6th of July 2018, the day prior to our big central Australia road trip and we had the day off, never to miss the opportunity we decided to head of early and drive to Port Augusta. But let me take you back to when this started – rewind the clock back about 10 months ago when we made the decission to visit what own country has to offer and utilise our Jayco Flamingo Campervan a little more. Fast forward to 2 months ago when we signed the contract to have our new Essential Cruiser Caravan built just in time for this road trip, picked it up a week early (which was in hindsight a big relief) and now that we have caught up lets hit the road.
Friday 6th July 4:00pm, car and caravan packed, kids on board and of we go to Port Augusta. The new van (DBC) was in tow behind our Holden Trailblazer and it was a dream to tow, yeah of course I felt the 2.5 tonnes of weight behind but only from a stand still take off or on the slight hills at times. We stopped for dinner at OTR Bolivar with our next stop to be at the Port Augusta SportsClub Motorhome Park, for $7 a car/trailer it was well worth $$ the spot. You do need to be 100% offgrid though and assuming there is room for you just arrive, park and pay in the sportsclub. Arrival time around 9:00pm.
During the night our first evening was not without a disruption though, around 3:30am there would be a little alarm sound in our caravan – stubbling around as I was not sure what switch would turn on the lights and I did not want to wake the others I soon realised it was the fridge alarming due to insufficent power. I had to sort this out now as we had the fridge full of food, not enough power – checked the battery and it was all good but it was at this point I thought about my car battery and an anderson plug. My first rookie mistake – I failed to disconnect the anderson plug from the car which meant that my car battery was charging the battery in the caravan, the fridge was pulling the power from the battery – 2 quick lessons learnt from this mistake.
- Unplug the Anderson Plug from car when stopping overnight
- Use the Gas to power the fridge when offgrid
After an early call to the RAA to jump start the car, mumma bear must have been waiting for that moment to come around the corner and say surprise – at least she bought morning coffee for us all :-). After eating breakfast and filling up with diesel we were soon enough on our way to Coober Pedy.
Our Aussie Family 