February 16 2009

Hi guys, well we're a couple of months closer to our departure date, but a little further away it seems at times.

I know a lot of you will be sick of hearing about this Global Financial crisis that's affecting us all in one way or another at the moment, and quite frankly so am I, mainly because I don't like being a pessimist, but, as far as it's affect on us goes, I'm currently out of work and our income has been severely reduced. Looking on the bright side, Shell is still working, 2 jobs, seven days a week, God bless her, and the price of Diesel is down quite a bit from what it was a few months ago, I suppose every cloud has a silver lining, I also get more time to get everything done, but we've had to alter our plans slightly.

Instead of leaving at the beginning of March we've decided to wait until after the Open Garden of Shell's, that I was telling you about last month, is finished, then head off, hopefully. So things have been delayed slightly, which is probably just as well given that we were going to head north first up.

Because of the cyclones up in North Queensland it looks like the roads might be a tad damp for a little while. I spoke to my parents in Townsville a couple of nights ago, and Mum said that they had had 430mm in the first 3 or 4 days of February, that's a hell of a lot of rain, and I'm sure everyone has seen how far up the rain goes and how far west it has affected.

I sincerely hope any of you travelling around aren't too badly affected by the wet or the floods.

The cargo drawers are finished and looking pretty good if I do say so myself. The barrier is almost finished, just have to fit it. The side bins have been rebuilt for the camper, they just need to be riveted back together, powder coated and reattached to the trailer.

We've even had a garage sale and about 1/3 of the house is packed up.

Erin's schooling has begun with a few hitches – it's taking a lot longer than expected to do a day's work, to the point that we are still playing catch up on Saturday and Sunday. Shell has worked out a day by day planner with what has to be done by what time, so hopefully Erin has learned her lesson and we won't have to work weekends anymore to catch up. The laptop we bought last September to do her schooling on, died and took three weeks to be replaced, I didn't realise just how much school work requires the computer. Shell did correspondence when she was a teenager while her and her family travelled, so she knows how the system works, which is a Godsend, because quite frankly I'd be lost.

January 2009

Well another month on and a bit more preparation done, so far things are moving slowly much to Shell's disgust as Erin and I tend to lose our enthusiasm for packing pretty quickly after starting. However, we have so far packed up some of the household things, packed away clothes we don't think we'll need on the trip, have arranged to have a garage sale shortly to get rid of any items we have come across that we haven't used in the last few years or so. We are limiting ourselves to one large plastic container each, so whatever we can't fit in that, doesn't go. Shell has made a comment from time to time that I'm a bit behind the eight ball here as my clothes are bigger than hers or Erin's so therefore I can fit less in, might have to see about a solution to that.

As for preparations of the mechanical nature to the landcruiser and the camper these are progressing albeit at a frustrating slow pace as the drawers I have been making for the back of the landcruiser have only just been finished, this taking longer than I expected. Fridge slide is in the process of being finished and the dual battery system is installed and wiring to the rear cargo compartment also completed along with an Anderson plug for the camper.

The damaged locker sections on the side of the camper were taken off in December and a workmate repaired or made up new pieces as required from sheet metal, this was done at a ridiculously low price which I thank him for. Now these new sections require powder coating to match the rest of the camper and then they will have to be put back on as soon as their done.

I've bought a new AT35 tow hitch to replace the one that was broken in the accident, and will slowly replace or repair the remaining broken or bent parts. On paper it sounds a lot to do but there are quite a few small jobs.

As things stand at the moment it's like this, although I'm sick of hearing about the economic downturn that's happening everywhere it's had it's effect on us too, as I'm currently out of work, and with things to be done in preparation for when we do eventually leave, so at the moment money is going out but there is not enough coming in.

However we are being guardedly optimistic and still planning to leave in March although at present it may be late instead of early March.

As for what we hope to achieve, nothing earth shattering, just see as much as possible of this country that we tend take for granted, but given a choice wouldn't live anywhere else. And maybe by the time we finish this trip give Erin that same sense of pride and wonder in this country that we've had all this time. Yeah, might be a little soppy I know, but that's how I feel and I'm not sure but I think that's how Shell feels as well.

Australia has such differing environments and varying types of people that it begs to be experienced. So that's what we're going to do.

December 2008

As usual the amount and type of gear that I originally considered required and our finances, or lack thereof, was at odds. So therefore the list, or wish list as Shell was apt to call it, looked like it had to take a few hits, and as I am willing to admit (albeit reluctantly) I will eventually come to the same conclusion, that is given enough time. Here is an example of how things have changed and come back to reality so far.

Wish List	Actual List
Electric winch	Big Haul hand winch
Sat phone	No Sat phone
Epirb or Accusat	Epirb or Accusat
Engel or Evakool 12v fridge/freezer 60Lt	Outback Travelmate 12v fridge/freezer 70Lt
Store bought rear cargo drawers	Home made rear cargo drawers
Milford cargo barrier	Home made cargo barrier
Laptop	Laptop
GPS	GPS
Recovery Gear	Recovery Gear
Puncture repair kit	Puncture repair kit
Air compressor	Air compressor
New Driving lights	Stick with existing ones
First aid kit	Put our own together
Dual battery system	Dual battery system (self installed)
Five new tyres	Use existing till worn out

 

So as you can see things have changed quite a bit since the initial planning stages, some things were kept as they are deemed necessary, others are dropped altogether as these are deemed as luxuries and with some, cheaper alternatives are found or constructed in the effort to keep expenditure down. As you can see we considered the Sat phone as unnecessary if we have an Epirb or Accusat. The same goes for the 12volt fridge/freezers, by changing brands to one just as good as the dearer brands this will save between $300 and $600 dollars on its own. Mind you I will admit much to Shell's frustration I took a lot of convincing as far as the winch and 12 volt fridge/freezers went, but much to her credit she did get through to me in the end.  As for the cargo drawers and cargo barrier, if I build my own it will hopefully save approx $2000 as compared to the ready made store bought ones, with the added bonus of being designed to suit our needs. And as luck would have it Shell managed to find a cargo barrier for a Mitsubishi express van in the Trading Post for $30, as these vans are wide, I figured that I might be able to "adjust" it to fit, anything was worth a try if it save me a bit of cash as well as a bit of labour. As things turned out, width wise it was perfect and I would only need to adjust it's height to fit it over the drawers.

However even with making all these adjustments, it's still going to be tight to start with until we get things sorted out, but at least it will be enjoyable.

I have 2 weeks off over Christmas and this will be the time that the cargo drawers and cargo barrier get made and the dual battery system installed. Also any work that I can do as far as repairs to the camper and general maintenance, such as new wheel bearings etc, this will hopefully get done then too.

As for where we'll be going first up, our "plan" goes something like this, as an initial shake down trip it has been decided that from here we'll go south or south west and eventually stop at Girraween NP until around the 20^th of March when we'll return to the sunshine coast for Shell's grandmother's birthday and an open garden that one of Shell's ex-TAFE teachers and employer is holding on the same weekend, we'll also use this as an opportunity to drop off any gear we've found we don't need and pick up anything we've found we do.