Drivers Eye view on the way to Port Headland
And Broome is absolutely full of Kombi's!!!!!
Good to see so many have made it this far. Almost as good as Byron Bay.
hi good to see you are up and running ok , there paying $30.00 an hour for fitters in kal now $1600.00 a wekk after tax !!! brome is a nice place are you a the canavan park palm beach ?
Looking for that special lady : PM me for coffee & cake
Yes have been looking at the job market as I go. Might come back this way after I get home looking for some well paid jobs. The Pilbra and Iron Ore mining looks good to me!
Broome is absolutely packed, school holidays, week end and the "stairs to the moon" in action was not a good time to turn up, we are in the PCYC oval which is an overflow for the caravan parks.
Lucky we only plan to stay a couple of days. The solitude in the middle of nowhere is more our style
Richard🙂
[Edited on 2-7-2004 by Andy]
Great updates Richard, I've been reading along with much interest. Great to see the kombi getting around without any major hassles. Good to see you're enjoying the trip!! I'll look forward to seeing your website after you get back. It's gonna take you months to build it!!! :thumb
Kruizin Kol
Hi Richard
Great to your enjoying yourself. What speed have you been cruising on with the old girl, especially across the nullarbor, when I went accross on the bike the north winds were very strong. What sort of tyre wear are you getting, do you have light truck tyres fitted or just radials? Also how is the fuel consumption going, what sort of Kays to the tank are you getting IE nullarbor and city.
Man your living my dream, Im always glad to see PPL doing this sort of thing, everyone should do it just once!
PS I finally bought that Oval I was always talking about!
Good Luck for the rest of the trip and take it easy.
When you get back Ill have to come and visit!!
Robo......😎
[Edited on 2-7-2004 by Robo]
Boxer Power
Member of DMLRK.....Die Mittler Lebuns Resto Komeradschaft
Thanks Guys.
Yeah Kol, the web page was supposed to be updated as we went. My excuse is we are having tooooo much fun :thumb
Rob, yep all is great, you'll have to get out there. We have slowed from sitting on ~90 in Tas, ~95-100 in Vic and SA to ~80 since we started the Nullabor crossing. This has changed fuel economy from ~6.5km/L to ~7.7km/L (best so far is 7.9km/L). With the extra tank we carry ~100L, but we fill up ~every 600km to be safe.
Tyres are hard to say. We are travelling on the 4WD all terains (light truck). Fronts were new when we left ~15-16000km now and still almost full even tread. Due to a blow out we fitted two new tyres to the rear in Perth. The tyres that came off had ~50-60000km on them and still had a good ~20000km to make them illegal. Wear hasn't really changed on the trip to previous. I suppose we are doing ~5-10% on varying dirt roads, the rest is bitumen. Currently running ~50psi rear, 42psi front to handle the ~2.3 tonne load.
Cheers,
Richard
[Edited on 3-7-2004 by Andy]
safe and happy travellin Richard... we still have not left on the trek yet but have sold house and will go to nth qld this week and set up there before we choof off. keep the updates coming
tony g (subavan)
they took me away haha, hope the medication works
Hi again. The next instalment from Andy’s adventures!
Well we made it into Broome and saw the “stairway to the moon” a natural show when a full moon rises over the mud flats with a low tide. The reflection of the moon light looks like a stairway to it. It was very cloudy but we did get to see the spectacle for a minutes. There really wasn’t that much else for us to see in Broome and spent one of our days there heading north to one of the secluded beaches, rather than stay in the very crowded ones in town. I think it is becoming another Cairns.
From there we push on to Derby which is north east of Broome. Derby is getting into the Kimberly country, another amazing part of WA. There’s not so much industry here now, just a few very small mines, a little cattle, some fishing and pearl farms. It is also just south of the Buccaneer Archipelago, which is a maze of hundreds of Islands. We take a scenic flight over them in a 6 seater plane which takes a little over an hour. The highlight of the flight is to see the “horizontal falls”. Derby has the highest tides in Australia at over 11m. This combined with two narrow gaps in the ranges along the coast has water rushing in and out of the small gap as the tide rushes in and out, an amazing sight.
From Derby we head into the heart of the Kimberlys and the Gibb River Road. It’s all dirt roads now ranging from reasonable roads to “4WD only” roads which I love to take Andy down, much to Cath’s horror. We see some of the beautiful gorges along the way which provide an oasis in the otherwise dry landscape and enjoy a cool dip in each one. Access to one Gorge involved a number of creek crossings which had water over Andy’s front bumper which he took in his stride. Of the sights we saw were Bell Gorge, Windjana Gorge, Tunnel Creek, Fitzroy crossing (and Giekie Gorge) and Halls Creek.
We also rescued a stranded family in a falcon Station wagon which we towed ~50km on dirt road to get them to help!
Next stop was Kununurra which is on the Ord river, and north of the Ord Dam and Lake Argyle. It’s an area rich in agriculture using the wet season rains caught by the dam. The “man made lake” is 70km high (north/south) and you need an open sea licence to take a boat out on it!!!
From here we took another 2 hour flight which passed over the lake, Argyle Diamond mine, the river and farming land, and the highlight of the “Bungle Bungles”. In there the weather warn ground has left a maze of beehive shaped rocks thought the area which makes a spectacular sight from the sky. We avoided driving in there as reports we heard was it took ~4hrs in a 4WD to cover 50km. I don’t know if Andy is up to that much punishment after all the dirt roads we have seen recently!
From Kununurra we head out of WA and into our last state/Territory, the NT. We head into Katherine and get to canoe the gorge there. A large and spectacular gorge with a number of “rapids” to carry the canoe over to get up stream. We spend a day in the gorge canoeing, swimming and having fun, such hard work!
From there we start heading North again and stop in to see Edith Falls then onto Leitchfield NP. It’s a small NP only ~100km south of Darwin based around a series of creeks and rivers, most of which keep running through the dry season. Again a very pretty area and a diverse landscape to see. On on short walk you can pass from low scrub to dense tree lined river, through Palms and into rainforest. Truly amazing.
All that fun and we have arrived in our last capital city, Darwin for a re-supply and quick service before heading into Kakadu to see what it’s all about.
Till next time keep well,
Richard.
Andy going for a swim!
Andy on the beach near Broome
Taking on the Termites in NT
A fellow Veedubber. This guy brought his with him from Germany. An ex police Syncro
Apparently some kind VW people helped him in Melb with some FI problems.
Anyone from the forum??
Looks like you're having a great time Richard, look forward to chatting about it when you get back.
Graham
65 Meyers Manx
68 Country Buggy (KO 367)
68 Country Buggy (KO 669)
68 Country Buggy (KO 789)
68 Country Buggy (KO 815)
68 Baja Bug
76 Baja Kombi Twincab
'XCELLENT'
Just reading this, i've come to realise we should have not sold our kombi...therefore will be selling the 4WD and grabing a kombi...
Steve
Sounds like your having a great time & the photos are really cool.Thanx for all the updates, its great to read about your fantastic trip.🙂
So cool! I love the photos, just beautiful! Cheers, Aurel
Howdy all. A quick update from Katherine in the NT.
We have been through Litchfield NP and Kakadu as well as visit Darwin and on our way south again.
We will go as far as Tennent Creek before heading for QLD and back to Brissy the quick way.
I'll post some more pics next time.
Cheers,
Richard
Ahh.... the end of a great trip!
We are back in Brissy after almost 5 months and 27,000km on the road (and wishing it was longer!!).
From Katherine (NT) we came back into QLD and stayed at a number of inland towns on our way home, namely Mt Isa, Winton, Longreach, Blackwater, Theodore and Toowoomba as well as visiting many more.
Andy coped well (well not really but he got us back 😀 ) and we are back to the grind stone to pay for it all now :jesus
Anyway I promise a trip report and more pics soon, and I will do up my web page in the coming weeks.
Cheers,
Richard
PS: Thanks again to all those who helped us along the way. Long live the forum!
Congratulations on a great trip! I hope to do it myself one day. Thanks for sharing the stories and pics 😀
Did you know that if you'd gone the other way round it would have been 28km shorter 😉
1959 red & white Beetle
1975 Kombi camper
when you unpack & remove all the extra do-daddds & unneccessary stuff Andy wil at least for a few days be perceived to be going like a rocket 😀
Please, I need drivers side window regulator (winder mechanism) for my '54
Not to mention the huge sigh of relief from poor old Andy.
😀
Time to start preparing for a Cape York trip now I recon.
Richard
