On the raod at last

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We arrived in Melbourne 24th of May and slept over at a Best Western Motel near the airport. The next morning I took a taxi out to the storage place to pick up our Land Cruiser. That was the first problem. The batteries had gone flat. Well after a jump start I doubled back to the motel and picked Liesel up (without turning of the engine) and headed toward the city to a specialised battery centre. They tested the batteries which by this time had picked up some what, but we decided in the spirit of caution to replace both. Of interest I did not know one got left and right hand polarity batteries - you need opposites on a Land Cruiser. I dropped Liesel off at a chalet we had booked in Coburg and took the Toyota tot he caravan guys to fit the reverse camera, break system and wiring for the fridge. They fitted that over two days and on Friday we went in to pick up the caravan. To my utter disgust I found that they had made the hitch about 250 mm to high. To solve the problem we have had to fit high lift stabilizers and now I cannot open the bottom rear door. Everything has to be loaded and removed through the top. I shall leave out the adjectives and adverbs as to my thoughts. It also resulted in the reverse camera being to low and utterly useless. I located a young local Phillian/ Aussie who was very knowledgeable and he fixed it in no time. The whole trip would have been very frustrating with Liesel trying to get the coupling lined up to my reversing. Now I can put it in the pin in seconds.

We were only going to stay at the caravan park for 3 or 4 days, but in the end we stayed 10 days - the time it took us to sort everything and a bit off to see Louis and Sarah. We also had lunch the first Sunday with 2 distant Allsop cousins I located through my delving into family history. Really lovely people.

This morning we went back to the factory to have a couple of minor problems sorted out on the caravan and before setting out I had the van weighed at the local public scale. Fully loaded it came in at 3340kg. Well that is a bit under the max of 3500 allowed and towing I find at 80 to 90 kph it cruisers. Ben, our Aussie guy on the GPS (he is always telling us to make a U-turn and pick up a "Mean Steak and Cheese Pie") took us all through the freeways down to the Great Ocean Road and on to Anglesea and the Anglesea Beachfront Family Caravan Park. Louis had told us of this park and said we must not miss it. We arrived close to dark so have not yet had a look around - apart from the 3 massive kangaroos on the lawn - so will see to the photos tomorrow. At least we are at last ON OUR WAY

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Comments

[William & Annarie Lilly]

Aussie road trip
Thanks for the call yesterday. Have a lovely and safe trip. Wish we were there.

[Karen Stewart]

On your way
Great to see you guys are on your way, will be following the blog closely to see what highjinks you get up to. Shame about the teething problems but just have fun. It's not the destination, it's the journey!!

[Denis & Pat]

Well, well, well.
To get thus far is obviously some achievement. Well done. One assumes there COULD be mort problems in the future, but that's all part of travelling I suppose. We wish you all the best of luck, however, and hope your trip comes up to our last, down the west coast. We give our regards to you both, and to John & Sue when they 'catch up'. Wish we were with you. Pat is home again, and just about walking OK, but slowly.

[Cecile]

Starting out !
I do hope you don't ever have to go back to the van man, they don't like fixing up their messes, huh.