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| Our Blue Sky Caravan at Alice Springs |
When we sold our house in March, we planned to remain at
Alice Springs until July so we could help daughter Meredith finish some
beautification projects around her house.
The additional three months also
ensures that the Top End of Australia will have a much more pleasant climate
than it would have at other times of the year.
All the good advice we have is that you do Western
Australia in an anti-clockwise direction. This ensures that when you travel the
long, gruelling distance across the Nullabor Plain, the wind is a tail wind and
not a head wind. Head winds cause a greater fuel burn than a tail wind (of
course), so it’s a better way to do it. More cost effective.
If we spend six months in Western Australia, it will also
mean that as we travel south, summer will be approaching and summer in the
south is more gentle than summer in the north. Make sense?
By the time we travel north to Alice Springs from South
Australia, we will be acclimatised to the summer heat.
Apart from getting Meredith’s retaining walls, new shed and
other tasks done, we are equipping our Toyota Prado with a UHF radio (to be
fitted next week) and some larger capacity spot/flood lights. The car will be
serviced before we go and probably get fitted with two new batteries – nothing
worse than having a battery die 20 km outside some remote township and both batteries
are nearing their failure dates.
Then there’s the caravan. We need to give it an
off-the-power-grid test to ensure our gas appliances (fridge, water heater and
cooker) work and that the solar-powered water pump and lighting work also. We
don’t expect any problems here, but prior preparation prevents poor
performance.
Finally, we need to trim the loading of the caravan as much as possible to keep weight within legal parameters.
In the near future we’ll develop a loosely designed travel
itinerary and post it online.
Robin
PS: We are beginning to get excited about our trip as the time draws closer
