In case it matters to the reader: I've decided not to spare words in this blog. In other words you may, at times, find obscenities and inappropriate references. So don't let your boss or your eight year old kid read over your shoulder. After almost a week in Australia I feel like I haven't gotten enough accomplished. You would think that it would only take a couple of days to purchase all of the small stuff needed to start touring. Maybe that's right but I've been at it for a week and feel like I might be halfway there. What do I need? Well all of the kitchen and cooking gear from a stove to knives and forks. Most of the bedding and linens. Lots of recovery and operating gear for the Trooopy. And then all of the tools and spares that might be needed in the middle of nowhere. So, what I've decided to do is to get as much as I reasonably can and then head off camping for a week on my way to Brisbane. There are a bunch of good stores in Brisbane so I can fill in when I get there. And I've wasted a lot of time with car rentals. My original rental company pretty much fucked me over - twice. First of all, my flight was cancelled and I was a day late. Called them from LA and they said they couldn't return any money because the car was already there. I mean I called about 15 or 0 hours before I would have been on the ground. At the airport I asked if I might extend the time if needed and was told, "Yeah just let us know about a day ahead". So I called early in the morning before and the dude told me he had to talk to the boss and he'd call back. Well, no one called so I called them around one in the afternoon and was told no way. That meant I had to return the car and rent another one from a different company.
So I spent a shitload of time driving into the airport in Sydney dropping off one car and picking up another. So, although they were pretty cheap and the folks I talked to at the actual site were pretty nice, I'd not recommend Simba car rentals, just because of their relatively inflexible policies and way of working. Ended up with a Goldcar rental and they were pretty good but I ended up paying more than I would have.
Nothing more in this posting, just some whines. I'll go ahead and put this up and will write some more reasonable stuff in the next one.