If you’ve been following our lap around Australia, you know we aren’t just casual road-trippers. We are officially the ultimate off-grid caravan guinea pigs! When we customized this rig, we loaded it with highly ambitious, innovative features—which means our journey is half epic adventure, half high-stakes mobile lab experiment.
Between our advanced water recycling reverse-osmosis filtration system (engineered by Darren, whose website over at Wildplanet Group is so new he’s still finishing it up!) and our state-of-the-art eco-friendly incinerating toilet, we are constantly testing the absolute edge of modern RV technology. And as any pioneer will tell you, being the guinea pig means that sometimes, the experiment fights back.
Our revolutionary Cinderella Diesel Travel Toilet decided to stage a mini-protest. Instead of executing its normal, flawless incineration cycle, it flat-out refused to start and casually squirted diesel all over our beautiful ensuite floor. Talk about an alarming tech failure. After consulting our digital manuals only to be given the classic, unhelpful advice to “contact a technician,” we hauled the van straight over to hand it over to Drasko. Thankfully, he is genuinely one of the few true experts on Cinderella diesel toilets in all of Australia!
With our mobile home parked in an industrial yard for an unexpected system check, we found ourselves temporarily homeless in Melbourne. The team offered to let us camp on-site, but looking around at the industrial mayhem, clanging security gates, and solid concrete, we decided to follow the call of the roadside brown signs and turn this plumbing plot twist into an absolute luxury detour.
From Caravan Life to the Sandstone Seminary
Jo had already been working her manifestation magic, trying to convince Peter that we deserved a night at the beautiful Lancemore Mansion Hotel Werribee Park. Peter initially balked when he saw that the online booking price was a steep $350. But Peter happens to be secretely always trying to keep Jo happy so he kept scanning booking apps, and as we rode the train back from the city, the digital algorithms smiled down upon us: the price miraculously plummeted back down to a beautifully reasonable $148, free mansion tour and breakfast included!
The grand estate was originally constructed in the 1870s by incredibly wealthy pastoralists. Decades later, the property was converted into a massive Catholic seminary, which saw the addition of a sprawling, spectacular sandstone wing built to house a thousand students. We checked right into one of those beautifully refurbished old seminary rooms. Funnily enough, because Jo used to study theology so it was almost like this was meant to be!
To celebrate our temporary upgrade, we treated ourselves to a split selection of entries at the estate’s restaurant, Saint Joseph’s. We hit a spectacular three-mushroom trifecta, splitting a menu of crunchy tempura-battered mushrooms topped with aioli, and rich cannelloni tubes stuffed with a cheese and mushroom mix, buried under fresh mushrooms and a decadent mushroom sauce. We topped it off by sharing a deep-fried coconut rice patty with local syrupy stewed pears and an elegant chocolate opera cake.
Rhinos, Ridiculous Crossings, and True Terror
The next morning, it was time to lace up our walking shoes and explore the estate’s sprawling heritage grounds at the historic Werribee Park Mansion. Because the mansion shares a boundary with the zoo, we were able to stand right on top of a scenic hill and watch magnificent rhinos grazing in the distance!
Seeing those rhinos immediately brought back memories of our walking safari in Africa. Now, if you want to talk about being truly “shit scared,”, having a broken Cindereally toilet does not quite compares to the sheer panic Jo felt on that African tour, trying to navigate an open-air walking rhino trek while suffering from a sudden, violent bout of diarrhea. That is a very literal, visceral kind of fear!
You’d think a broken diesel toilet in a concrete industrial estate would rank a close second on the terror scale. But ironically, it wasn’t the zoo rhinos or our broken incinerating toilet that truly paralyzed Jo on this walk: It was a simple water crossing.
Our trek took us on a brilliant loop along the riverbank, which featured a spectacular, sturdy bridge in one direction. But as we tracked around to complete the loop, we quickly discovered a major structural hitch: there was absolutely NOT a bridge on the other side. Instead, we were faced with an ancient ford entirely lined with old bluestone cobblestones—the original main road that used to connect Geelong and Melbourne.
Peter, casually jumped across the slippery rocks of a fish weir to keep his boots dry. Jo, however, had our precious new drone safely tucked inside her backpack. The thought of slipping on those mossy, wet bluestone cobblestones and sending our brand-new aerial camera to a watery grave was entirely overwhelming. While Peter laughed from the dry rocks, Jo swallowed her pride, rolled up her pants, and meticulously waded her way through the freezing, rushing water.
Once we both made it across dry and intact, the trail wound past historic bluestone cottages, old stables, and massive traditional vegetable gardens bursting with heirloom pumpkins and a red-striped banana plant. We even explored a quirky historic grotto built on a lake island, intricately tiled with abalone shells, children’s teeth, and animal bones that had been built in the middle of a man-made lake that was refilled regularly in the old days from the river by hand for the ladies of the mansion.
Returning to our mansion on wheels
In the end, our guinea-pig tech trials wrapped up with a perfect text message. Drasko called to let us know he had successfully installed an upgraded part on the Cinderella toilet, ran it through a battery of tests, and whoosh—our advanced dunny is fully operational once again!
We’ve officially checked out of mansion life, filled up our water tanks, and set up camp for four nights at a stunning waterfront Hipcamp called “Shacks” at Indented Head on the Bellarine Peninsula. Our power is purring, our water filtration system is running clear, and we’re currently sitting back, watching the sunset…
Until the next brown sign calls our names, happy travels!
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