What do you need to consider to take a stealth camping van travelling? It might seem straightforward – a van set up to live in full time – taken on a trip. However, there are a few differences between stealth vanlife and the standard vanlife that will quickly become obvious when travelling. It can be helpful to do a bit of planning and prep when heading out on the road so that you can make the most of your time away!
Stealth living in a van full time means that I have my van set up to be very contained. I don’t have the glorious pull out kitchen or kitchen to cook out back. I don’t have an awning or an outdoor cooking or lounging set up, no rooftop deck. My water supply is limited, based on the idea that I’ll be close to water sources almost all of the time. Same for grey water and waste disposal – all limited.
It’s important to think about how you want to travel. What kind of money are you wanting to spend? Do you want to keep things relatively low-cost or as cheap as possible, or are you happy to splurge a little more? This will make a big difference to how you prepare to travel in your van.
Here are a few things I had to consider when taking my van on the road.
Outdoor Set Up
Cooking
Part of the joy of travelling, in my opinion, is cooking outdoors, whether with a simple table set up or on a fire. There’s nothing like it. Space-saving is always front of my mind when living in a van, and so I love my Trangia and my little backpacking stoves that take up hardly any room.
The Trangia is a classic piece of camping equipment, and it truly stands the test of time. You absolutely cannot go wrong with a Trangia, although you do have to be careful with it. All the components fit together neatly, taking up minimal room, and you can cook for ages on it with a bottle of metho. Can’t go past the joy of getting to use the word spondoolies, either!
There are a bunch of great backpacking stoves out there, that are light, compact and work really well. I love the Furno stove, which is widely available. They run off butane, and with an adaptor, use the widely available canisters used in standard box camping stove which make the running costs even cheaper.
I still love my thermal cooker when travelling, especially for long travel days where it is nice to be able to have dinner all ready for you when you park up! A little bit of prep time in the morning to start the cooking process, then pop everything away in a stable spot for the day and your meal will be ready on arrival – I love that you can have two components of a meal cooking together. Thai Green Curry and rice go down a treat on a cold evening.
A basic table that can be packed away and set up is important too, regardless of your set up. I like the one linked, again for ease of set up, and minimal space.
Fires
How about a fire? Being able to go camping is not complete without being able to have a fire, when it’s not fire ban season of course! However, not every campsite is well set up with drums or sites for a fire, even if they allow fires. I went looking for a portable firepit that would take up minimal room in the van but make sure I would never have to be without a fire. The Aussie-made Supa Peg Frontier Portable Folding Fire Pit is the best option I have found so far, packing away neatly for easy storage in the van, and easy to set up so that you can cook on it too.
Storage for firewood can be a bit of a pain in a van set up for stealth camping, too. I had to do a bit of a shuffle to make space for a good stack of firewood, but planning ahead means you can rearrange things in advance if need be, rather than tripping over firewood in the middle of the night!
Seating
Small outdoor seating set ups can be handy. I like to have a couple of backpacking chairs in the back of the van as they are perfect for my needs – light, portable and take up minimal weight or space. This one from Trekology is what I have, and it works great! Is it the most comfortable camping chair in the world? No, but it certainly does the job.
If you are going travelling for a longer time, it can be worth bringing along some comfier chairs to lounge by the fire in. I ummed and ahhed about buying this oversized moon chair from Anaconda for a long time, and it takes up a lot of space in the van, but when I was away for months, it was glorious to curl up in this. Besides, when travelling, there isn’t a need to be as stealthy, so I could use the passenger seat for storage. This fit into the footwell just fine. Just make sure you have somewhere you can offload it when you’re not travelling!
Awnings
Honestly, I’ve never felt the need for an awning while camping, and I’ve never missed it on my van. For a lot of people, though, it seems to be an important part of their camping setup. If you are heading somewhere particularly hot or just want some guaranteed shade while outside regardless, in order to maintain the stealth look rather than attaching one permanently to the side of your van, a standalone or adjustable awning like this one might do the trick.
Camping Websites
Wikicamps is the classic website for finding everything you might need while on the road – showers, toilets, campsites, water, dumping points. It does have some limited free functionality, but if you really want to get much out of it, you’re going to need to sign up. It has great filters and reviews so you can find exactly what you’re after.
Sites like Free Camping Australia or Camps Australia Wide are great to find campsites, particularly free or low-cost sites. Other more specific ones like Free Camping Tasmania are also great resources, including for supplies such as water.
Facebook groups for freecamping and pub camping are great resources as well, although they can be harder to find exactly what you want at the time. The good thing is that you can get people responding to you in real time if you have a question.
Water Supplies
Depending on how remotely you’re travelling, you may need to consider shifting over your water supplies. I only have storage for 20 litres of water and fill up my drinking water separately in a couple of large drink bottles that I rotate through, so if I’m heading out to a National Park or more remote spots, I need to stock up. I haven’t done much travelling anywhere too remote, and I am notoriously bad at drinking enough water, but I tend to grab a couple of 10L boxes of water from the supermarket, as this is the easiest and quickest way for me to top up my water supplies, which is usually more than sufficient for my needs. I also keep an eye out for places to refill water as a matter of habit, and will top up drink bottles or my 20L jerry can wherever I can. Different towns, cities and states have different resources that show you where you can fill up water for free. Links to some of these are below, but if you do a bit of Googling I’m sure you can find others.
- Hobart: Water Refill Program
- Sydney: Water Refill site
- Canberra: Water Refill Options
- Eurobodalla (NSW South Coast): List of water refill stations
- Melbourne: Website
- Sunshine Coast and Brisbane: Unity Water Refill Locations
- South Australia: BYOB app
Waste Disposal
When living in one area statically, you develop systems for getting rid of waste of all kinds. When travelling, this is a very different world. Here, accessing traditional travel options is what you want. Look out for RV-town signs or signs of a dump point. Staying at a caravan park every so often while travelling just to have access to these facilities can be worth it for the convenience.
Laundry
Honestly, laundry is much the same as it is at home. It’s so easy these days to just search online for “laundromat near me” and see what comes up. This works well in towns and cities, but otherwise, caravan parks are probably your best option. Some free camping sites offer surprisingly good amenities for a small fee, which may include laundry.
Summary
These are some of the big things I found helpful to think about before heading out travelling in a stealth van. Let me know if anything else comes to mind!