Kalbarri (and camping with an 8 month old baby)

Back when I was pregnant with Devon, my parents invited us to come on holiday to Kalbarri for 10 days with them in April 2014. I thought, well our baby will be sleeping through the night by then, and crawling too which will be fun, so yeah, why not. Devon is not, in fact, doing either of those things yet. And it transpires that he hates the car seat, and Kalbarri is a 6 hour drive north of Perth.

The 6 hour car journey actually took us 10 hours due to the amount of stops we had to take. Devon hated it. I never leave him to cry, ever, so it was heartbreaking for me to leave him sobbing in his carseat, because we had to get there before it got dark to put the tent up.  

We were so exhausted from it all that we decided we'd split the journey back into three - two hours a day is much more manageable! Luckily Nick had booked the whole week off so we had the time, and it was a good opportunity to check out some of the other places on the coast we had never been to before, like Geraldton and Jurien Bay,

Overall we did have a really good holiday! This was the first significant amount of time off Nick had taken since his parents came to visit last October.

Setting up camp. A much happier baby out of his carseat!

It took us all about three days to recover from the packing, journeying, unpacking and setting up! Then we finally starting relaxing into it. By the third day Devon was napping well in the tent and having my parents there helped a lot.

Kalbarri is a small town on the coast, where the Murchison river meets the sea. The campsite was opposite the river. A few days Devon woke at 5am, so I took him down to the river before he woke the whole campsite. One of the positives of being woken before dawn - you get to watch beautiful sunrises you probably would never see otherwise.

We took our 4m bell tent, as well as a gazebo for a shaded cooking area. It worked quite well, although having a small baby to look after does effectively mean only one person can be setting up camp or getting on with camp tasks at once. I make full use of baby carriers, but at 9kg you can't hold Devon and do too much else for long.

Our camp set up

Devon napping in the tent

Inside the tent we just had a double and a single 4WD mattress. These are big self-inflating mattresses that are really comfy but really heavy. I can't recall ever seeing anything like these in the UK. Devon sleeps in bed with me anyway so it was no different for him really in the tent. Nick slept on the single so as not to disturb Devon, because he tends to move around more in his sleep.

At the start of the week it got really hot so we took things easy, dipping in and out of the pool and going on some short walks. Kalbarri is surrounded by national park, and is a very beautiful, scenic place.

The Indian Ocean 

One cooler day we drove inland to see some of the river gorges. There is a rock formation called Nature's Window, which frames the river from the right angle. To get there required driving on about 25km of unsealed road. This was very bumpy (although the faster you went, the smoother it became) but it worked its magic on Devon, within seconds he was asleep.

And at one point I was struck by the vastness of the sky, the landscape was mostly flat and from horizon to horizon was deep blue without a single cloud.

The unsealed road to Nature's Window

Devon mostly unimpressed by the scenery

Devon, I think, mostly loved it. And really, when your baby is happy, you are happy. Because it was school holidays there were kids everywhere and he really is fascinated by other children. He loved the swimming pool, paddling in the sea, and having his Dad and grandparents around full time. And after the novelty of the tent had worn off, he slept no different to at home.

The challenges were:
1)  Keeping him out of the sun. Even with a hat, suncream, long clothes and trying to stay in the shade his delicate skin still looked pinkish some days.
2) Getting him to sleep with so many new sounds around him. This got better after a couple of days and we brought along a battery powered white noise machine to try and drown some of the campsite noises out.
3)  Keeping the tent cool. Some days Devon would be asleep in the tent for his morning nap and the sun would hit the tent, and the temperature inside would soar. I don't think babies mind the heat that much but it got to 38 degrees once and the poor little man ended up sleeping in a pool of his own sweat.

What helped:
1) Having my parents there. This meant more hands available to look after baby and tasks like laundry could be shared (thanks Mum).
2) Going in school holidays. This meant most people got up and went to bed early which fitted in well with Devon sleeping and other parents would have hopefully not minded too much when he cried. He was also completely absorbed watching all the children tearing about.
3) Going for a longer time period. We have realised going camping just for a weekend would not be worth it - there wouldn't be enough time for us all to chill out between setting up and taking down and it would just be exhausting.

We are heading into winter now, so that will probably be the last camping we do for a while. And by the time we get the tent out again, Devon may well be walking.