Our Big Lap Gap Year Wrap Up | This might help your Lap dreams and plans |
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- Опубліковано 15 лис 2024
- We answer viewers questions as we sum up our Lap and wrap up our Gap Year. In this Episode we cover off on the route, the timings and how it all went, our fave spots, our top dozen camps, what we'd do different and more.
Welcome to Episode 53 of our Big Lap Gap Year. We're David and Paula @nextleveloz . Like many of you, we've worked hard for 40 years, but we are too young to retire. So we took a gap year from work, we bought our first ever caravan and we did a Big Lap around Australia taking in the iconic destinations of our fabulous country.
100% of our UA-cam channel ad revenue goes to charity, so please watch and share with anybody you know who is considering a Big Lap of Australia and we send that bit extra to charity before the series finally ends.
It's a little bit long, but a number of you wanted a more detailed coverage of the Lap route, so we aim to please.
All we have to do now is give the van and car updates when their services are completed and any repairs are done - so you get a complete picture.
Thank you, thank you, thank you! We so enjoyed coming along on your travels and have returned to rewatch the wrap up & videos of a few specific areas a number of times. We found your series truly inspirational. While there are many bikini-clad twenty-something you tubers their focus is different to ours. Whereas we felt like you & Paula were doing pretty much what we would choose to do. Inspiring!
Wow. Thank you, thank you, thank you too! We love it when people watch and thank you for taking the time to leave such a lovely comment. Yes - I can promise you won’t see me in a bikini (and Paula said she probably wouldn’t either 😉). Good on the younger ones but you’re absolutely right, we had a view about the adventure and the balance we wanted to have. And to be honest we went to some pretty rough and remote places as well as some enjoyable, fun and comfortable places also. So really glad there is a group of people like you guys who feel that our approach has helped. And of course our view is everybody is different so they can vary and do their own trips their way in their rigs and have a dream trip. And if our wins (and occasional fails) helps, that’s terrific. The one thing we’ve felt - is if we can do one thing it’s give people who’ve dreamed it the confidence to consider actually doing it! Thanks again. Safe travels. David and Paula
Love your work, David & Paula, we really enjoyed watching your journey. So informative, and it was great to see the Defender in action both as a tow vehicle and off road.
Thanks so much for watching and following along. We really appreciate the kind feedback. We will do the wrap up on the Defender shortly. All the best. cheers
Thanx for the wrap up and look forward to your car and van episode. It was a great adventure and we enjoyed the ride.
Thanks so much. It was a terrific adventure and we are still amazed that people subscribed and came along for the ride. Thank you. The car and van wrap ups are coming soon. cheers
Congrats on making it around our great country. I have a Defender 2022 and have ordered a Zone ,picking up in March ,not sure if I missed your comments on the mirror extensions you fitted and how was there performance . Did you disable the the feature which folds the mirrors when locking the vehicle.
Thanks. Yes, we did cover the Defender 3D brackets. But no problems. You can use them with the arms and mirrors such as milenco as we do. check out the bracket here defender3d.co.uk/products/ols/products/tow-mirror-mounting-solution. Been great and no you don’t have to disable the automatic folding as the bracket is clamped to the side mirror arm which doesn’t move. Thanks for watching and the comment. Wishing you many safe travels in your new rig. cheers
Wow! What an awesome episode. Sincere thanks to you both for such a heartfelt and informative share of your journey.
Thank you. Much appreciated and hopefully covered most of the questions. All the best.
What an inspiration!
Have loved your travels since day 1. Hope all is well with you both. Thanks for sharing and I hope you’re both settling into your new normal lives.
Thanks and you have indeed been along on the journey since day 1. Thank you so much. All is sort of well - were good, but still finding our post trip cadence, so. it settled but well beside that. Thanks again we’ve loved sharing especially with those that have followed along most of the trip. The car and van updates will be sometime in the next few weeks. All the best. cheers
Thank you for such an interesting and informative series, it’s good to see a series that isn’t dictated by sponsors, for me that’s a turn off. We have traveled extensively so some of your episodes brought back great memories. Take care, stay safe, and hopefully we will see you both again in the future.
Our pleasure and glad you’ve enjoyed them. I get what the professional content creators need to do, but we didn’t need to or want to. As we said, it’s enough work doing this and we’ve enjoyed it - but not done all you really need to do to make it a bigger channel. But it’s a hobby and a share and we’ve liked it that way also - and still did oretty well we think and got to send a few bob off to charity. All the best and thanks again. cheers
Enjoyed that wrap up. It confirmed some of my ideas, as we will be on the road for most of this year. We are currently spending 2 months in Tassie, on our third trip. Having previously covered most of the eastern half of the continent, we are planning to head west and will certainly spend time in the south and north and then across to Darwin.
It's amazing how many people are travelling, some for long periods. We recently met a couple who have been on the road for 19 years and another couple for 9 years. They've been everywhere.
Also meeting plenty of single older female travellers who, for various reasons, have rented out their houses and hit the road indefinitely.
Appears an increasing number of people are rejecting being tied down and have decided it's now or never.
So, thanks again for the series and keep travelling!
Thanks for watching and your comment. Love Tassie and there are so many places elsewhere including WA to NT to enjoy. Yes there are so many long term travelers which just reinforces that you have to adapt your own preferences and travel style and do it your way. All the best for your travels, be safe and thank you for following along and glad to helped confirm your own thought process as well. cheers David and Paula
Really, really enjoyed your travels.
Selfishly I’m sad to see your trip end as the free entertainment you provided us on a Sunday kept us inspired to travel. Well for what it’s worth we have ordered our new van and will be doing the lap ourselves.
Please promise us you wont sell the van, and if you do make it back over to the west, would love to catch up.
All the best
Mark
Well that’s exciting and great news. You will have a ball. We enjoyed sharing and thank you for watching. We hope it helps people to decide what they might like and how they want to do it there way. There are multiple variations of the Lap to suit everybody. We don’t know what’s next. We deliberately didnt make plans so we weren’t thinking about it while we travelled. We are dropping the van of at Coolum for a major service and going to drop in to Zone around the corner to check out the expedtion, but we love our Base so we will weigh what the future holds in the coming weeks and months. All the best, safe and enjoyable travels and thanks again. cheers David and Paula
Fantastic job to you both, we have enjoyed watching and we will be checking out some of those amazing destinations, hopefully soon! All best to you both with what lies ahead. Regards Keith & Nicola, hope to see you on the road one day 😎
Wow how exciting. So much to see and do. Thanks so much for following along and thanks so much for watching and the kind feedback. We really appreciate it. Safe travels and best wishes David and Paula.
Thanks for the wrap up video
Great stuff
Looking forward to the ones on the Defender & Caravan
👍
Thanks Stephen for coming along on the youtube journey with us and the encouraging comments. The van is in being serviced now and we’re waiting on some parts for the Defender but we will have those wrap up’s shortly, but probably not this week. Not sure if we will post this week. Only if we’ve got something useful to share. cheers
@@nextleveloz
Thanks David & Paula.
I very much enjoyed all of your content
Many thanks to you both for sharing your journey with so many, I'm sure it takes quite a lot of time to put the episodes together each week. Thank you also for donating the proceeds to 2 excellent charities. I was lucky enough to travel in the past but never a big lap and now age will beat me. Your videos have shown me what I missed out on. I can echo your advise to others to get out there and do it. Best wishes for the future and good luck settling down to so call normality, I recall it wasn't easy. Many thanks again.
Hi, thank you so much. Such a lovely coment and thank you for letting us share . It does take a bit of time for the episodes. Maybe not you are a real pro, but while we had some production issues on some videos we wanted them to be a good record and worth sharing as well. I’m sure you did plenty and contributed heaps. We just thought we didn’t want to be grey nomads and wort till we were retired and not only the millenials clcan have gap years 😉. Thanks so much for watching and while there are many good causes out there we feel these two provide some really important hands on help on things that touch us, so doing some good on the trip was important for us as well. All the best and thank you.
Thanks to you both for sharing your trip with us. It’s been both informative and entertaining and i know I'll miss the weekly updates. I’ll be keeping an eye out on the Northside for the NXT LVL Landie so I can bend your ear if I bump into you! Many thanks again.
Thank you for following our journey. We have been so surprised by the number of people who come over to say gday so please do if you see us around. Thanks for the kind words and all the best. cheers
Good wrap up but sad that its ending really enjoyed all the videos now its back to work for you both take care❤
Yes back to work in some form. It’s changed us though. Thais for the lovely comment - as always. We’ve enjoyed all the subscribers, but especially those like you who take the time to comment and give feedback so kindly. Thank you and take care also ❤️
We found your channel not long ago, we are absolutely loving it so many of the other channels are turning commercial and just want to sell you something we are waiting and should pick up our van in May so we will be watching all your early videos. Thanks for all the inspiration love your work.
Hi thanks for watching, welcome and hope you get something out of them. We certainly enjoyed it 😁😉We got better at the vids as we went 🫢😳. We were on a gap year from work so this was a record for family and friends and we’re happy to share, but we definitely didn’t want to be professional content creators or influencers and 100% of any ad revenue goes to charity. But if was we get to show it our way as well. Hope you like it and thank you for helping us send some money to RFDS and Legacy. Exciting countdown to getting your new van. We wish you safe travels and many happy memories. cheers David and Paula.
Thank you for such a fabulous series of videos. I have also started back a the beginning as we start to plan a trip beginning Tassie and seeing where to after that. Enjoy the time at home and look if possible what you added to the Defender before taking off. Cheers.
Thank you and we really appreciate all our regulars and the great questions and comments. 🙏. We love Tassie. We trust you will have a ball. You saw what we said. We will update and wrap on the Defender shortly. The fix for the 2WD issue is in train and a couple of other niggles as well, so I’d rather be able to share a complete picture. We won’t hold up the episode long though - all good things have to come to an end after all. Yes happy to touch on the mods. All the best, safe travels and thanks once again. cheers David
Thanks for taking us all along on your lap. I am really going to miss anticipating each new episode and the fantastic way you present our amazing country. Good luck adjusting to being at home again.
Thank you very much for watching. You’ve been one of our longer standing subscribers so thank you so much and glad you’ve enjoyed them. We loved the experience and the shares. Loved WA (saw a bit too much of Geraldton! Not a bad place, just a bit so great time for us). As you would have seen we would have loved to have spent more time in SW WA which doesn’t get as much focus as the NW. Who knows when we will get back. Safe travels, best wishes D&P.
Hey Guys, my wife and I have really enjoyed what you have shown us as it is just a normal documentary style and you don't 'Try too Hard' to influence us. - One question though - If you were to take the most preferred 'Perfect Lap', how long would you budget for? - Thanks again and we look forward to seeing some more 'trips down the track. - Best Regards Matt and Tina
Hi, thank you. We definitely don’t want to be influencers or sales people (not on youtube). So hard to say what a perfect lap is. We always wanted to be home and with family at Christmas and a gap year seemed the right length. You can spend years on the road if you want to but it does get expensive. So while there are places we missed and might go back to for set periods, a year made sense for us. But you’ve probably figured out, big believers that everybody has to do it their way. Hope we do see you around and if you ever see us, don’t hesitate to come and say g’day. cheers Paula and David
Thanks for a great re-cap. Thourghly enjoyed the series. Enjoy your future.
Thank you so much and glad you enjoyed the series and the re-cap. Who knows what the future holds. All the best to you also. cheers
Thank you, thank you, thank you. You are two incredibly beautiful people. ❤
What a lovely comment. Thank you for following along. We have our moments 😉! All the best and we really can’t express how surprised we remain that anybody ever followed. It’s been a blast. Thank you , too kind ❤️
Great wrap up. Very inspirational. If you do any more trips please keep the same channel so we can find them easily. Good luck for the future. Look forward to the car and van wrap up. Take care.
Thank you! Yes, we will keep the handle and try to clean up the channel a bit as soon as we can take a breath. Thank you for watching and commenting we still get amazed that anybody did. All the best
Well done on such a great trip, really enjoyed your vids.
Thanks 👍🏼
Great recap of a great lap. You put so much work into this and I’m really grateful that I got to share it with you both. Thanks so much and if you do ever upload anything new I’ll be there with you ❤️
You’ve been so kind. Thankyou for keeping on with us, we love it. Yes it has been a bit of work and the wrap up was a lot of work and too long but we didn’t want to do too many “last ever”, “final” episodes. So it got too long but didn’t make sense if we split it and the map stuff was fiddly for amateurs. Anyway, not much sleep last night as it took too long to process and upload. We are so out of routine! 😉😂. All the best and thanks again. ❤️
Great wrap-up thank you.
Couple of questions in relation to the vehicle and van for your next videos.
Vehicle - you mentioned you hit two Roos on your lap - do you wish you had a bullbar?
Would you think a snorkel is a “must have”?
Van - we’ve got a zone base 17 with the same solar 400a lithium / 720w solar on the roof. Was that enough or would you recommend a solar blanket?
Any other additions to your Zone that would be a “must have”?
Once again - we’ve learnt so much watching your videos and appreciate the time and effort you’ve gone to making them.
Cheers Dougal & Abby
Thanks for watching and great questions. We can touch on those in the update but even for right now - we have a front bar, thankfully as it took the brunt of one strike and glanced the other, to reduced damage on both cases. We have a raised air intake (rather than snorkel. The wading depth of the car is 900mm regardless which is pretty good, but the RAI helps reduce dust intake and even then we have had three air filters. Just shows that we’ve been on some dusty, rough roads! 🤣🤔 I do recommend a portable solar blanket any way, it’s helps chase a bit of sun and the roof tops can really always capture the most efficient rays. We had to live for a couple of months without one as our first one failed, so we know the 720 and 400 does well but that portable blanket does help heaps when you have it. Thanks so much for watching and we will touch on some of this is the car and van wrap ups. All the best for many happy travels on your van! cheers
Great wrap up video , wow so much in 11 months
Thank you so much! and yes it was a lot. The couple of car issues did bite into it a bit so yes, we probably did cram a bit and as we show there are a few things we’d change but we still had a wonderful time and you play the hand you’re dealt. It was a pretty good hand overall ! Thanks for watching and taking the time to comment. All the best.
Great way to wrap up your lap. And yes I've been rewatching episodes. Your early ones were really good but it's noticeable how much more "polished" you were able to make them as you went along. You're both natural presenters and this helped make a informative and fun series. Best of luck with your future endeavours and being a fellow Brissie resident maybe we'll see you around.
Thanks so much. Yes sole of the earlier ones were better than others for sure . Glad they got a bit better. I’ve probably only just started to learn more about the capability of the editing suite and of course if you shoot on the run you don’t always get the best footage for editing . But we just didn’t want to be doing multiple takes etc. We both got better at the presentation but it’s also hard watching sometimes 😉😂. If you see us around Brissy come and say gday . 🙏 All the best.
What an epic adventure. Sorry to say this but I absolutely insist that you take off another lap😂. I have throughly enjoyed your gap year, it has spired us to leave on ours in May. Thank you for your vids. What did you family think of you becoming UA-camrs?
Wow, May. How exciting and if we played a small part in your decision and hope my helped your planning thoughts, that’s terrific. We’re sure you will have a ball. As we say - do it your way! It’s been epic . We all had a bit of a laugh on the youtube stuff. But most of them followed along - it means they don’t have to come to slide night now 🤣🤪. All the best and safe travels. Maybe we will see some of your posts on one of the platforms. cheers Paula and David
Thanks so much, its been a pleasure watching you both. Looking forward to the car and caravan wrap up, as we have a car but now need to purchase a van.
Our pleasure.!Thank you for watching. Once weve seen what is repaired etc we will complete bit the car and van updates. Glad you’ve enjoyed the series.’All
the best.
Hi - thanks for taking the time to help others planning the same journey. While I'm new to your journey I'd be interested in any safety thoughts, issues or concerns you've had. Did you feel safe?
Hi, thanks for watching and we might touch on that in the final update. We’ve answered this before and we didn’t get asked again before producing this wrap but it ls such a good question. We’ve always felt safe where we’ve stopped. If we ever felt a free camp location didn’t feel right we moved on. There are signs (dumped gear etc) but our rule of thumb is that if it doesn’t feel right, find a better one. There are some locations where normal precautions apply and TBH in Kununurra at the van park we were fine until the operators sent a courtesy text to all campers cautioning them to lock up and secure gear (they’d had some thefts). So that raised the eyebrow for sure, but we often secure much of our gear as a matter of course anyway. The biggest safety issue is silly people frankly. Poorly loaded rigs and poor road behaviour of a few, so we had a couple of moments on tough roads with people overtaking at excessive speeds well beyond the conditions. And one nasty moment just north of Kimba on the Stuart Highway where multiple 4x4s in a group tried to overtake 2 vans and road train and couldn’t do so before oncoming traffic approached but because another in their group was tailgating and two were on the wrong side of the road they left the towers including us with limited options. It was close. We saw rhem at Kinba and fortunately Paula’s commonsense prevailed and persuaded me to leave it be. That was probably the unsafest moment of the lap. But in terms of camps, once we got used to it we loved tucking away in free camps. The other thing I might mention for any newbies (as we most certainly were not long ago) is that there are very few places you don’t see somebody else. So the best free camps were totally alone and tucked away, but we never minded a few others spaced about either. Many people did what we did, took a stroll, polite wave and a hello - great way to meet people and also check out who the neighbours were. 99% of the time they were lovely and just enjoying their own space respectfully as well. Final comment - there are some troubled communities and it’s often best to drive past, of fill up and move along. But that’s very rare. Great question. Thanks again.
hi guys - have really enjoyed your lap series - great videos, heaps of useful info and a real down to earth style. All the best and maybe we’ll see you on Big Lap 2 sometime in the future! One question- what plan would you recommend for the Garmin InReach and would you buy a Garmin Overlander (with Hema maps) next time?
Thanks mate for your regular encouragement and feedback. We try to keep it real and sometimes that means the quality probably isn’t ideal , but it’s a hobby not a job for us. Whole the audience is pretty broad, no question we’ve tapped into a group who related to a (youngish) 🙄😉 middle aged couple who saw it as an exciting, but temporary diversion from reality. All the best
Another Geordie here,trying to persuade my wife to venture up to Broome.
Will make sure son in Mountain Creek mooloolaba sees it and encourage him to do it!
It’s still cold and wet here in UK
Hi - you’re the Geordie Inwas referring to 😉🙏 Wrve got a few regulars from the Uk. We can’t always tell specifically where they’re from of course but your handle and he comments have a clue of course 😂. Broome is great. We’ve been there a few times i’ve the years. But it is a long way isn’t it! All the best and thank you.
On coffee number one here on Gold Coast, it's raining outside and been storms overnight... But I get up to see another episode.. I'm sure the dog heard the music and knew the walk was delayed...
This was without question the hardest post of all. It was fiddly and we aren’t in routine and it took forever to process and upload and for UA-cam to check it etcz So while I shouldn’t care, I didn’t get much sleep last night finishing it off and posting. It’s a matter of pride for me that we’ve been punctual and regular with the vid posts right to the end (I think this one might not have actually gone live until 10 minutes after scheduled time 😂😂🙄. Hope it didn’t ruin your coffee but in fairness hopefully you weren’t up at 5.00 am! 😉
Hi Guys, welcome back home. So quick question.. I've seen some of the challenges you had with the Defender. So if you had your time again, would you still go for the Defender or something else like the 300 series?
Hi - thanks for watching. It’s an interesting challenge isn’t it? we will be doing a van and car update shortly (as soon as some major services are done) But in short the 300 wasn’t released at the time, but we saw a couple of 300s on tilt beds on our way around so one of the problems with retrospectives or hypotheticals sometimes is the assumption that you are comparing imperfect with perfect - it’s a bit of a dilemma for those like us who aren’t brand tribal. It assumes you would or wouldn’t have an issue with another new model. One thing we won’t do is compare apples with oranges though and the 300 was only being released not long before we departed and the delivery time was over 12 months. So it was never an option (we don’t particularly like it - but that’s beside the point) So we’ve covered off on the issues a couple of times and we’ve also completed the Lap. So some of the answer comes to how JLR perform in addressing the niggling issues that couldn’t be addressed before we left 🤷. We will try to answer that in a couple of weeks. It’s complex. but we will give it a go. Thanks again for watching, have to go - i have steak on the barbie 😉😂🙏
What did you do with your van when visiting spots not suitable for vans?
Thanks for following along 🙏. We find a van park or similar to park/ store. We’d consider locking up, hitch in and securing for an overnighter in a relatively safe and populated stop if there was somebody around we’d got to know - many people do that at Spring Creek near the entry to Purnululu (it’s still a 2 hour hard drive in). Many people pet mind and swap over to do similar. But for longer like Fraser Island , the campground on the mainland offered storage rates for those who’d stayed either side of the trip to the island. For after the Gibb and for Purnululu we decided we needed to head to Kununurra to clean up so it was better to arrange to park up the van at the van park and do the 5.5 hour trip each way. We stayed 2 overnighters at the Bungles. But it doesn’t happen very much. David spent 5 nights out of the van on the call Lap (3 in a room at El Questro and 2 for Purnululu. Fraser was some separately as part of the shakeouts) Paula did and extra week away when she headed back to Bris for a family event). So we are re- evaluating whether it’s with the weight of the extra camping gear in the future. Thanks again. cheers
On your various videos you have a clip of you saying 'this is absolutely insane'. Do you remember where you said that?
Fraser Island??
@@midlandgeordie Quite possibly, that walk to Lake McKenzie is ... Fabulous. That was the spot that my wife and I decided to move back to Australia from a 6 yrs back in UK (York).. we settled this time
Hi mate - it was indeed Lake McKenzie on K’gari Fraser Island. We had a brilliant morning, it was early and we thought we were completely alone and it was gobsmacking. It summed up what we were were about to do as well ( for us) but the reality is many places are “insane” but doing a Lap to see them is quite doable for most people and restores your sanity! cheers
Yep
Brilliant share mate. We believe the inland lakes of Fraser are among the very best places we’ve visited. Now we think of it - we should have mentioned that in the wrap up 🤦. We did Fraser as part of the Lap shakeout rather than rhe Lap but Teewah, Fraser and some of Western Qld rank up in our faves.
Have you learned it's never to young to retire?
Hi. We’ve worked hard and saved etc we have some choices. Not rich, but comfortable. I think it has definitely changed our outlook on the ballance but in some form I need to work to keep the grey matter entertained. We are figuring that mix out now. It was always going to be transitional but I was always likely to be working in some form. I think 😉