Escaping lockdown
Whilst holed up at Howard Springs, we found a Toyota Land Cruiser Troop Carrier (Troopy for short) for sale in Melbourne; a rare find as they are in great demand by Aussies unable to holiday abroad. This was our vehicle of choice as they are easy to get spares for and also simple to convert to a live-in with the addition of a roof bed if we decide to shrink our lives even further. The owners, Keely and Scott, already had a queue of people waiting to view it once they were out of lockdown but we were able to jump the queue by paying a deposit and arranging to collect it as soon as we arrived in Melbourne. Evidently the lockdown rules allowed you to collect a vehicle you are purchasing.
So, plan A after quarantine was to fly to Melbourne, stay with big brother No.1, Ken and his wife Roberta, collect our Troopy and Kimberly Karavan that we bought back in May and drive off into the sunset. Nope, Melbourne is in hard lockdown after several days of 20+ new COVID cases. If we were to go there, we would be stuck unable to travel or even shop for the kit we needed, possibly for weeks. Plan B was to stay in Darwin for few days, hire a camper for a week and explore Kakadu National Park. All looking good, we changed our flight date and had an itinerary lined up when, at 11am two days before release, a snap three day lockdown is announced in Darwin to start at noon the same day. This would still be in place when we were due to leave quarantine so, if we were to stay in Darwin, we would be stuck there. Plan C fly to Adelaide, where there’s no lockdown, hire a camper van and spend a bit of time in South Australia then drive to Melbourne once lockdown eased. All looking good, we triple checked that we would be allowed into the state and rebooked our flights again. But the camper van was pretty pricy and we couldn’t pick it up this the day after arrival so would also need a hotel which all seemed a bit risky given we were not considered covid clear until our day 17 test. Back to the drawing board. Plan D to fly to Adelaide, hire a cheap car, book into a cabin on a campsite out of town so we can keep away from anyone until we’ve had our day-17 PCR test. Thoughts of ‘then what?’ kept us planning. Plan E included all of plan D and have our Troopy and Kimberly transported to us! That way we could set off on our adventures, not quite as planned but not constrained by lockdown. Few, looking good 😊
We chose Plan E and, provided we were bussed from Howard Springs to the airport without passing go and flew directly to Adelaide, we could avoid another two weeks quarantine in SA. We booked a 5-birth cabin at the lovely Belair National Park Holiday Park, reserved a Toyota Corola hybrid to collect at the airport and enacted Ian’s previously researched plan to buy a Troopy we hadn’t seen from people we hadn’t met and have it transported interstate by someone we didn’t know; what could possibly go wrong?
The sheer scale of Australia is humbling. It would be easy to think that there is nothing much between Darwin and Adelaide, some 3000km the equivalent of London to Gibraltar and back, but the landscape is fascinating; the dry river beds, red rock formations and salt flats which eventually give way to greenery and coastline is stunning.
We did all we could to check out the Troopy by arranging a Safe-Buy premium inspection that was carried out by a super helpful engineer called Norman. He visited the Troopy at home, met the owners and spent several hours inspecting and testing before sending a very comprehensive report, complete with 50 photos of key components of the vehicle as well as checks on the ownership history, finance and thefts. He called to discuss the report and provided further helpful information that put our minds at rest. We also chatted to the owners, Keely and Scott, and we all checked each other out. Nowadays, everyone leaves a trail of stuff to discover, something I’m relieved it didn’t start earlier in my life. The first thing thing discovered was my history of environmental protest with Extinction Rebellion but that didn’t deter them from selling to us! A video call allowed us all to chat about our lives and plans, understand why they were selling as well as see them at home, have a live tour of the Troopy and they could see our passports in our hands which made us all much more comfortable and confirmed this as the best car buying experience of our lives.
Moving our money was a painful process despite banking with neo-banks both in the UK (Monzo) and Australia (Up), we could only move a limited amount each day which required four separate international transactions via another neo-sort-of-bank (Wise) used by the other two. In this day of multimillion pound international electronic transactions, it’s very frustrating that such a transaction can take up to 10 days! In practice the transactions took between four and 24 hours but that still means someone is using our money to make money on top of the transfer fee.
The Holiday Park is just inside Belair National Park so beautiful walks were on our doorstep. On our very first day we saw a Kangeroo with a joey in her pouch, a koala asleep in the fork of a gum tree and turtles in a lake. We were pinching ourselves all day! Hear the birds by the lake here.
As it turned out, nothing went wrong and our rig arrived on time and in perfect condition ready for our trip. With the help of our friend Paul, we collected the rig from the drop-off point and drove up the steep hill to the site wondering why it seemed to be struggling a bit only to get out to the unmistakeable smell of cooked brake pads. Caravans out here weigh over 1.5T and all have hydraulic electrically operated braking systems including a parking brake, which we now know needs to be turned off for travel. Thankfully the discs weren’t discoloured and there was plenty of pad left so no apparent damage done.
We set up the Kimberly a few pitches from our cabin with the help of our friend where we stayed for a couple of days while we sought out the things we needed Keely and Scott included a wonderful care package hidden in the Troopy containing games, home made masks and treats to eat along with all the vehicle information which was the icing on the cake of the best car purchase we have ever undertaken. Ken and Roberta also kindly sent us a box bursting with essential stuff to tide us over until our belongings from the UK, that we left in a warehouse in Wembley back in June, finally catch up with us. We set about kitting out our rig which will be covered in the next instalment.
