HCC: Since the Lost Girls scored an awesome camper van, we decided to take it—where else?—camping. Our premiere girlfriends getaway in the Blue Monster, as we affectionately named it, takes place in Barrington Tops National Park. I chose our destination in my usual last-minute fashion by flipping through the Lonely Planet for a quiet wilderness spot that didn’t require days of traveling. This World Heritage site is not actually a hill, but a 1600-meter plateau covered in mossy Antarctic beech forest and vivid green rainforest. The book said it was only about a three-and-a-half hour drive from Sydney. Our mission? To stay at a secluded campsite, test drive the van’s cool features and not crash the vehicle while doing it.
So far, mission accomplished. After going over the river and through the woods (we literally had to drive across ‘fords,’ which are shallow streams of running water) on a windy dirt road, we came across the perfect place to set up camp for the night: The Scooby Doo caravan park. Okay, it’s not really called that, but the random Scooby Doo billboard pointed towards the promised land: A park equipped with hot showers, laundry and (the best part!) a kiosk open until the late-night hour of 8 p.m. Hey, sleeping in the woods still counts as roughing it even if you’ve got access to goodies such as marshmallows and $10 bottles of Riesling. Score!
We love our little home on wheels. It saves us serious cash because we can store food in the fridge and heat up beans and coffee on the stove. And staying at powered sites where we can hook up to electricity costs just nine bucks a person (as opposed to a $28 hostel dorm room), shedding some light so we can read all those novels that have been weighing down our backpacks all year. The seats fold out into a bed big enough to fit all three of us, but there’s also a single bed up top. It may not be the Ritz, but we’re definitely sleeping in style. Check out this quick video for a tour of the Blue Monster. --Holly
