Australia Day In Your Camper Trailer

Australia Day– a day for celebrating with friends and family, laughing and enjoying the summertime.

Australia Day is a great time to celebrate of all the cultures that make Australia great, from our first people whose civilisation spans tens of thousands of years, to the waves of migrants that have made Australia their home since.

It is a national day of celebration and reflection, and honouring the freedom and prosperity that comes from living in the sunburnt country.

People celebrate Australia in many ways – from hosting a BBQ with mates, or just playing cricket at the beach. Australia Day is an opportunity to celebrate Australia with friends and family and is an especially popular camping and caravanning holiday.

The other awesome part about Australia Day is that we get a public holiday, so for those who are lucky enough to get the day off, it would be so very un-Australian to not celebrate.

Hitch up the camper trailer, gather your friends and family and load up the camp fridge, we have your ultimate guide to the best Australia Day yet.

Mars Campers love celebrating Australia Day, and everyone does it in different ways. But there are a few things that are for sure, everyone has to eat, drink and come up with some awesome activities to do with their friends and family.

Keep reading and get inspired, Australia Day is just around the corner.

We all know of the classic menu items that will never go out of style: we’re talking barbeques, lamingtons and ham steaks, but it’s time to try something new and even more delicious that’s still easy to make from your camper trailer (while of course still including classic Australian flavours and ingredients).

Avocado and Egg Salad

What you’ll need:

• 6 chopped boiled eggs
• 2 tablespoons chopped chives
• 2 small avocados cut into 1cm pieces
• 1/3 cup of mayonnaise
• 1 tablespoon of lemon juice
• 8 small butter lettuce leaves
• Chives and micro-herbs, to serve
• Salt and pepper, to season
• Thick sourdough seeded bread

How it’s done:

In a large bowl, combine eggs, ¾ of the chives, and avocado. Stir gently. In a separate small bowl, combine the mayonnaise and lemon juice. Season with salt and pepper. Carefully stir the mayonnaise and lemon juice through the avocado mix. Season with salt and pepper. Place 2 lettuce leaves on top of each slice of bread. Spoon 2 heaped tablespoons on each slice. Top with remaining chives and micro-herbs to serve.

Australian Damper

What you’ll need:

• 450 grams of self-raising flour
• ¼ teaspoons of salt
• 180 ml of milk
• 1 teaspoon of caster sugar
• 80 grams of butter

How it’s done:

Mix the flour, salt and sugar together into a bowl. Rub the butter into the flour with your fingertips until it looks like fine breadcrumbs. Add milk slowly and mix to form a soft dough. Knead lightly on a floured board until smooth. Shape into a round loaf, brush with milk and cut across in the top surface of the dough. Grease tin foil and dust with flour. Add bread dough and wrap it. Place in the coals of the BBQ and let it bake for about 30 minutes. Enjoy it with your favourite jams, cream or even some cheeky maple syrup for breakfast or an after-dinner treat.

Kangaroo and Chilli Sausage Rolls

(You will have to prepare these before you head away, but we can assure you that it’s worth it)

What you’ll need:

• 445 g ready-made frozen sour cream shortcrust pastry thawed
• 500 g kangaroo mince
• ⅕ cup fresh breadcrumbs
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1 egg (extra), for glaze

How it’s done:

1. Preheat oven to 200°C (180°C fan-forced) and lightly grease baking trays and line with baking paper.
2. Place pastry sheet on a lightly floured work surface and halve lengthways, to create two equal sized rectangles. Roll each rectangle widthways to approximately 18 cm x 25 cm.
3. Evenly divide the kangaroo mixture in half, shape like a sausage, placing down the centre of each pastry rectangle; making sure that the pastry is able to encase the mixture. Firmly bring one long side of the pastry up against the sausage meat and lightly brush what will be the seam with the egg glaze. Repeat with the other side by firmly bringing the remaining pastry up and over the glazed pastry, creating a seal. This will be pretty tight and there should ideally be about a 1 cm overlap.
4. Place sausage rolls on a prepared baking tray (seam side down) and chill for at least 30 minutes. Cut each large sausage into eight small sausage rolls, snip the top three times with a pair of scissors and brush the outside pastry with the egg glaze. Evenly spread out the sausage rolls onto prepared baking trays.
5. Place in the preheated oven, cook for 25-30 minutes or until pastry is crisp and cooked through. Allow sausage rolls to cool slightly before serving.

Sure, a cool beer or a can of UDL is pretty Australian, but this year we are kicking things up a notch with some creative Australia Day cocktails. Whoever said cocktails are for girls has clearly never tasted one!

Sunset and Sails

This cocktail pays tribute to rum, which was a form of currency in the 1800s. It also features mangoes that grow proudly in Far North Queensland, and for an extra Aussie day touch, you can get creative and fan them on top to replicate a mini Sydney Opera House.

What you’ll need:

• 60 ml of gold rum
• 20 ml ginger syrup
• 10 ml fresh lime juice
• 90 ml soda water
• 1 mango

How it’s done:

To make the ginger syrup, heat equal quantities of water and white sugar (1/4 cup will suffice) with a slice of ginger in a pan until the sugar is dissolved. Press the ginger down to extract some of the juice. Strain and store in the fridge until ready to use.

Slice the mango lengthways. Muddle one slice of the flesh in a cocktail shaker. Add rum, ginger syrup, lime juice. Fill the shaker with ice and shake well. Double strain into a chilled wine glass ensuring there is no mango pulp. Top with soda water and ice cubes. Garnish with fanned mango slices and a sprig of mint.

Beach frisbee or football

You really can’t get more Australian than a frisbee or football on an Australian Beach. Just make sure you slip, slop, slap and drink lots of water.

Australia Day Quiz

This can be fun for all ages. Buy some trashy $2 prizes and discuss your answers over some watermelon or pavlova.

Bite the Arnott’s Biscuit into Aussie Shape

This is a fun one for the little kids to nibble their way through an Arnott’s milk arrowroot bickie until they think it resembles the Australian flag. The closest one wins!

Toss the Thong

You will need chalk or some sort of marker. You can either go the dartboard approach OR go for distance. Warning- Thongs can cause injury!

Backyard Cricket

A classic that needs no explanation. Make sure you determine the rules first.

No matter what it is that you end up doing on Australia Day, make sure you do it surrounded with friends and family, celebrating what it means to be an Aussie!

Stay tuned next week as we fill you in on all the best locations to be around Australia for the Australia Day long weekend.

A camper trailer really is the best way to see the country, and it’s even more convenient when you have accommodation ready to go and head away for a long weekend celebration like Australia Day! Take a look at our range of campers to see which design best suits you and your family. If you have any questions or need further information, the team at Mars Campers is always willing to assist.