14th November 2012, Summary

As promised, some data and general info from our trip.......

Firstly, our rig consisted of a Turbo Diesel Toyota Landcruiser 100 series, towing a semi off-road van which is 22ft long and weighs 3.2 tonne when fully loaded. I’m fairly confident that we didn’t get too close to that figure as we generally didn’t have the water tanks full – that saved 250 kg. If we intended to ‘Bush Camp’ we filled the tanks, but elsewhere we only carried about 40 to 50 litres. As we left home we deliberately ran light to allow room in our payload to buy stuff as we got into the trip (Shirl has the capacity to spend like you wouldn’t believe – I only drink the wine so that we can lower our rig weight).

Typical cruising speed was about 85 kph, but out on the flat plains, it crept up about 10%. If into a headwind, we dropped back to about 80 kph.

Daily travel distance varied a fair bit – eg: maximum daily this trip was 422 km, with only another 5 days being greater than 400km. Minimum was 36 km, but that was because of our blown radiator. The minimum normal day was 106 km, with another 6 days being less than 150 km.

We travelled 16,054 km with the van, plus another 7730 without the van.

Total fuel used was 4632 litres, at an average of 19.48 litres per 100km. Cost of this fuel was $7,454 (dearest = 202.9 cents/litre). And, joy oh! Joy, our precious fuel vouchers saved us 1.41% or $106.27. Fair dinkum, if any other business offered you a 1.4% discount you’d laugh at ‘em.

We were away for 218 nights, and we stopped at 59 different locations. The most expensive nights were at Parklea in Sydney ($52.50) and the cheapest night was $19 at Dunmurra in the Northern Territory. Overall we averaged $31.29 per night when using Caravan Parks. It shouldn't be a surprise that the six most expensive places (over $40) were at the "Big Ticket" places such as Broome, Kakadu, Exmouth, Bungle Bungles etc.

During the last year (since Nov 2011) we have dragged the van through each and every mainland capital city. We have also driven on (but not always with the van) the most easterly, northerly, and westerly piece of sealed road in the nation – we also came real close (42 km away) from the most southerly.

Between Byron Bay (18^th Apr) and Perth (31 Aug), we didn’t see any rain – nor did we find the need to not wear shorts nor put a jacket on.

Specific memories include the excitement of departing, and the joy of returning. The bits in between were also very very special. Of course, some places were more special than others, but we don't recall any bad places.

At this moment, we are not planning any long trip next year – we may hitch the van up sometime around next Spring/Summer for a short 3 or 4 weeks.

Cheers to all.

We're travellin' before unravellin'