Day 1.

It's finally happened! We are on the road. After a furious few days of activity we pulled away from home at about 1130 this morning. The trip was off to a fabulous start (seriously wish that I could bottle the feeling of pulling down the driveway) when a few mins down the road Daz exclaimed "Oh no I forgot my wedding ring!" . A quick U bolt and problem solved...we were on our way...again. As far as we can tell the only other thing we forgot was the sunshine. It's been raining since Blackbutt and were camping in the rain at Warra for our first night. Doh!

2 weeks to go!

So the countdown is on. 2 weeks to D Day! With all the big ticket items taken care of we're down to making the really important decisions, like how many crab pots to put on the roof and which fishing rods to take. The roof of the Patrol is now 3/4 loaded with:

• Spare tyre for the patrol
• Spare spare tyre for the camper (same stud pattern as the patrol)
• Exhaust jack
• Spare Water container
• Spare esky
• Crab and yabbie pots

The last things to go on top are the crab and yabbie pots. 

I'm happy to say that all my sewing jobs jobs are now completed (last 2 things today were the crab pot bag and a couple of "socks & jocks" organisers for the kids) and Daz is has just waiting for a bigger battery charger and a spare number plate for the camper to arrive (the number plate is to go on the back of the rubbish bin that hangs off the the tyre on the back of the camper). Final job for the day was to re-pack the fishing tackle boxes and the Medical kit.

Camper getting packed (again)

Daz getting ready to bag the crab traps.

Big decisions being made - Which fishing rod to take?

Rigging the hand reels with Venetian Blind Chord

Engle is rigged on the drop Slide. The little Waco is our freezer.

So we're nearly there. Remaining on the list of things to do (roughly) is:

• Pack food boxes & fridges, 
• Pack clothes
• Get kids school work
• Clean out the pantry
• Mow the Lawn
• Vote (local council elections)

Thought this was meant to be a holiday !?!

The Shakedown Trip

We decided to go to Sundown National Park for Easter to give all the truck and trailer modifications a test run over the rough 4wd track into the park. The track to the camping grounds takes about 2 hours and is low range all the way with lots of bumps and rocks.

Unfortunately when we paid for our camping permit the week before Easter, the National Parks Ranger forgot to mention that the recent floods had washed away the nice camp sites at Reedy Waterhole (henceforth referred to as "Shadeless Shithole") so we decided to make the best of it in a pretty featureless paddock. Lucky for us we were the first people to arrive at the camp grounds so we were able to pick the best site - it had a few shrubs around it so we only had 10 hours of direct sunlight each day, which was luxury compared to those poor sods who arrived after us!

On a positive note the Severn River provided nice spot to cool down (just had to watch out for leeches) and we caught quite a few yabbies and a catfish. The lack of facilities gave us the chance test our latest rig changes in a bush camping environment and everything worked well - including the Easter Bunny turning up!

2 Months to Launch

After about 10 Years of dreaming and 2 years of serious planning we're now only 2 months away from setting off on a 14 week camping trip to the mighty Kimberley Region in North West Australia.

"Are you insane? 14 weeks of camping?!"  I hear you ask.

Well maybe we're mad, but in 2000 Daz and I started dropping spare coins in a tin with "Kimberley Trip" written in permanent marker on the side, and somehow the dream is is looking like it could become reality.

These days we have two daughters (Jessica & Matilda) - they will be taking time out of Year 2 & Prep to take a 14 week course at "The School Life" where hopefully they'll be graduating with honors in the"How to Avoid Getting Eaten by a Croc" course.

For the last 12 months we've been prepping the camper trailer and the Patrol for the big trip. Our latest list of mods are about fine tuning everything so that it'll be fast and easy to put the camper up and down. Daz has just finished a new kitchen light setup and installed an inverter and 4 port outlet in the back of the camper as well as 4 x 12v outlets as well. The last big ticket item is the long range fuel tank for the Patrol...but that's on the way.

This is what we'll be living out of for the trip. 

So the next big question is where are we going exactly. The map below should give you the general idea. Starting from Brisbane we head to Charleville, Mt.Isa and then to the NT.   After spending some time in the Kakadu and Darwin, off to the Kimberley's.   The trip home takes us through the Tanami desert to Alice Springs then back to Brisbane.   Overall its about 13,000 klm.