Friday 3rd November – The Aussie road trip begins!

We woke up and borrowed Lisa’s car one last time to reach Traveller’s Autobahn for 1015am to collect our van.  Our home for the next four weeks is a Toyota Hiace Hi-5 van.  This means a Hiace van that has been adapted for the road for 4-5 occupants to travel in.  There’s a ‘bunk’-type double bed in the roof and the table and chairs area adapts to create a large bed across the base.  It comes with a double burner stove, microwave, sink and fridge.  So we have downsized dramatically from the RV AND more importantly going without the luxury of a toilet and shower onboard.

We arrived at the hire company to complete registration.  The process was easy though (compared to that of the couple arriving after us who were told that their van hadn’t arrived back yet!).  We did the damage report, signed our life away stating that we were responsible for any further damage and had a walk around to make sure all the equipment we expected was present and correct.  Our kit includes bed linen, towels, crockery and general cooking equipment – we shall see if everything we need is there.

Love the index plate - 1IQ (that's our joint IQ) and we'll now have to call him Ozzie, or Oz for short

Could've been worse - this van was parked out the back.  Maybe to deter us from speeding?!

Ozzie has done a fair few miles... or kilometers in his lifetime.

The van is a complete wreck compared to Harvey!  We took photographs of the entire body because there was more of the surface area scratched than not! If we do have any scrapes they’d be hard pushed to establish blame so that’s a good thing I guess.  Tip for you folks out there re: insurance.  All of the camper hire companies out here seem to give you two rubbish options – either go for ‘basic cover’ and have AUD$2500 spare on a credit card meaning that if you get into a smash that’s you’re excess – so say goodbye to about £1300! Or option two is a really expensive ‘covers all’ policy that costs about £1300 anyway.  There is another option.  We bought camper hire insurance in the UK for £300 for a month.  Basically, we’ve had our credit card swiped for the excess but if we do have an accident our insurance in the UK will reimburse the excess, minus a more manageable £100 excess.  A much more appealing option.

Ready to hit the road in our new home

Anyway, in possession of our new temporary wheels, it was time to get some grocery supplies in at Coles supermarket.  Which brings me on to budget.  Not including the hire of the van, we are going to start by aiming to limit our spending to AUD$400 a week for food, petrol and camping.  Excessive items such as essential diving trips and expeditions will have to be considered separately!  Let’s see how that one goes.  The first grocery shop was always going to be expensive when you’re buying everything to start you off, so $205 gone there!

Check out the size of these parrots I saw on the walk - I thought they were vultures at first!

We got back to Lisa and Ken’s about 2pm.  We had hoped to hit the road at 1pm!  But we had a couple of important things to do.  I had promised to take Monty and Rosie for a walk so that the others wouldn’t have to face that after a hard day’s gardening work.  Then we both wanted to have a last decent shower in case we stay somewhere without facilities tonight. Eventually, we were ready to hit the road at 330pm – better late than never! But with our first port of call, Albany, over four and a half hours away, that was clearly a drive too far for today!  But still, we had our van and wanted to spend our first night on the road in it, so we headed slowly, south from Perth along Highway 30 towards Albany.  

Like in the USA, we have equipped ourselves with mobile apps to assist us with accommodation. Simon found one called ‘Spaceships’ which uses three colours on the map of the country to show free, cheap and more expensive campsites as you move around.  Traveller’s autobahn have their one and they also supply you with a bumper printed edition in your van, useful when you have no signal or internet.

Simon did the first driving stint and I checked out the reference material.  Heavy traffic out of the city slowed us down and we were aiming to set up camp around 6pm as it’s pitch black by 7pm here at the moment.  I was tempted by a roadside parking area with absolutely no facilities (apart from a picnic bench) but there was another option of a cheap campsite about 20km off the main road.  But, would they have space last minute on a Friday night?! Well, yes, as it turned out, they were completely empty.  Even better than that, for only AUD$25 for the night we had a key to brand new toilets and showers, electric and water hook-ups AND a clubhouse, complete with full cooking facilities, leather sofas and wide screen TV! Erm, I thought we were supposed to be roughing it?! The guy taking payment invited us to the ongoing lawn bowls tournament in the next road, but we were hungry and wanted to arrange all of our belongings in the camper so they were our priorities for the evening - all after applying mossie repellent as I managed to get bitten 5 times whilst being booked in!

Our first camping spot in Ozzie - there was no one else around

We tested out how to make our new bed as comfy as possible – basically by using ALL the available cushions in the van.  Then we headed for the clubhouse where I made the easiest, quickest pasta with stir-in sauce for dinner and there we were.  Just the two of us, back on the road.  The evening reverted to US form – I got on with blogging and Simon got busy with a Facebook update whilst being entertained with such televisual classics as McGuyver.  Life on the road, eh?!