Prepping leading to Day 1

We've been preparing ourselves for several months leading to this very moment.

The Caravan

We did some research around different types of caravans and camper trailers and we were really inclined to get a camper trailer as it would be a cheaper option, but eventually we found out that the pop-top caravans were pretty affordable. It was just a matter of narrow down the model of caravan we wanted and get the best deal.

The Jayco Hawk Outback ended up being our choice. We wanted the Swan instead, but we got a pretty good deal on a Hawk Outback 2014 with aircon already installed which I would probably need when summer comes and I need to work inside the caravan.

The Car

The idea was to drive our Volkswagen Multivan around Australia. While that was initially a great idea, when we talked to one of our friends about the trip, he prompted straight away that we would definitely need a 4wd car. The van wouldn't do the job.

Honestly, I still think the van would do the job just fine, but Alyne didn't want to risk being stranded in the middle of nowhere and I didn't want to hear "I told you so" so we decided to sell the van and buy a 4x4. Which sucks because we spent a lot of money on the van to fix it and to install a bunch of extra stuff required for the trip.

We managed to sell the van just a couple of weeks prior to the date we were supposed to have started. The rush to find a new car started and eventually we also found a good deal on a Nissan Pathfinder 2013 and we went for it.

The House

We decided to sell the house and travel with no concerns about the house being looked after. We contacted the same Real State agent who sold us the house about 4 years ago and kicked off the process of selling the house.

As for now, the house is still not in the market, there are a just a few bits and pieces left, but it will be out soon and hopefully also sold soon. Although if we don't get a decent price, we'll rent it out for the period we're going to be away and return to it when we're back.

Our Stuff

What about all our stuff? We have a decent size house and a lot of stuff that we gathered over the years. Well, a lot of clutter. We started selling everything that was worth selling and started putting this money in a box to be used towards the trip. We were super impressed with the amount of things we don't use and keep it anyway just because we had room in the house. We made a promise to ourselves not to clutter our next house. Let see how we're going to go with that.

Regarding the stuff we want to keep, we hired Taxibox which is a mobile self-storage. They bring the container to you, you fill it up and they come back to collect it and store it. We've used their service in the past when we moved from Melbourne to Brisbane and we were pretty happy with it.

To Do List

The planning started to take place. We used wunderlist to start putting together everything that we needed to do before the trip started. It went from peeler to subscribing for road side assistance. This list took a long time to be put together and to complete it. Actually, we managed to get pretty close to completion just a couple of days prior to the departure.

Time To Go

Time was passing way too quickly. We had a farewell party and then all we did all day and everyday was to post things we wanted to sell on Facebook Marketplace and put things we wanted to keep inside the container.

We finished everything we needed to finish, we did a few trips to the tip to drop unwanted stuff and rubish. We were ready to go.

We packed up the caravan, which was a bit too heavy, plugged to the car and off we go... until the drama started.

The Drama

As soon as we left the house, we noticed that the lights in the caravan were not working, we knew for sure it wasn't related to the carava itself as we towed it with our previous car and it was fine. It had to be with the new car.

It was already getting dark and we decided to sleep in a hotel, fix the car first thing in the morning and hit the road.

Morning came and we went straight to the place where I installed the brake unit and battery isolator with the 12-pin plug.

I got there and told the guy what was going on, they brought the car in, made me wait a few hours until they came back to me and said the car was working fine after they installed their things and something must have happened and they couldn't do anything else that day. The earliest they could look at it was Monday and I would need to pay for the service as it had nothing to do with their installation.

My blood was already getting pretty hot at the time and I decided just to turn around and find another solution. Btw, the shop this happened was the Speedy Towbar, just in case you're wondering.

It was a Saturday and my chances to find an auto electrician was getting pretty low. Eventually, I found a place where they would take the car in but made no promises whether they could fix the car.

It took it to Chermside Auto Electrical, the guy was amazing, it took him about 20 minutes to fix the car and as he showed me there was no way the car would have worked before.

We were ready to go again.

We did it!!!

We hit the road and went to our first stop: Rainbow Beach. We still don't feel like we're actually doing it. It feels like we're on holiday and we're about to go back home.

There's a lot of adjustments ahead, but we will survive. Stay tuned :D