We got most of our original camping gear from Kmart. We bought minimal and have added to it over the years. Our first trip we had a tent, air mattress (yep, cold to sleep on especially when our trip was in June in Melbourne!), sleeping bags, esky and gas cooker.

Once you start, you'll see things that other campers have and see how they can work for you. We now have a caravan but it's full of all our camping stuff. We still use the gas cookers to cook outside.

If you're going to caravan parks, they are mostly well equipped with great camp kitchens. Free camping, you'll need everything. We're taking our tent and free camping at Christmas in places with no power, no showers and long drop toilets. We've got an auxiliary battery for the car to run our Waco cooler and we're going to buy solar shower bags.

Ray's is great for looking at tents set up - you can walk into them which I find handy as you can decide what height you need, and we bounce between them and BCF to see who is cheaper for things. But Kmart is pretty good for camping gear too.