3 Night Escape

We had a small window of opportunity to give the Chev & Van a run down to Donnybrook WA and visit family on their beautiful property. It was also a chance to fit the new rear vision camera that will replace the one that’s been hidden by the Smart Cap canopy. Video instructions showed it being a fairly simple job but that didn’t take into account a couple of old blokes doing it. After stuffing up by running the cable wrong with the connections at the wrong ends, sorted that and after getting the factory plugs disconnected and new cable connected and fighting with a rubber grommet that proved difficult getting back into place we refitted all the plastic interior panels back in place. We then connected the new camera only to find it didn’t work ! Arrgh !! We rechecked the original camera worked, tested the new cable and came to the conclusion the new camera was the culprit ….luckily it was a EBay PayPal purchase and after sending a message to the seller I received a full refund. I then did what I should have at the start and that was order a new genuine Chev Silverado camera from Rock Auto in USA. This company is great to deal with and an extremely quick delivery. My last purchase of a Furl Control Module and some filters arrived in 4 days !! Unbelievable ! Here in West Australia it’s not unusual to wait 2-3 weeks to get things from the East Coadt of Australia. 

So now I wait until the camera arrives before I get to fit it and hopefully we have some success. 

Oh and Chev goes in next week for a service and hopefully fix the drivers side window that refuses to go down or up. And it’s not a fuse .. the other 3 work fine. 

 Such a beautiful entrance to the property 

Bored so we got some lights connected

Recently we had Kade & Shania from Boss Builds & Mechanical do a reconnect of lights on our Chev Silverado 2500 that GMSV don’t bother with when doing the LHD / RHD conversion.

We now have indicators in the side mirrors and front and rear facing lights in the mirrors, Tub lights and a light in the tailgate plus some other stuff connected.

We can recommend these folks, their work is excellent and utmost care was taken.

Home SWEET Home

HOME SWEET HOME 🥴🤣 And it’s raining heavy … 🫤 Seriously we do love getting home after a trip, we quickly fall back into our home life with seperate lounges and seperate TV’s 😂🤣 … As we do , we were kept busy stripping out everything not needed or used on our recent trip, we still make the mistake of taking far to many clothes and the Chev was chock full with everything we did take, plus the electric roller cover and drawers I removed so a Smart Cap canopy and full set of Decked Drawers fitted.

They were not intended changes when we left home but seeing as how we were close by and saved heaps on freight costs we decided to inconvenience ourselves for a while and create a lot of work. 🥴🙄🫤 Now we’re home and everything is cleaned and emptied we can start reorganising ‘stuff’ to go back in. New tyres fitted to the Chev, wow these round black things are expensive!! Probably be the 1st and only set I fit 🙄🤔 Yokohama Geolander X AT 285/65/20 on the factory rims. I had to source a 5th 20” alloy rim as the factory spare is a 18” steel with different profile tyre so it’s not compatible with the new sizes. At some stage a portable power station and some internal lights in the canopy to get fitted.

Madura Pass

Stayed the night in the bush at Madura Pass, had a lovely evening chatting with Tom and Katy, a couple from Sydney off on their Big Lap of Oz in a Mercedes Sprinter motor home 4WD. Wake up to another stunning Sunrise, life is good.

Walgett - Peterborough

We have left Bingara after 3 nights, rain was coming down quite steady and we didn’t feel like a day in the van so we headed off to Moree with the intention of visiting the Tilpa Hotel … We stayed a night at Walgett where we have stayed before, very busy with other vans but we scored a spot someone had recently left.

The next day we drove through Bourke following the Apple Map where we stayed the night in a pleasant bush setting at Louth near a river that appeared to be flowing mud .. certainly not the clear water of the Gwydir we had been camped next to.

Leaving Louth we followed the blue line on the Apple Maps 🙄🤔 and the Nelyambo Bridge Road turned into dirt, or more like stone and rocks .. this continued for 50/70klms and we came upon an intersection with the road to Tilpa having a ROAD CLOSED sign 😳 We had a choice of turning left to Cobar or continuing on .. another 250k of dirt road. We came across a Mazda BT50 looking very sad as it had rolled over and sat on its roof, it looked a recent crash so we stopped to check no one was inside, fortunately for them they weren’t but the amount of damage and squashed roof it didn’t look good for the occupants.

Driving on the dirt road was quite good but the fine powder grey dust kicked up for hundreds of metres behind us, we had turned the 12v Dust ‘blower’ on in the van and all was good inside when we stopped. Eventually the dirt turned to bitumen and we arrived at Willcania, fueled up and moved on. We have stopped the night at Peterborough and a sunny afternoon certainly changed to a cold night, it was zero degrees outside and 1.1 degrees by the time we got out of bed. Glad we have the Truma Gas Heater, it works a treat. The Horse is heading for home so it’s another drive, we expect to reach Kimba this afternoon.

Bingara - Walgett - Again

We left Bingara this morning after 3 nights stay, the rain was falling consistently during the night and looked to be settling in for the day so a decision was made to move on.

It rained until we got to Moree and the sun started to break through the clouds. We have stopped for the night at Walgett, this is the 3rd time we have stayed here and it’s the busiest we’ve seen, luckily for us we moved into a site that had just recently been vacated. Tomorrow we head further South West to Broken Hill if we get that far.

Inverell - Bingara AGAIN

We had good reason to call in at Inverell again as our new Honda Generator woukd mot start, the mob we bought it off 'Motor Mecca' spun us the story that the carburettor was dirty, which it could well have been as it had not been used once since we bought it off them last July. $90 to 'clean" the Carby and when i phoned them a few days later to tell them it still wouldnt stsrt they gave me another story the fuel pump is faulty and they had no parts and gave it back to me as we 'needed it' what a load of BS !!! It wasnt until we got home and had it looked at by another Honda dealer who took photos and showed me proof that Motor Mecca did NOT clean the carby, also an O ring was missing and the float bowl was bent ANOTHER $173 to get it working. A call to Honda Customer Care has produced no results ... Anyhow here we are back at Bingara and life surely can’t get any better than this now 😁😁 … we are again at the Gwydir River after a hectic few days getting the Smart Cap canopy and Decked Drawers fitted around the Gold Coast. ( ORI Electric Tub Cover & a set of ARB drawers for sale ) DECKED Australia RSi SmartCap Australia