Love the ocean, the bush, travel and camping
Lucy and I spent a lot of time camping along the south coast of NSW, we love the simplicity of the camping lifestyle and the different experiences it offers. Early 2012 we decided it was time to take our weekend camping trips into another realm plus we got fed up talking to Europeans who had seen more of Australia than we had, so, we made the decision to starting saving our coin and looking for a suitable setup that would take us around Oz. We started researching into tents and found that roof top tents caught our eye. After a couple of months of searching the web Lucy found a pre loved Howling Moon Star Gazer. As soon as she told me I knew her heart was set. We read up on the brand and found nothing but positive feedback so we made the journey to Melbourne in my trusty Subaru. The owners were a young Swiss couple that had just completed a 12-month trip around Australia. They pulled the tent out. It still looked like new, knowing strait away we were looking at a trusty bit of accommodation. So we strapped it on to the Suby and waved goodbye to the Swiss couple who had tears in their eyes as we swept it from there lives.
TIMEGAZING from Matthew Loft on Vimeo.
So now we had our accommodation sorted but we didn’t have the right vehicle. We looked around and eventually found a trusty old Landcruiser Troopcarrier. The perfect match for the Howling Moon Star Gazer.
After 3 months of solid preparation we head off, on a 14 month, funky d shape journey across the continent. Exploring the rainforest’s of Tasmania, roaming the rugged southern coastline to Port Augusta, heading north into the central deserts, continuing up in to the tropics of NT, ploughing across to the majestic expanses of the Kimberley, following the WA coastline into the concrete jungle of Perth and tracing the southern coastline back to the Gong.
During our on the road we experienced every type of weather pattern Mother Nature threw at us. We were sand blasted by 50 knot winds in WA, drenched in torrential Tasmanian rain, roasted by the extreme South Australian sun and swamped by insects and animals in the Northern territory. And not once did the Howling moon falter. It stood up to every extreme element of nature whilst other tents were blown away, flooding or just falling apart.
Now when we camp around home, the tent still gets compliments on how new it looks. We are so happy with our decision to go with such a good quality product, we probability would not have survived the 14 months with anything else.
If you have any Howling Moon stories to share, send them to us at: info@howlingmoon.co.za
Howling Moon would love to hear from you!
