. Huw was happy, as he managed to fit everything we needed without expanding any of the panniers. His reason: If we need to expand the panniers for a one-nighter, how will we ever manage to go round Australia? Who can fault that logic?

Fully Loaded GS

Following the successful Frigid Digit, Huw drafted our first GS-specific packing list, detailing what goes into each pannier, to save him from puzzling out the packing configuration every time. He refines the list for every trip, depending on the weather and off-GS activities to be undertaken. We experimented with changing the content arrangement of the panniers during the 5-day Winter-in-the-Outback, 10-day Uluru and 13-day Cairns trips. The biggest change for our Trip around AUS was the addition of two Huw-designed custommade pannier bags for the lightweight tent, air mattresses, sleeping bags and thermal liners. I referred to the engineering and making of these panniers in Part 1 of our Trip around AUS. We also moved from sharing the top box and putting food and walking shoes in the side panniers, to giving me exclusive use of the expanded Top box (winner for me) and allowed room for the lastminute addition of my laptop. Another tactic from our 2014 family trip that became a long-term habit for all subsequent trips, is that we pack our clothes in separate Hercules twin zip 27cmx33cm resealable bags before putting them into our backpacks/panniers. This creates order (e.g., all your socks stay together, and each piece of clothing stays neatly folded, even when you unpack your whole pannier). A benefit relevant in 2014 was that when we got soaked by rain in Tokyo, our clothes (in our backpacks) remained dry and intact.