Camp food - Western Australian wheatbelt granite outcrops

We are just back from a seven day camping trip visiting granite outcrops in the north eastern Western Australian wheat belt.  We travelled nearly 2,000 kilometres and camped at seven different camp sites in seven nights and eight days.

The "Wheatbelt Way" and the "Granite Loop Discovery Trail" are two self-drive tours promoted by WA Tourism.  We hadn't toured around the north-east corner of the wheatbelt before, and our trip combined some of each of these drives. The wheatbelt and its granite outcrops make an interesting tour through farm and bushland, with places to camp, bird and animal life, interesting historical sites and a profusion of wildflowers during spring. 

Granite outcrops are scattered throughout the Western Australian wheatbelt. They were used by early explorers as places to camp, water and feed their horses, take their bearings and map their progress. Before this indigenous aboriginal people would use caves as shelter and source water from the gnamma holes. These rock holes hold water for a long time after rain and are important for human and animal life during drought.  The aboriginals would visit favoured holes regularly to keep them clean.  When European settlers arrived, they harvested the water from the rocks by building walls to channel the water into dams and tanks.

Today these granite outcrops are great places to bush camp (ie basic or no facilities). 
Below you can see our seven campsites - 
from top right - Congelan Dam at Dryanda north west of Narrogin, Billiburning Rock north of Beacon, Elachbutting Rock east of Bonnie Rock, Baladjie Rock north of Westonia, Kokerbin Rock west of Bruce Rock, Karalee Rock east of Yellowdine, and Beringbooding Rock east of Bonnie Rock.

Camp food when you are on the road every day moving on to your next destination, exploring and setting up camp, can be a bit of a challenge. So that we can easily organise our camping food and supplies we have come up with a list that we have saved on our computer and download a few weeks before we set out. We check the gear in our camper trailer and cross off items on the list as they are packed. It really helps with meal planning and making sure we have all the food supplies we need before we go. And also with making sure we have everything else we need - it wouldn't pay to forget your pillow and sleeping bag!

There are lots of camp cooking books available. But I find that when you we on the road, I don't have the inclination or the time to fiddle around with complicated camp cooking. And often it is a fight to keep the flies and other flying insects at bay while cooking and eating. So I want easy quick to cook meals. The up side is some of the spectacular locations we have camped at.

Someone asked me the other day what meals do we have. So here is a small list of some of our easy meal choices - 
Curry and rice (pre-cooked), chilli-con-carne with potato or pasta (pre-cooked), chicken and corn schnitzels with vegetables (cook all the vegies in one pot), BBQ steak with vegetables, diced sausage rings with packaged fried rice mix, tin tuna with packaged pasta mix, spaghetti bolognaise made from dehydrated mince & a packet sauce mix & tin of tomatoes.
For dessert - custard pots, creamed rice and tinned fruit - none of which require refrigerating.

We do have a portable fridge/freezer that goes in the back of our 4WD, so that does make keeping food cold or frozen.  If you have a dehydrator you can dehydrate mince and cooked meals like curry and rehydrate them with water in a sealed container the day you want to use them. You can also dehydrate carrot rings, apple and banana rings etc.

Staples include potatoes, carrots, tomato paste sachets, cup-a-soup, rice, pasta, casserole mixes, dehydrated or tinned vegetables, dried fruit, nuts, dried biscuits. 

For lunches we have fish rolls (a favourite), meat and salad rolls, noodle cups, cup-a-soup, tinned fish, cold sausages etc. You can see the fish rolls in the middle picture here - thawing on the dashboard as we drove along because I hadn't taken them out of the car freezer early enough - dash-board dining!

Breakfast choices include cereal, toast, scrambled eggs, eggs and bacon and packaged pancake mix. 

And of course camping wouldn't be complete without sunset drinks with cheese and savoury biscuits, and later on around the fire, chocolate and a hot drink or port, and marshmallows toasted on sticks over the fire. It is nice to have a few luxuries when you are camping!

Wouldn't you love to have dinner under a sunset like this?
What sort of food do you take camping?

 Thanks for stopping by - I look forward to hearing from you. Please click on "comments" below to comment.  Thanks!

I hope you have enjoyed reading this post. I will be back later with more stories and images from the north-eastern Western Australian wheatbelt.

And yes there were wildflowers - but that will be another post too! You can find my guest post about photographing wildflowers on Jo Castro's travel and lifestyle blog - Zigazag - please click on the link here - Zigazag

To find out more about touring the Western Australian wheatbelt - click here - Wheatbelt Tourism and Wheatbelt Way

I am linking up with Mosaic Monday at Little Red House. To see the work of Mary and other wonderful contributors, please click on the link here - Mosaic Monday

  You might also like - click on the links here to go to -

On The Road in the Kimberley

Camping in the beauty of WA's National Parks