Aussie hello

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404
Posts: 42
Joined: February 28th, 2021, 4:12 am

Aussie hello

Post: # 30109Post 404
March 3rd, 2021, 1:36 am

Hi all, my wife and I are in SE semi-suburban Australia and dreaming of roaming around the scrub and visiting grandkids with tall stories to tell about breaking Land Rover parts etc. I am 62.

We are in the process of building a demountable composite panel Biv Box to sit in the rear of our Land Rover 110.

I was born in Leigh-On-Sea/South End and exported to Australia in 1962 at 4yrs old. Parents were about 25 then. [ Last year Mum went into aged care -I discovered youtube has people making money walking through towns and attractions for hours at a time in the UK and google map cars filmed Mum's childhood streets, church, schools, shops etc in Leigh-On-Sea and South End. Mum loved those 'walks' on the screen. We also did it for Australian homes/location memories too. Please take a hint - it is a must for your family to look for this sort of memory reviver while you can! ]

my motivation story

7am after stopping for a fastfood brekky on one of the busiest interstate highways near Wodonga, I spotted a old bus converted to a motorhome, out with the big rigs in the rear carpark. Lorries as grandad called them. He was a Pickfords driver all his life and knew the UK before motorways, mobile communications and the channel tunnel.

So I walk along the driverside toward the back of the bus for a look at windows etc. At the back it has a big old detroit engine and its heavy bus. It is towing a very heavy duty car trailer, using recycled bridge girders. Thick. It looks homebuilt to carry a proper bulldozer or earthmoving plant. Heavy. And it has an asian 4x4 wagon loaded. Uh huh..

As I walk the other side near the front end the air shuuush noise happens and the entry doors open up. A interior voice says hello in a welcome way. We chat. He is in the driver seat and maybe 80 yo. He starts the engine and warms it up. He and his wife head up north every winter to the sunshine in coastal Queensland, a 3000km return journey at a minimum. He has the usual thick glasses on his thin face, he wheezes and he has a oxy bottle and a clear tube leading from it clipped into his nostrils. His arms and legs are very thin. Uh huh. I ask the obvious and he says he gets Roadside Service if he gets a flat tyre. He certainly would need a helpful neighbour at the holiday park to de-hitch and unload that trailer behind... if he survives the drive.

While I'm chatting I hear a clip clop noise continuing from behind the curtain that makes the rest of the bus private from the cab. Someone is coming up the passageway from the back of the bedroom I guess. At length the other half comes thru the curtain using her walking frame. Thats the clip clop noise mystery solved. She makes it to the driver's side and hands the driver a little cup of different pills and a he takes his meds with his cuppa, supplied on an earlier clip clop journey. She took her meds as well. I said thank you and made my exit. I drove away and said a prayer for them. OMG. Take care on the road - beware of other people who are in those other driver seats and depending on medications etc.

I did not want to be that driver, at that advanced age, trying to have a holiday... let alone be in charge of 12 tonne or more on a 3000km trek to a holiday park - no doubt set close as possible to shopping centers (with plenty of pharmacy) available etc.

getting on the road
I told my wife about 'the bus' and we decided to get out on the road a lot more, savings and retirement funds be damned. They're overtaxed anyway. It is a tax on getting old. To pay for a pension, a room and a nurse when you need it.

We can camp in a cheap and cheerful style. Drama free. We usually avoid other campers. We like big skies and empty places, empty beaches. We have camped on swags under the stars, and farm paddocks and elsewhere. But we have also used motels and hotels, we have camped on hikes under tarps/bashers and lived out of backpacks. Boats too. I like hiring things like that. I have overnighted in trucks and even Q stores when in Army Reserves. Versatility.

Here is a video we did in April 2017 -our outback 'shakedown' trip with our renovated 1990 Land Rover with a Maggiolina on top. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnFo01_xICA
Two weeks. 4070km. The Landy went very well overall. A valuable mech. lesson learnt during that trip. And a new tyre sidewall sliced by rock and more of less ruined as far as reliability is concerned. Shame. Anyway, the TD shocks were outstanding and inner helper rear coils a real improvement on handling when loaded up. We got an average of 12litres per 100km.

I thought about taking more camping gear and thought about a more comfort type camper-trailer too...

But in the end I chose to do a simple demountable: http://www.demountablecampergroup.com/v ... =15&t=1692
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zildjian
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Joined: September 8th, 2013, 3:30 pm

Re: Aussie hello

Post: # 30115Post zildjian
March 3rd, 2021, 10:35 pm

Like your video, what a place you live in!
few members have been lucky enough to visit your place and i'm envious


especially to learn more of this
Screen Shot 2021-03-03 at 21.32.41.png

404
Posts: 42
Joined: February 28th, 2021, 4:12 am

Re: Aussie hello

Post: # 30118Post 404
March 4th, 2021, 7:18 am

Hi, the video mills that 4000km into about 11minutes, hard to do.
Pig Launcher had us thinking for hours on the conversation that approved that name. Out there are a hundred or more Natural Gas wells and somebody drives the hours in the dust checking them every week or so, I supposes. I think they filled in the form for that one after a few refreshments. Outback roads have 'in jokes' all over. Right at the end of the video I am trying to get a phone signal next to "The Dish" (historic Apollo 11 etc RX/TX stn). We have a place in the local bush where things are tech-dead (the phone network is MIA) yet the concrete floors are there to see, 2 acres of it, where it was hi-security, 24/7 shiftwork for 180 techies maintaining RX/TX with the Space Shuttles for a decade or more. The best tech and money-no-object a short time ago yet now.. the story is that before the Shuttle missions GPS was not around, etc, and they put in more satellites to make the earth stations like ours redundant. Previously, to maintain constant Shuttle comms, they had ground stations at great cost, all around the world (NASA) and even over the large oceans using daisy chains of special Lockheed transport flights loaded up with RX/TX gear (as one Lockheed crew ended a shift a fresh plane arrived on the Shuttle trail to take over duty - imagine the money). Money. Another favorite taxpayer money story - while I was out walking in school Walkathons and such as a kid in the '60s, raising money for a school hall so the mum's could bake cakes and raise more money etc.. way way way way way out in the desert (out in the middle) the UK MOD and Australian equiv were testing nukes and they built a town for the staff complete with shops and school pools and probably a school hall too. It had 200km of bitumen road altogether. It had british alloy spar hangars for the spotter planes and choppers. I heard the story that it was flown in well before the other things like homes. A lot of it is still there, a ghost town. It is so long back, older than Chernobyl of course, and it is totally safe now. I'd like to go there. http://maralingatours.com.au/faq/
Another place I'd like to go is ancient - - the Pilbara in NW West Aussie features Archaean–Proterozoic bedrock.
No fossils in it, it predates life-as-we-know it totally. Year zero stuff. 3500-to-2000 million years old. Max old. I have been to areas 500 and 600 million years old as per that video and photo above I made in 2017 (see https://curiouscampers.com.au/brachina- ... ers-ranges )..... but 3500 - to - 2000 million ... ( http://crcleme.org.au/RegLandEvol/MtEgerton.pdf ) there are exposed layers of sediment as high as a highrise and each 25mm layer represents 10,000 years. Unique. Makes our truck look young. :)

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zildjian
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Re: Aussie hello

Post: # 30131Post zildjian
March 6th, 2021, 7:58 am

Screen Shot 2021-03-06 at 06.58.52.png
In case you crave Leigh on Sea still; https://www.meteoblue.com/en/weather/we ... om_2644658

404
Posts: 42
Joined: February 28th, 2021, 4:12 am

Re: Aussie hello

Post: # 30135Post 404
March 7th, 2021, 2:08 am

Thanks for finding that cam.
There are so many places on youtube. Local too, not just exotics like Venice and Positano. There is a walker video around The Great Pyramid at Giza as a good example of the type - it that really delivers the size perspective, the donkeys and camels, the dust and litter. Its over an hour or so... I will never go there ... but I feel I have 'done it'.

Our federal parliament building has a stainless steel pyramid frame as a big flagpole. There is a real Magna Carta on display in that parliament. True.
Our local webcam is: https://visitcanberra.com.au/canberra-live-cam

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