Road Trip
We first had to decide between a van, a 4x4 or a station wagon car. Wanting to do the West coast, we quickly opted for a 4wd. However, I had the opportunity to buy a Subaru Forester for a excellent price despite this one was low compare to a real 4wd but the consumption was much lower. Then, I had to adapt the car to travel. My mate, Jason, who sold me the car, helped me to built the bed. After this, I bought mattress, tent, gas cooker, dishes, jerrycan, water tank, chairs, table, roof basket,...
The first 5000 kilometers were not easy considering we were 4 on the car with stuff for 4 more all equipment. Especially Mr. Selfish and Mastouffe were taking up all the room. We had around 800 Kilos and the car!!
The first part was Townsville-Uluru. We saw road-trains for the first time. Those ones could reach 60 meters. We also saw a lot of death kangaroos and death cows along the road.
We had our first fear on this part due to the overload. Indeed, the automatic box was demote gears automatically and your petrol consumption explosed. When I realized this we immediately stopped. The engine took all the oil but fortunately we had an oil can that we emptied and we also had a petrol jerrican otherwise we should run out of petrol on the middle of the way. Then, we found a good rhythm to avoid this problem.
During this portion we slept on tent and we admired beautiful skies.
The second part was Uluru-Darwin. We were more efficient than the first trip for any reason as to set up tents, meals,... We did here our first off-road between Kings Canyon and Alice Spring to save 300 km. The corrugated road gave us vibrations during 1:30 hours but the car did it without any problems and I was pretty surprised... We also discovered here forest fires and fucking flies at the end of this portion.
For the third part, we were just two so we had a lighter car which allow easily off-roads and gave us more comfort. This trip was amazing regarding it beauty and is far away the most beautiful we did. We crossed many animals for the first time, saw lovely birds and we also slept on dream places.
We learnt how to drive on beaches (deflate tires to earn adherence,...) and how to fix many things on cars even if we had at the end one issue that we couldn't fix. Indeed, the sparkplug poped up of the engine and the only reliable solution was an helicoil but we didn't have money so the mechanic put glue on it and it kept going miraculously until Perth.
Ours next trips will be Perth-Melbourne passing by Margaret River, Esperance, Albany, Adelaide,... and then, Melbourne-Brisbane following the coast and passing by Sydney.
