Roadtrip Australia: Wikicamps

This blog is a little late - so sorry!  Usually I schedule my posts in advance, and I just forgot that I hadn't finished writing this one.  Never mind - here we are now :)

We discovered Wikicamps right before we left on our first Uluru roadtrip, and it really is the best thing ever!  Especially if you are looking to spend minimal $$ in accommodation, or find somewhere close to your location that would be nice/safe for the night.

Wikicamps is how we found the rest stop at Lake Hart - this view anyone?

The first step is to download the app, and then make an account.  I have a vague memory of paying something like $7ish to be able to use all of the features, but I can't quire remember.

Wikicamps has so many features - most of which I don't have a clue how to use or what they are even for!  One thing you definitely need to do is make sure you download the maps for each state, so you can be sure that you can access them anywhere, Wi-Fi or not.

The home page of the app looks like this:

Below is just one example the one feature we actually used - I'm sure there are lots of other things you could use this for.  But we pretty much just needed to know what was close by to us and where we could stay the night after a long day of driving.

Referring to the home page pic above, we clicked on 'View Map' - top row in the middle.

From there, we then clicked on 'location' (in the below pic, at the top in the middle) - and typed in the city we were nearest to.  Once you narrow down the area, you can then scroll around to see what's nearby.

This app shows:
- rest stops
- truck stops
- caravan parks
- actual accommodation
- points of interest
- probably more things I didn't take note of :)

Once you have a screen that looks like the above, you can then start clicking on the little icons and it will tell you what it is.  Some of them say things like 'gravel pit' or 'truck stop', and these are places to avoid! 

Rest areas, like Lake Hart, look like the below.  It shows the icons of the facilities that are there, as well as a review rating.  From here, you can get more info, or get directions to that location.

Free is obviously the $ with a \ through it - the others are also fairly self explanatory, but if you click on 'more details' it will explain them all for you by clicking on the icons (below is the 'more details' view).

Typically, I would look for sites where there is:

- no charge to stay

- toilets

- running water 

- phone signal 

Even though Lake Hart is missing most of these facilities, I would not miss this rest stop!  It is super safe, with lots of people stopping there for the night.  It is roughly half way between Port Augusta and Coober Pedy, which is a good distance to have a rest, and if you're on a trip that huge, chances are you will survive without running water and a phone for the night (I hope you're OK with a bush pee though haha).  You can then walk all the way down and wander around on the salt lake - which is incredible.  We took what would be about 1000 photos whilst we watched the sun set.  Such a great evening.

When choosing your place to stay, I would strongly recommend reading the comments (the tab at the top of the above pic).  As always, take people's reviews with a pinch of salt (because lots of the time people are so dramatic when they leave a review!), but definitely use them to help make a decision on where to stay.

We generally avoided anywhere that:
- had consistent bad reviews (pertaining to noise, safety or really messy)
- hadn't had a review in well over 6 months

Sometimes we ended up paying for some campsite (like if we selected a caravan park or something), but we only did that if it was the only safe option, or if we were due for a shower! :)

We are heading to Tassie in June, and we will be using Wikicamps the whole time - we have challenged ourselves to pay $0 for accommodation on this trip, which makes it more interesting.  After this trip, I will do the Wikicamps Tassie trip blog for you to see everywhere we stayed.

Join me next Sunday at 5pm for a review on our Satellite Messaging device - the Spot Gen 3.

Hx