The camp kitchen box: what actually earns a spot after two years on the road

Our camp kitchen tub has been repacked so many times I could probably do it blindfolded, and honestly for about a year I nearly could. Two kids, a dog called Waffle, and a rig that's been up and down the east coast more times than I can count on one hand will do that to you. What's in that tub now is nothing like what left home in our first month, and the gap between the two lists is basically this whole article.

I get asked about this more than almost anything else at caravan parks, usually by someone standing at the next site watching my seven-year-old set the table while I actually get to talk to another adult for five minutes. So here's the honest rundown: what earned its permanent spot in our camp kitchen setup, what got binned at a dump point somewhere near Coffs Harbour, and why the extra $40 gadget almost never beats the $12 one.

Start with the box, not the gear

Before you buy a single item, sort the container. We went through three: a soft canvas bag that got a hole in the bottom from a cheese grater within two months, a hard plastic tub that cracked its lid in the cold at Bright Holiday Park, and now a stackable modular crate system that lives in the tunnel boot. The modular one wins because it splits into "cooking," "eating," and "cleaning" sub-boxes, which matters when you've got a nine-year-old capable of setting the table if you hand her the right box and not the whole lot.

If you're building from scratch, buy the crate first, work out what actually fits, and let that discipline your gear list. A camp kitchen that doesn't have a hard size limit will grow forever. Ours has a limit because the tunnel boot has a limit, full stop.

The stove and the argument we had about it

We run a two-burner butane stove, not gas bottle. My husband wanted the bottle setup for the "unlimited fuel" argument, and to be fair he wasn't wrong about running cost. But butane canisters are cheap, sold everywhere from Woolies to servos in most regional towns, and there's zero risk of a teenager (future problem, I know) leaving a gas bottle valve cracked. For a family that cooks maybe one hot meal a day at camp and does a lot of one-pot dinners, the convenience wins over the marginal saving.

Where I'd push back on the marketing: you don't need three burners. We had a three-burner for the first six months and the third ring got used maybe four times, mostly for boiling the kettle when the other two were busy. It took up a third more bench space for a feature we barely touched. Sold it, downsized, never missed it.

Water, and why the collapsible everything phase ended

I went through a collapsible bucket, collapsible sink, collapsible kettle phase that lasted about eight months before I quietly retired all three. They fold flat, sure, but they also split at the seams eventually, and a wet collapsible bucket doesn't actually pack any smaller than a solid one once you've used it a dozen times and it's stopped folding flat anyway.

What stayed: one solid 10-litre water container with a tap for hand-washing at the table (huge for keeping kids from tracking mud through the annexe), and a proper stainless kettle. If you haven't sorted your bigger water picture yet — tank size, where you top up, how much you actually get through with kids and a dog — that's worth reading properly on its own; we've covered the maths of it in water storage for family touring.

Cutting boards, knives, and the one rule that keeps the peace

Colour-coded boards. I resisted this for ages because it felt like overkill for a family, not a commercial kitchen, but after one dodgy stomach bug that was probably (probably) from a board that saw both raw chicken and cucumber, I caved. Three boards, three colours, done. It's a five-dollar habit that matters more remote, where you're further from a chemist and further from feeling sorry for yourself over a shared van toilet.

Knives: one good chef's knife, one paring knife, both kept in a proper roll, not loose in a drawer near the cutlery. A loose sharp knife bouncing around a drawer on corrugations is how you end up needing the first aid kit you hopefully also packed properly.

The jaffle iron debate settles itself

Every family van eventually has the jaffle iron conversation. Ours earned its keep purely on kid-labour value — my son can make his own jaffle now, badly, but independently, which on a rainy afternoon at Bright Holiday Park waiting out weather is worth its actual weight in gold. It's a cast piece, it's heavy, and I don't care. Some gear earns space by saving your sanity, not your kilos.

Camp ovens are the opposite case for us. I love what they produce, but a 4.5kg cast iron camp oven that gets used twice a school-holiday trip isn't pulling its weight in a rig where every kilo matters for tow-ball figures. If you're already tight on payload — and most family vans are once you've loaded kids' gear, bikes, and the dog's stuff — a camp oven is one of the first things I'd question before a jaffle iron.

Comms and the thing nobody puts in the "kitchen" category

This isn't strictly cooking gear, but it lives in the same crate: a small UHF handheld that stays charged in the kitchen box so whoever's cooking can call the kids in from the camp jumping pillow or the playground without walking the whole park. It sounds minor until you've done it the hard way, shouting across a caravan park at 6pm while trying not to burn dinner. If you're still working out which comms actually make sense for your setup, we go through the options properly in satellite messengers vs UHF vs sat phone, though for site-to-site kid-wrangling a basic UHF handheld is honestly all you need.

What we binned, and why

The electric can opener. Dead weight, needed 12V power we didn't want to spend on it, and a $4 manual one does the job in ten seconds. The dedicated egg holder that fit exactly six eggs and nothing else. The salad spinner, which was lovely in the kitchen at home and completely pointless in 40-degree heat at Discovery Parks Coober Pedy where lettuce doesn't survive the drive anyway.

I'll admit I bought most of this stuff in the first three months, back when I was still packing like we were setting up a permanent kitchen instead of a mobile one. My honest opinion, and I know some families will disagree: the "does it earn its place twice a week" test beats any camp kitchen checklist you'll find online, including probably parts of this one. Every family's twice-a-week list looks different depending on ages, appetite for cooking, and how much slow travel versus quick overnight stops you're doing.

The amenities test, applied to your own kitchen

I judge caravan park amenities blocks by whether they're clean at 7am, whether the camp kitchen bench has actually been wiped down, and whether the jumping pillow is in decent nick. Turns out the same instinct is useful pointed at your own van. Walk into your kitchen box cold, not mid-trip when you know where everything is, and ask honestly whether a stranger could find the tin opener in under ten seconds. If not, it's not packed for a family, it's packed for someone with more patience than a hungry eight-year-old allows.

We're heading back through the East Coast Run again this year with more or less this exact setup, minus whatever falls apart between now and then. That's the real test of camp kitchen gear anyway — not what sounds good in a shop, but what's still in the tub after eighteen months of actual dinners.