Well we've done our 6 month 1/2 lap (sort of).
So after a false start (the van was home, the food was in the fridge and everything was packed) in 2020 only to have ScoMo shut the country down (thanks COVID).
We finally left just 12 months later. We left Victoria on 2/4/21 and headed straight over to the SA border (in case any COVID cases were found in Vic). I won't put all the details of the trip in here, but we ended up getting as high as Exmouth in WA before we had to urgently head home (the van and car are still in WA - but I can't get back to pick them up and drive them home due to border closures) - we only got through 4 out of the 6 planned months.
Here are some of the various pic's of where we parked for a night (or more) in this great country of ours.
You'll notice in 1 photo the tow car is different - there's a reason for that :-(
We had a great trip while we were there and the van itself was faultless.
Due to the van being overweight when we fully loaded it (2 Adults, 2 teenagers and a pre-teen) with the intent of living on the road for 6 months (with our fishing gear, bikes and all the goodies) I had to strip some weight out. The easiest weight was to remove 1 of the batteries (we left other stuff behind) - that left us with 1 x 110ah AGM battery. We had a few weeks of less that ideal (read overcast) camping and the battery struggled to get charged during the day. As we were doing school work on the road there were multiple devices to recharge/run, lights after dark, etc.
Our van had 1 x 160W on the roof and a portable 250W (kings brand) blanket. To fix this I had another 160W added to the roof when the van was getting a service and some repairs. I also ran a cable directly from the regulator to an Anderson fixed on the chassis (this will allow me to add the portable solar blanket directly to the regulator inside the van if needed)
The repair was the gas heater - ever since day 1 the heater has cut out and recorded an error. After a few phone calls the original installer came good and offered a full refund (3+ years later) as they couldn't assist in fixing the issue - I want to put it out there even though they never got it right I could not have asked for better after sales support - they were hassle free and fantastic. Despite this I would go back to them as after sales support is important to me. HOWEVER we took the van to an authorised installer for the Truma gas heaters - they modified the install and it seemed to work great the few times we ran it. If anyone wants further details on what was wrong causing a gas heater to error out and switch off PM me.
So after a false start (the van was home, the food was in the fridge and everything was packed) in 2020 only to have ScoMo shut the country down (thanks COVID).
We finally left just 12 months later. We left Victoria on 2/4/21 and headed straight over to the SA border (in case any COVID cases were found in Vic). I won't put all the details of the trip in here, but we ended up getting as high as Exmouth in WA before we had to urgently head home (the van and car are still in WA - but I can't get back to pick them up and drive them home due to border closures) - we only got through 4 out of the 6 planned months.
Here are some of the various pic's of where we parked for a night (or more) in this great country of ours.
You'll notice in 1 photo the tow car is different - there's a reason for that :-(
We had a great trip while we were there and the van itself was faultless.
Due to the van being overweight when we fully loaded it (2 Adults, 2 teenagers and a pre-teen) with the intent of living on the road for 6 months (with our fishing gear, bikes and all the goodies) I had to strip some weight out. The easiest weight was to remove 1 of the batteries (we left other stuff behind) - that left us with 1 x 110ah AGM battery. We had a few weeks of less that ideal (read overcast) camping and the battery struggled to get charged during the day. As we were doing school work on the road there were multiple devices to recharge/run, lights after dark, etc.
Our van had 1 x 160W on the roof and a portable 250W (kings brand) blanket. To fix this I had another 160W added to the roof when the van was getting a service and some repairs. I also ran a cable directly from the regulator to an Anderson fixed on the chassis (this will allow me to add the portable solar blanket directly to the regulator inside the van if needed)
The repair was the gas heater - ever since day 1 the heater has cut out and recorded an error. After a few phone calls the original installer came good and offered a full refund (3+ years later) as they couldn't assist in fixing the issue - I want to put it out there even though they never got it right I could not have asked for better after sales support - they were hassle free and fantastic. Despite this I would go back to them as after sales support is important to me. HOWEVER we took the van to an authorised installer for the Truma gas heaters - they modified the install and it seemed to work great the few times we ran it. If anyone wants further details on what was wrong causing a gas heater to error out and switch off PM me.
