JD - THE VAN
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Our trip was inspired by our good friends, Will, Ange, Chloe, Masie and Mac Edwards. They did a similar trip to us a year or two ago but turned right in the far north and headed East where as we are compelled to turn left as we want to catch-up with our old friends the Agnew's in Tom Price. They have lived there for at least 15 years and I'm ashamed to say we have never knocked on their door. Fortunately for us the Edwards's were finished with the Van and had it for sale. Most will know my wife is a particularly determined individual she was very keen to make the purchase. The time was as good as it would ever be for the children and I have been focused on my career/business for far to long. With Nicole's encouragement (some might say badgering!) and my increasing feeling of being " chained to the wheel" We decided that we would try to make it happen.
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Now my definition of a fair deal has always been when both the vendor and the purchaser are equally disappointed with the sale price. Will and I reached this point without any upset and friendship intact.
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The van is a 2011 VW Crafter light commercial vehicle with a Jayco Caravan body fixed to the chassis. In a former life it was a Britz hire van. Like most hire vehicles I imagine it was "ridden hard and put away wet" The cabin of the vehicle consists of, unsurprisingly, two front seats and room for four across the back. I altered the rear seating arrangement to accommodate Matilda in the middle in a child seat which gives Grace and Olivia the balance of the space either side. We have fitted a Engel fridge/freezer in between the front seats, which doubles as a arm rest and bench. Also extra storage under the rear seats and a rear in car DVD player for the children for the longer sections of road. My mechanical background has exposed me to many mechanical failures and so I have done my best to limit the probability of any failure considering the vehicle has covered 166000kms prior to us owning it. These facts as well a reoccurring nightmare of us breaking down before we made it to the Spirit of Tasmania! To date we have covered over 7000km all seems ok with the exception of the following;
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We have done quite a few trial trips in the unit in Tas. Fuel economy was not encouraging but keeping in mind the undulating terrain in Tassie and our usual time restraints I was keen to know how the 2.5L turbo intercooled diesel would perform on the open roads of the big island . I think it was about day 2 when I lost interest in calculating the litres per kilometre preferring just to fill it up and stuff the receipt in my pocket and account for it later. The engine excels in consuming diesel with little regard to my attempts to drive it economically. My rough calculations put consumption around 18-19 litres per 100km. To put that into perspective our little tractor delivery truck at home uses around 30-35litres per 100km but has an 11 litre 400hp engine and is normally loaded to 24 Tons. I did have a fleeting thought that I should have chained the van on to the Kenworth and set off with Nicole's car on its trailer! I wouldn't be bothered by the kids whinging it the Whopper's cab and would get more road cred from the oncoming Road Trains!!
In the defence of the poor little VW power plant it does do a mighty job. Not only does it push a lot of wind, the van is 3.4m high and 8m long, we are carrying everything including the kitchen sink.
The resistance from the alternator must be considerable as it provides charge to, the normal vehicle electrical demand, the aforementioned Engel and DVD player, 4 mobile phone (don't get me started on that), 2 iPads, the van fridge and van battery storage.
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Unfortunately while on route to Kings Canyon I ran over an off cut of corrugated iron which I did see but couldn't avoid due to on coming traffic. Some might say why didn't I move further to the left but while the roads up here are generally good, I imagine the rain in the wet season leaves the roads with little verge and the many car wrecks are a warning to stay on the black top. The iron offcut gave the van entry step a good whack, neatly trimmed the end off the grey water discharge tap and finally on its rearward journey of destruction smashed the rear plastic panel that houses the LH brake lights, indicator and clearance lights. I have had experience fixing this moulding before as we had dislodged it previously in Tas on a weekend up a rough track on the Nile river. 100 mile an hour tape, paper clips and bubble gum was added to our shopping list to complete the repair.
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Second issue happen in Katherine when for what ever reason when we attempted to unlock the caravan door the key couldn't be inserted all the way into the lock barrel. Unfortunately the door was locked and after several attempts we gave up. There is nothing like 30 plus degrees and a little bit of pressure to bring sweat out of a bloke, I was sweating like a drug mule in a Thai airport! Under pressure I have to drown out all sound (mostly the 4 girls who had somehow all become expert locksmiths??) and concentrate on the problem at hand, which is what I did on the way back to the Katherine CV park. In the 10 mins it took to get there I had a made a plan. Part of the preparation of the camper was to remove the rear storage compartment behind the rear axle and replace it with a custom made unit large enough to accommodate our baby Weber BBQ.
My Plan A was to remove the BBQ , fishing rod, bike tyre pump, tool kit, stools, excess shoes, butane canisters, rotary fold up cloths line, spare engine oil and coolant and fold up bucket ( I told you we have packed everything! ) unscrew the lock off the access door and send one of the kids through the access hatch in to the van to unlock the door from the inside. As Matilda is the smallest she was the obvious choice. Only problem was that once in there she couldn't unlock the door!
Plan B was similar to plan A only this time we send Olivia in to complete the mission. Unfortunately Olivia had no more luck with the lock than Matilda.
Now I really had a sweat up, in fact it was running down my back into my Never Never region. Before resorting to plan C, I unfurled the extension cord and plugged the van into power. Plan C was similar to plans A and B except this time it was my turn to squeeze through the access hatch. The plan was fraught with danger as I have been on good pasture these last few weeks and the access hatch isn't very wide. Luckily the sweat made me slippery as an eel and I slid through the access hole with the grace of a walrus and possibly a similar odour.
The purpose of plugging the van into power was so I could turn on the A/C as soon as I got in there, because if it 30 plus degrees out side you can back it in its more than 10 degrees hotter inside and I was still under the pump.
The lock was completely jammed, my only option was to completely disassemble the three locking mechanisms from the inside, which I did and 15 mins later I eventually pushed the door open.
Bathers and towels were gathered up an the kids wandered off to the pool to leave me to reconstruct the door locking system. Their locksmithing skills obviously forgotten.
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Third issue was not so serious. An element of the morning ritual is for me to unlatch the bonnet, check the coolant level, oil level, general condition of the engine bay, monitor the minor oil leak from the engine crankcase breather filter and oil cooler and to give the engine some words of encouragement and praise. As well as this I clean the windscreen, mainly for my and Nicole's benefit, as three of the crew normally don't look through it preferring to stare into the in car DVD player. This particular morning, in Jabiru, I changed my approach to the windscreen cleanliness. This morning I soaped up a Ex dish washing rag and scrubbed the windscreen with it, washing the suds off with a fresh load of water from our borrowed fold up bucket. The obvious result was an immaculately clean windscreen. The other result was not as obvious until we set off for the days travels. It was Matilda who initially picked it up. The minor, 200mm east west crack we had in the windscreen had headed north, presumably from the sudden temperate change thanks to my bucket of water. The initial 200mm crack was now a fully mature crack which starts in the lower RH side ( my right not Nicole's) of the windscreen and finishes near the rear vision mirror. If the windscreen was a map of Australia the crack replicates our travels so far, hopefully it doesn't continue to follow us. Naturally, we carried out a through risk assessment and conducted a cost/benefit analysis on a replacement. The unanimous result was SBRM. (She'll Be Right Mate). Unless we get pulled over and receive a Defect notice!
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The 4th issue happen just after leaving the Adelaide River jumping croc boat tour. We diverted off the main road to see the Fogg Dam. The dam was built after WWII by returned service men to provide water for the near by rice fields which were also under development. Fortunately the rice grew exceedingly well but unfortunately it attracted over 250000 geese harvested the grain themselves. The project failed, but the dam remains. The dam is approximately 1.5km long and would be no higher than 2m. To see the dam you drive the length of it on top of the dam wall on a single bitumen lane with small pull off areas every 100metres or so to let oncoming traffic through at the end a U turn is required to head back along the dam wall. On our way back along the wall, as I pulled into one off these pull off areas to let a Hilux through, I'm not sure if he misjudged the distance between him and I or he was just impatient but he ran into the plastic rear moulding of the van the opposite side to the one the corrugated iron remodelled! I got out to have a look but the Hilux stunt driver didn't bother to stop. The damage to the van was limited to a scuff mark and a cracked clearance light so I wasn't too worried. I could have waited for his return but after the corrigated iron plans were already under way (in my mind) for a heavier duty rear section, with checker plate and C section making it corrugated iron proof and now upgraded to Hilux proof! We did see the Hilux again when he passed us along the Kakadu Hwy but only long enough for us to exchange hand gestures and again he didn't stop.
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To be continued.....