Week 1: Mainly ADLs

Hello family and friends!

We have now been on the road for almost two weeks and given that I’ve only uploaded a few photos I’m not yet achieving my goal of being better at updates than on the Mongol Rally last year! But what have we achieved? So far we’ve driven 3900km and counting and are finally reaching warmer temperatures; much to Charlotte’s delight. It’s been chilly camping so far with our coldest night to date at Ti Tree just north of Alice Springs a few nights ago, when it dropped to 2°C.

We finally left Sydney on Saturday 30 June about two and a half months later than we originally expected. The car build took much longer than we planned and the full details of the build will be put up here in the near future. We had been trying to leave the weekend before but various hold ups such as delivery delays for our interior benchtops and issues with our dual battery system to power the fridge and interior electrics kept us in Sydney.

Anxious to leave after all this time but still not entirely ready we said goodbye to my parents in Glenhaven before heading in entirely the wrong direction to Manly to pick up a recovery point for the front of the car (essentially a strong piece of metal bolted on to the front for us to be pulled out of whatever bog we get stuck in) as well as the relevant equipment for the pulling (straps and such). This was followed by a few other final bits of shopping including picking up a chair for Charlotte as she had been procrastinating on her choice of bum comfort for about a month. The next chore was a goodbye lunch with Charlotte’s friend Tess in Curl Curl and we gave her a Star Wars lunchbox as a farewell gift because she’s a massive nerd. Our final Sydney task was to visit Charlotte’s storage locker to pick up her kitchen stuff and other useful items from her old flat that we were going to use on the trip. Finally, at 7pm in the cold darkness we finished packing and started driving out of Sydney as we felt that mentally we couldn’t delay leaving by yet another day after waiting so long to start!

We were roughly heading towards Lake Eyre, a salt lake in South Australia that only fills every 4-8 years (interestingly from tributaries thousands of kilometres away in Queensland) as it currently had water in it. We examined WikiCamps, pretty much THE app to use when camping in Australia (well worth the $7.99), and found a campsite near Lithgow which was an achievable distance. Louis powered up the Blue Mountains with ease and we arrived around 10pm, popped the roof and then found water on the floor in the back! It seemed our backup 10L jerry can had a leak… After drying the floor we found that it was 20c per 1 minute of hot water in the shower so we scrounged around for coins and found enough for me to have a 2 minute shower before bed in the 3°C weather. It was sub-par in case you were wondering.

After a very cold night we woke up on day 2 to a rather excellent view of Lake Lyell.

I braved the cold, got out of bed to get 20c coins for Charlotte (who got a more generous 8 minutes of hot water) and picked up breakfast from the café in the campground given we hadn’t bought any groceries yet. We hit the road again stopping for a one dollar coffee in 7-eleven (no more hipster coffee for us, got to save the pennies now) and pushed on to a pub in Ballimore, just before Dubbo, where they let you camp for free out the back if you buy a meal; and having still not bought any food this seemed like a good deal to us. The owners were lovely although there was one rather offensive drunk Australian who reminded me of why Australians have a bad reputation in pubs worldwide. We got chatting to a bloke named Daryl and explained that we were trying to get our recovery point fitted in Dubbo but were having trouble booking anywhere. Daryl took my number and said he’d sort us out!

After another cold night I got a call from Daryl saying I could get it fitted that morning if I got to Dubbo ASAP – what a champ! In Dubbo we finally went to the supermarket, picked up a few odds and ends from Bunnings and bought a three quarter size acoustic guitar (perfect for travelling) from the music store for entertainment on the road. Another late departure meant only getting an hour or so further on the road and we stopped in Trangie for the night. It felt like groundhog day as we once again found water on the floor and discovered we hadn’t quite emptied the hose we were carrying in the back and mopped up again.

In the morning, Andrew, the caravan park owner, saw us emptying the hose (Charlotte up on the roof for gravity) and came over for a chat. He found a spare hose bag that caravaners use and gave it to us – so great! I then spent a while finishing up website construction and chasing up Pivotel, the network provider for our satellite phone (which really just texts, tracks and has an SOS function to call the cavalry) as there were some activation issues on their end. The sat phone activated a few hours later and now you can see our GPS tracking here and if we have an emergency we can text or SOS for help – bi-winning! We finished up the day in Wilcennia and stayed again at a caravan park which was noted on WikiCamps to have the best bathroom facilities EVER and a great communal campfire, both of which we’d totally agree with.

Day five saw us pass through Broken Hill where we tried to pick up a bag that sits on your spare wheel so we could store the hose in it, use it as a bin and have it as general dirty-we-don’t-want-it-in-the-car storage. Unfortunately they were out of stock so we called ahead to Alice Springs (a few thousand kilometres away but the next ARB store we’d pass through!) to get them to hold of one. We also dropped in to Toyota to get them to look at our passenger door seal as we were getting lots of wind noise and couldn’t see any reason for it but we had to book in ahead to get it looked at so moved on.

We crossed into South Australia and considered stopping for the night at the service station rest area in Yunta but given their showers were out of hot water we pushed on in the dark to Peterborough (with much kangaroo awareness given the number of mangled furry corpses on the road) to enjoy some pesto pasta and another cold sleep.

In the morning we decided to drive into the Flinders Ranges to check out a camp area with rave reviews and a private 4WD track through the mountains. Unfortunately there were winds of 45km/h so we decided to take a scenic drive through the ranges and move on.

Louis got wet for the first time on a creek crossing and we drove on to Leigh Creek, the last town with a supermarket (and phone reception) before the Oodnadatta Track. We arrived just as the sun was going down, hit the supermarket, did some much needed washing which we hung between a tree and the bull bar and Charlotte cooked a feast in the camp kitchen.

We finally had a slightly warmer night and departed on to the first true gravel roads of our trip in the morning. We stopped in Marree, home of the Lake Eyre Yacht Club, a highly Australian establishment given the infrequency of adequate conditions to sail (i.e. water).

Incidentally, after travelling this far, the high winds had pushed the water to the dry areas and it had all soaked in. No water in Lake Eyre for us. We considered staying in Marree for the annual camel races the next day but decided to push on north and try and escape the wind. We passed many ruins and were amazed people built out here in the first place given the harsh desert conditions.

Lunch was at Coward Springs (a museum, lukewarm plunge pool and campsite rolled in to one) which was pretty but probably not worth the entry fee if you weren’t staying. Rest was at William Creek where the pub ran a campground. The pub was hugely busy and when we noticed everyone on their phones we found out that parts of the Oodnadatta Track actually have Optus reception for those of you out there planning to do the track and needing to be constantly connected!

We met two lovely German men taking on the track on their imported motorbikes (very brave and dusty) and discovered that one of them, Jürgen, has a troopy with a pop top of his own in Germany! They are going to be touring Australia for 6 months on their bikes. Unfortunately given the dust on the floor of the showers they looked rather pooey but they smelt clean so after a shower we went to bed to start week two which will hopefully contain more adventures and less ADLs (activities of daily living for the non-medics)!

Apologies for the length but that’s it for now. We’ll update you again shortly and in the meantime we are now using Louis’ Instagram at www.instagram.com/louis.the.second or from the link at the top of the website. You will notice a YouTube link there too which will soon also be a channel filled with probably poorly shot videos.

Until next time,

Mitch and Charlotte