During my travels I met a lovely lady who a lot of you will also know — Janet Kelly, a solo traveller in her Mercedes Sprinter.

I was sitting outside my Transit at the Rocky Creek “freebie” on the road to Mareeba (Q) with an out-of-date 9kg gas bottle on my knees, drawing on it with a texta, planning on where I was going to attack it with an angle grinder to make a cooker (like the hundreds already in use).

Janet approached me and asked what I was doing. I told her, to which she muttered something about “men” and told me to “wait here and don’t go away!”.

She returned a minute later with a colander still smouldering. She told me that she had just made a fruit cake and a loaf of bread (which she also brought over) in her camp oven which sits in the colander on a couple of tent pegs pushed through holes in the colander. Whoa!!! I thought – how brilliant!

I took her idea on-board and added another dimension by using the system to spit roast a piece of meat, poultry etc by pushing 4 skewers through the chook etc in a square shape. The meat sits on top of the colander, with the skewers resting on the edge of it.

Cover with alfoil to keep the heat in and turn the meat every 10 minutes or so (takes about an hour for a 1kg roast or about 3-4 cans). You can add spuds, pumpkin, etc wrapped in Alfoil to the coals about 15-20 minutes before the roast is done (keep the spuds, etc, smallish).

And guess what? It bloody works!!! You can be set up for around $20, it’s compact and light-weight. Huge bonus — there is almost no washing up! Simply wipe skewers with a paper towel and the colander, when cold, just slides into a plastic bag ready for next time – voila!

I have showed off Janet’s system wherever I’ve gone and reckon I’ve been responsible for a huge surge in colander sales — may even save the world economy eh Janet?

Go out to Big W, K Mart, hardware stores, Target etc etc and buy yourself a stainless steel colander (like the one you wash salads in). It needs to be around 30cm accross the top. also buy some stainless skewers (4 is good for spit roasting — make sure that they are long enough — around 40cm).

You will also need a metal tray for sitting the colander on (stops burning the grass), some firelighters and some heat beads (the type that you use in a Weber). You’ll also need some tent pegs for resting your camp oven on.

You simply place 3-4 firelighters in the base of the colander, add about 6-8 heat beads (depending on what you’re cooking etc), set it alight and wait until the heat beads turn grey – then you’re ready to cook!

It’s that easy!

The cooker is called the “Kelly Kampa Kooka” and when you pass on the KKK to others (which you certainly will do), make sure that you also pass on the proper name.

By the way, Janet’s fruit cake done in the KKK is bloody bewdifull!

Please email your photographs to Allan so that we can add to ongoing travel galleries.

In the meantime travel with Eddie.

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When you enter the Forum you will see FAQ on the top right. Click on it and all your questions should be answered.

Over the years several attempts came to nothing and then just two months ago the lovely Verna started an email ‘tree’ which sort-of worked, and from the responses it was clear that those on the mailing list wanted to ‘talk’ to one another much more than had happened in the past.

One of the recipients decided to do something about it and RV Seachange was the result. It was an instant success with solo travellers, but much less so with the hierarchy of the CMCA, who if we played by their rules basically would have insisted on running the show.

That’s not how we want to operate and so decided RV Seachange should not be part of the CMCA.

Instead it should welcome ALL soloists — including those who travel in motorhomes, campervans, fifth-wheelers, caravans, slide-ons, pop-top trailers, etc … we want to be inclusive. After all, solo travellers are basically independent souls who do not want to be labelled according to their mode of travel.

So spread the word … and welcome to all.

In the meantime, please go and register yourself on our forum to help get things started.