First Day

Well first day of travel and we already broke down. We were parked in the carpark on Sawtell headland and got up in the morning and the batteries were flat.

 This made no sense to me because I put an isolator solenoid in to stop one battery from getting flat when it reaches a lower charge. This wasn’t really a problem, we just went out for breakfast and by the time we got back the solar panel had charged the batteries.

 I think the problem has to do with the smoke coming from the dashboard when Rachael plugged something into the cigarette lighter, which shorted the “ignition off” circuit. Because this circuit was shorted we had to leave the keys in the ignition all night so all the lights and junk would still work.  I think we flattened the battery by sucking power out through the “engine on” circuit which the isolator solenoid can’t protect us from.

 Anyway, good news is we drove to Lismore to visit my old friend Will and on the bumpy roads out to his place the short circuit shook itself back into place! Apparently we don’t have to worry about that one for a while, at least until the next bumpy road.

 BUT on the road the microwave shook itself out of its shelf which was pretty alarming because we were going along at 80Km/Hr and had nowhere to pull over. We knew the microwave was gonna shake loose for a while now but didn’t do anything about it... We are totally not cut out for this lifestyle...  I also snapped the CV radio aerial by going under some low hanging trees driving up Will’s driveway.

It was really nice seeing Will again. We were very close friends in highschool, and used to egg each other on to do the most dangerous things either of us could think of, we had a lot of fun. Times have changed now though, Will now lives in a really beautiful little cottage on the top of a hill looking over Lismore with his partner and kids. He’s also extending a house for his sister and has already built a little cottage for his parents! Will’s not a builder either, he just read a book on carpentry. It was really impressive to see what he’s done using a book and determination. 

 We spent the night in Lismore and had a really nice vegetarian dinner with Will and his partner Claire and spent the night at their house. The next day we headed off to my Grandfather’s farm in Murwillumbah to set up for a while, we’re going to have to start doing some serious repairs on the lemon to get it ready for its trip, we’ve also got to use the place as a dumping ground for all the dead weight we’ve accumulated (e.g. a broken microwave).

  Tension was a little high in Murwillumbah when we arrived. My grandfather (Dick) was away from home but his tenant was in who lives in a nearby cottage, and she filled us in on the story. (Last time me and Rachael came up here we went to sleep in her bed thinking the place was unoccupied, she was pretty surprised in the morning finding us in her bed).

 Anyway, the place is being re-fenced and the fencer’s were out the back of the property cutting down trees for timber for the fencing. This doesn’t make sense to me because I’m pretty sure you have to cure timber before laying it for a fence, but I’m not a fencer. Apparently it was OK’d by dick before they started but It was a bit worrying hearing the chainsaws. It is a real shame, hopefully they are only cutting down English pines because this property has some beautiful native pines and gumtrees. Its a pretty amazing place.

 I had a crack at mowing the lawns after getting up here. Everything around this place is a bit bizarre, the lawn mower must be pre 1960’s and was so dangerous, it had a tin can as the muffler, weighed about 80Kg and could propel itself along. The problem was that if you lost hold of it then it would just keep going until you caught up to it and managed to pull the lever to stop it. It was actually pretty fun trying to use this thing to mow the lawns. The next target is the Bulldozer/Tractor in the shed.

The Lemon

  It all started sometime in June when Rachael and I decided to buy a motorhome and travel around Australia. We'd been living apart for a while now while I finished my intern year in pharmacy and couldn't really decide on a place to settle afterward, so we figured we'd just travel around for a while until we found a good place.
We looked around for a while for a little hiace campervan but they were pretty expensive ($10000 +) for a reasonable one. Then we started to look at Toyota Coaster's converted to motorhomes and thought "Why not, some of these are around $10000 and are twice as big!!"  ... How naive we were.
 We didn't really shop around much, and just jumped on the first coaster conversion which was nearby, It was allegedly a 1982 coaster conversion which used to be a school short bus. After kicking the tyres there was no real rust on the body which seemed good and that was about the extent of my mechanical knowledge. The guy who was selling it seemed to like it and said it had a new engine in it so we were like, why not, we don't know what we're doing anyway. And bought it against the advice of everyone we knew.
 So we bought this piece of crap motorhome off this guy which turned out to be a 1972 model with a replaced but worn out engine. And a broken fridge, broken air conditioner, leaky roof, dodgy gas set up and some really dodgy wiring amongst other things.

 So for the next 7 months it was down to some pretty heavy duty renovating and repairing to get this thing in order. We had a hand at re-painting it and got bailed out by some friends at work who fixed it up.
 We put in a new engine, New fridge, Aircon, fixed any rust and made it livable inside.
 We also put a 120 watt solar panel on the roof and set up a little battery bank and a little inverter so it's like a little house. We also got a gas hot water shower and decked it out with so much crap that we can't fit much more in.
 Now we have a pretty classic motorhome which looks pretty good. It's pretty comfortable to live in and with some luck won't break down too often on it's way around Australia. Too bad if anyone is stuck behind us though, it is so slow now it's full of all our junk. We're gonna have to cull a lot of it on this trip and try and live a bit more minimalist for a while.

 For the last few days we've just been sorting out loose ends, I just sold my trusty car to a massive bogan in Kempsey. I felt pretty bad for it, but I had to say goodbye. Rachael moved all her junk out to her parent's, which was ages away, we had to drive about 1500 K's over the last 4 days getting from Coffs Harbour to Lithgow and back to Newcastle then back to Lithgow then back to Coffs harbour. And now tomorrow is the first day on our trip and we're already over travelling.
We're both a bit apprehensive about the journey, there's a lot which is gonna go wrong, but we're pretty good when we get into trouble and generally don't get at each other's throats.
 On the past 5 or so trips we've taken the lemon out, it has broken down on 3 of them. It has also broken down once when parked where I was staying, so the track record isn't good. We'll see how far we get tomorrow...