Author Archives: Are We There Yet?

Well our forced stoppage in Tennant Creek has given me some time to finally sit down and do “The Blokey Stuff” post

So here it is in the Blokey-est format possible, categorised bullet points!

Top 10 Essential Bits of Kit:

I’ll prelude this list by stating that during the planning phase of a trip like this, we tend to talk to every 4×4 store, go to the Expos, read every possible piece of literature you can get your hands on regarding preparing your “Rig” for the bush. Most of the articles and magazines these days are primarily advertising material, so it is hard not to convince yourself (or your CFO) that you need every product in the latest ARB mag. Jess and I kept telling ourselves during this process “People used to do these trips in Kingswoods, without aux batteries, fridges, roof racks, inverters, solar, etc etc etc”. So with this in mind, the fact that Jess is an accountant and I’m a tightarse, we were never going to be putting the local Ironman dealer’s kid through Uni with our purchases. So, what is “Big Boy Bling” and what will save your life?

1. Dual battery system, with ability to switch to the aux battery for cranking.

This proved it’s worth before we even got out of Brisbane. Some of you will remember that Jess left the headlights on on day 1, rendering the crank battery useless. Annoying when you are in a park in Newmarket, Brisbane, only 10 mins from an RACQ depot, but life threatening out here. We have been over 600klms from the last bar of reception, and not seen another sole for 8-10 hours a number of times already on this trip, if we suddenly had a flat battery, it could be serious.

2. Solar Panels.

Everything has a weak point, and while the Aux battery is great, as we have found this week, if your alternator fails, you could easily find yourself with 2 x flat batteries. I have been amazed, gobsmacked, at how great solar panels are. We have a folding set of 120W el cheapo Chinese panels and 1 hour of good sun brings a battery from 11.5V to 13V….. For FREE. And just a tip, you would be seriously struggling not to get 1 hr of sun virtually anywhere in this country. The panels MORE then keep up with our power usage in the camper (I only bring them out on day three and only for a few hours) so forget about a Genie, they will charge your car battery, so forget jumper leads or portable jumper boxes, the only thing is they are heavy, and big, but when your are working out your packing, these are a must have. If I was to do it again, I would install them on the roof of the camper, and try and get maybe a smaller 40W panel on the roof of the car (I’ve seen them installed as a wind deflector in front of the roof racks, Uncle Garth…) sure the argument is that you normally park the camper in the shade, but even in good shade, you would struggle not to have at least an hour of sun at some time of the day.

3. Snatch Strap/MaxTrax

Recovery gear is expensive, especially if you really buy into all the “must haves”. Every bloke I have spoken to so far (and I don’t mind a chat so over 6000k’s and 7 weeks, I’ve chatted to a few) who own a winch has either never used it, or only used it drag firewood out of the bush. BUT, just about every bloke I’ve spoken to has used their snatch strap or MaxTrax more then a dozen times. Do not leave home with out them. (Yes I do not have MaxTrax yet, but as soon as we get into Darwin we will be getting a pair, classic example of “nah we won’t need those” but turns out we could have used them a few times)

4. Decent LED Headlamp.

No, the $4.99 Crazy Clarkes one is not what I’m angling at here. Two very important reasons you need a good headlamp, It is dark out here, like really dark, especially with no moon and secondly, a decent headlamp will allow you to have a better nights sleep. What? Hang on…. How does a headlamp help you sleep? Well if your finer half is able to light up 250mtrs ahead and 80mtrs across, they are more inclined to go to the toilet on their own 7 times a night with requiring you to stand guard.

A tip on this one, there are literally hundred of headlamps on the market, and it is hard to know if 10/20/40/230 lumens is sufficient or not. Well we bought headlamps which at their maximum setting do 70 lumens, this is plenty. Yet to have to replace the original standard Duracells they came with so it’s too early to tell if the rechargeable options are worth it. I hate spending money on disposable batteries, so I like the idea of rechargeable headlamps (they use either USB or some 12v plug) but they were much much more expensive.

5. Suspension Upgrade

Ok, whilst possibly not essential, I truly believe we would have sustained damage in places we have been had we not lifted the car, and I would not imagine your stock set of shockies would handle the roads as well as our Billies have. If you are towing, especially the weight we are (1150kg) your stock set of springs are going to sag considerably, and therefore increase your chance of damage. Forget ride comfort and all that rubbish, go higher rated springs then your think you will need, because you will be heavier then your estimates, we had 3 different rated springs in the car (OEM, heavy duty and finally extra heavy duty) and we never felt any difference in ride comfort…. This might be he quality of the Bilstien shockies??? I don’t know, but go heavier.

6. Air Compressor/Tyre gauge

A perfect case of what I thought might be a bit of big boy bling, but I snagged a special and got one cheap (Tigerz 11, $129) we have used it at least once a week. If you are not dropping tyre pressures on these roads you are asking for punctures and suspension trouble, we have found 30psi on ‘normal’ roads (no faster then 80kph) 25psi on bad roads (no faster then 40kph) and 18psi in the sand to be serving us well, oh, and 42psi when we do find some of that horrid black stuff.

Get a good tyre gauge and use it exclusively, DO NOT USE SERVICE STATION GUAGES. We learned this heading out to Carisbrooke station. I checked the tyres at the Winton BP and could not believe that we had lost almost 10psi in every tyre (should have been alarm bells but hey, rookie error) so I topped them all up, only to drive out to Carisbrooke on what turned out to be tyres at 45psi. The gauge at BP Winton was 10psi out, I had planned to go to Carisbrooke on 35psi (still a bit high with experience now) but at 35psi on their gauge turned to to be 45!!

7. Extra Spare Tyres

Thank you Aaron and Garth for the fabrication and welding of the dual spare carrier on the back of Karen Camper. Spare tyres are heavy, the tools to take a tyre off a rim and replace with a new one are cumbersome, so it was a big decision to take 2 more spare tyres. I can tell you the amount of people I speak to who have had multiple punctures are amazing, fingers crossed we have only had a split valve, and a screw in another, but I can tell you, once that spare tyre is on, if you didn’t have another one, it is very stressful.

8. Tools

My MiniMax 3/8 socket set gets used every day
My tool box gets used every day with:
Flat and Phillips screwdrivers (including a stumpy Phillips)
Large and medium sized Shifters
Needle nose and normal pliers
Wire stripper/crimper (good one, not those $5 ones)
Stanley
Tape measure
Cold chisel
Hammer
Spirit level
Q-Bond adhesive
Duct tape
Good multi-grips
Silicone spray

9. Bottom filler for camper water tanks

Don’t muck around with top filler pipes and breathers and rerouting them and levelling them yadda yadda yadda. Just install a filler pipe that goes into the bottom of the tank, and ensure your breather runs nice and high before it come back out. After doing this, this is the first time we have ever managed to fill both tanks in the camper, and trust me, water is precious out here. As a guide, we are finding we are getting about 10days from our combined 140ltrs, no showers. We still carry 2 x 20ltr jerrys as well but that is for emergencies. We never use anything but our own water for these results. (Might go up now the weather is warmer)

10. MULTIPLE hose tap fittings.

Because we avoid the caravan parks as if they are leper colonies, the first one we pulled into we realised we couldn’t use the water because we didn’t have the tap fitting. No problems, I ducked to the shop/newsagent/bottle-o/pharmacy/bakery/butchery/camping store/repco/electrical store/toy store/hardware (love these Jack-of-all-trade shops out here!) and bought the tap fitting for $2.99, got back to camp, screwed it on and away we went. At the next caravan park, it broke…. Moral of the story, carry a couple of them, or, not saying I did this, hang around camp until after 10:00am checkout, then walk around to all the sites that had rental Maui/Britz vans in them the night before and just grab all the ones they left behind on the taps…… I’ve been told they can be sold for $30ea to people in rental Maui/Britz Vans who roll in at 14:00pm checkin….. I’m told.

11. The Wheelie Bin Bag

I know I said top 10, and this is supposed to be “essential” bits of kit but the Wheelie Bin Bag has to get an honourable mention. Again, $100 was a lot to spentd on a rubbish bag, but again, it is something we use every day, and constantly find ourselves saying, “I love that rubbish bin”. How many times do you find yourself saying that? Ahhhh…. The simple things in life…..

Hey Everyone – we are back in internet reception for the day in Alice Springs while we do a few jobs before heading north in search of warmer weather!  We are finding it hard to get any internet reception in our camping spots so we are a bit behind with our blog posts but just so you know we have had an awesome last couple of weeks exploring the East and West MacDonell Ranges – beautiful spots and we will get some posts through as soon as we can!  In the meantime we are coming up on nearly 6 weeks on the road – it has gone soooooo fast!  We put this below list together to sum up our first month on the road – just a nice summary for us to look back on when our trip is all over – thought you guys might find it interesting too!!

1. Snap lock bags are awesome – soooo many uses!
2. Sooooo much dirt & dust – Jess really doesn’t like the dust!
3. Lexi is petrified of long drop toilets
4. Bush weeing for girls is much harder than for boys!
5. Laundromats & washing clothes for a family on the road is expensive (hoard your $1 coins!)
6. It costs 50cents for adults to use public toilets in Alice Springs
7. If planning on gem fossicking with kids – install trailer at back of your camper to tow all of the ‘amazing treasures’ home! (Grammy & Grunda have a lot to answer for!)
8. Our kids talk a lot, all of the time, often all at once & loudly
9. Hippies in combi vans seem to be clothing optional after midnight – even in crowded caravan parks in Alice Springs
10. A game of car cricket out here takes two days to get in to double digits!
11. We’ve learnt how to do the camp shower dance – learning how to put your trackies on without letting them touch the wet floor!
12. Socks & thongs are perfectly able to be worn together when camping in winter!
13. 0 degrees in a camper is cold – very cold!
14. Tyre pressure must be dropped in soft sand when towing the camper or we will get bogged – twice!
15. Freddo Frogs are a very effective form of bribery when you want your kids to do just one more walk when they have walked over 20km’s in the last 3 days!
16. We absolutey could not live without our saucepan & frying pan – we use them just about every meal!
17. We expected to be able to cook & eat outside all of the time – instead it has been so cold that we have only eaten outside about 5 times to date!
18. It is actually quite tiring sightseeing all the time!
19. Clothes really can be worn for at least 3 days before they are truly dirty!
20. To date our trip fatalities are, 1 shovel & 1 spotlight lost to the Plenty Highway, 1 camper foot and mudflap lost to the Mereenie Loop, one left hand mudflap that has been runover & pulled off the back twice, 1 number plate which fell off on the dirt road to Arltunga, one dent in the fuel tank from reversing into a rock at Ruby’s gap, and one fridge pipe that keeps wriggling loose!
21. Our favourite place so far has been our camp at 2mile in the West MacDonnella ranges.
22. It is very difficult to argue quietly in a caravan park!
23. We love the fact that the sun is not rising until after 7am – our kids are sleeping in until then!
24. Since we have been in the Northern Territory we have hardly seen any wildlife beside the roads – dead or alive.
25. So far we have travelled 5,847km’s since we left with an average fuel economy of 14.1 litres per 100 km’s.
26. Having a compressor on board is essential as well as an auxiully battery for a trip like this
27. Matt is in love with his stove top Italian coffee maker – best on road coffee!
28. We are also loving our wheelie bag (garbage bag on back of car) and decent head torches – money well spent
29. The Northern Territory National Parks are great – clean long drop toilets, individual fireplaces with cooking plates & tables, ranger talks are awesome!
30. We are not ready to come home yet!!!