Well that's the vehicle bought!
I was much taken with a Toyota Landcruiser GXL which was an automatic with cruise control and electric everything - exceptionally comfortable and a very good drive but unfortunately with a petrol engine and with 290,000k on the clock. Wiser council prevailed (I was told it wouldn't last the journey, there were too many electrics to go wrong, running costs would be high and there would be a low resale value at the end of the trip) and we went for a Nissan Patrol - diesel, manual, 2005 model with a low mileage which we should be able to re-sell without too much depreciation.
The salesman - a real patter merchant - was also able to sell me a bespoke storage unit for the back with drawers and a sliding platform for a fridge, a Rhino roof rack to substantially increase luggage capacity and a fridge/freezer - all of course at a ridiculously low price (according to the patter merchant!) I think he was actually right but for me the main thing was to take away the hassle of sourcing all of these things separately and having them fitted.
Now we have the vehicle we can look more seriously at tents etc.
Drought Busters
Much of Australia has been very dry and, before leaving, Sandra often joked that when we arrived the heavens would open - AND SHE WAS RIGHT!!
Yesterday and last night saw rain over much of Australia and the Sydney area was particularly dampish - so much so that this morning we woke to find that a retaining wall between Johann's house and next door's garden had partially collapsed. As next door's garden was higher the resultant mudslide deposited mud and soil against the basement of Johann's house with a some overflow into the house itself - what a mess! Whilst not structurally significant to the integrity of the actual house it was still a bit of a pain.
However, as a silver lining to this particular cloud, as we dug out the soil it was not given back to the neighbours but put onto Johann's vegetable patch.The photo shows the area after most of the soil had been dug out and spread on the garden - it looks like a bit of re-building will be required!
One very sad aspect of the wet weather is I suspect that it will have a dampening effect on the Edinburgh Military Tattoo which is on in Sydney this week. They have built a $1m replica of Edinburgh Castle at the Sydney Football Ground and are doing the full production.
I'm going to give it a miss as, when I went to the Tattoo in Edinburgh a couple of years ago, it rained throughout - I couldn't face that again!
Tomorrow we are meeting some fairly distant Douglas relatives who we have never met before. They are down in Sydney for the Tattoo tonight and I hope the rain holds off for them.
No comments:
Post a Comment