This blog will relate 9 months of travel in Australia
... there are HUNDREDS of pictures, hence it is divided into subsections
- Recap and introduction => continue to scroll this blog
- Melbourne to Uluru is here
- Uluru to Perth is here
- Perth to Darwin is here
- Darwin to Cairns is here
- Cairns to Melbourne is here
In April 2020 as soon as I had gotten delivery of my Land Roamer out of Melbourne harbour (it had been shipped from Jakarta -You can read about it here), Covid-19 lockdowns were in effect everywhere in Australia and I had no choice but to put it into long term storage and fly to Switzerland -You can read about it here.
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In March 2022, 2 years later ! I was able to return to Australia and regroup happily with my Land Roamer.-:)
Ha, ha, it's 2 neighbours had not moved either !
Before starting my trip, I knew that I would have to stay in Melbourne a few weeks to repair the brakes of the Land Roamer and to improve a few mechanical issues.
Thanks to the "netwok of overlanders" (the friends of my friends are my friends) I could stay for as long as needed at Pierre and Caroline's place in a scenic place in the woods; a big" thank you" to Caroline and Pierre. Only drawback, I had a 50 kilometers, 50 minutes drive to the workshop where my Land Roamer was worked on but I was able to rent one of their cars to commute to Bayswater.
1) The most important issue was the brakes. My truck being 30 years old, the master cylinder was corroded and had to be relined at a specialist's workshop. This took a few weeks as Easter holidays came at the wrong time. In due time we could get everything to work properly.
2) The next pressing issue was with the inappropriate cooling of the engine. The design of the radiator is okay for the not so hot climate of Europe, but with a full load under hot temperatures the engine had tendency to overheat quickly and I could not use all the (limited) power of my engine: VERY fustrating !
The solution was to have a custom made radiator. This was done by a specialist who had to order the custom made "core" and fit it to my radiator ends. To make sure that the engine would not overheat again, I added a manually controlled BIG electric fan in front of the radiator; this is in addition to the fan that is fitted on my engine. 14'000 kilometers later and after having driven under very hot conditions I am pleased that this modification is working perfectly.
3) I had made and I fitted a "sun visor". To limit the sun shinning on the big windscreen I had a custom made sun visor that I fitted on top on the driver's cab. This addition had been thought-off before I started my trip, but only had a chance to have it made much later during the trip. It's very useful during the noon hours when the sun is shinning straight down on the windscreen of the Roamer.
4) To be 100% legal on Australian roads, I fitted a notice on the right-hand back corner of the Roamer !
Also these various activities took longer than I would have hoped
and I left Melbourne 5 weeks after my arrival.
=> Pictures of my trip from Melbourne to Uluru are here