What a long, strange trip it’s been!!

24 through 28 March 2025

This post isn’t about the wonderful things I’ve seen lately. No cool photos. Just an accounting of how shit can happen at any time.

The main backstory is that auto registration and documentation is a lot stricter in Australia than in the US. Because my Land Cruiser is more than 5 years old it has to have a safety inspection every year before registration. I knew the registration was coming up but didn’t realize I was going to need an inspection by a licensed inspection station. So, I’m in the middle of nowhere, serious outback in Western Australia (WA), and my registration is from the state of New South Wales (NSW). So I called them to see how to manage. I was told that I can get it inspected in WA but I have to mail the original copy of the inspection report to NSW. But then when she checked a little closer, it turned out that there was a problem. When they did the suspension upgrades the car was “engineered” and the report filed with NSW. Anytime you make a big change to a vehicle it has to be checked by an engineer. I guarantee you that a lot of the cars routinely running around Santa Fe would fail the engineering report. Anyway, mine was filed but I should have taken the original copy to an NSW office and done a change report. That has to be done in person. I had a few options but the only ones that I considered were sending the report and an official letter giving someone else permission and then they could go to an office in person and take care of it. I thought of a couple of people who might do that but just wasn’t really comfortable asking them to do so. Plus, time was kind of running short. From where I was, it would have taken at least a day and a half to drive somewhere and get everything straight and in the mail. Then a few days mail transit and then I had to hope that my designated person would go right away. If it’s late, I’m without registration and therefore without insurance until it’s done and registered. So I decided on option 2: Drive all the way to NSW and take care of it myself. That was a 3500 km drive. And I did it in 3 ½ days. That would be some driving in the US but it was really something in Australia. The first day a lot of the roads were unsealed. Then almost all tarmac but all 2 lane roads with maximum speeds of 110 kph and bunches of roadtrains on the roads. (Wait for another blog post and I’ll tell you about roadtrains.) Almost every night I was setting up camp in the dark. But I made it by Thursday night so I could get things done on Friday, before the weekend. A bunch of glitches along the way but I got it done.

This is an accounting of the trip. Start to Finish.

I left the place where I was bush camped along the (almost dry) Murchison River at around 1:00 PM. I’d spent the morning figuring out what was needed and contemplating my different options for fixing the problem. Drove for a couple of hours to the Mullewa Post Office to check on a package I was expecting. It wasn’t there but that’s a whole other story and I’ll just let it go. Then I drove on to another bush camp at the Xantippe Water Tank. I didn’t get in until well after dark. This was mostly on tarmac but it’s disconcerting to drive after dark for fear of a kangaroo jumping out in front of you. If you want details of the drive, you’ll have to look it up on Google maps but it was 417 km.

The next morning I got up pretty early but spent time checking the car and adding air to my tires. When I bought new tires they didn’t put enough air in them and I knew that it’d make a difference for long days on tarmac. So I drove to the Balladonia Road House for dinner and a beer. Camping at the Road House didn’t appeal to me so I drove on, about 40 km, in the dark, to a roadside overnight spot. I pulled in kind of late and just set things up and went to bed. In the morning, when I could see the surroundings; there were about a dozen of us camped in the roadside stop. Most of the others were folks in caravans. It was about 910 km that day.

Coffee and a little breakfast and on the road again. This is the start of the longest straight road in Australia. Driving on there are actually some pretty nice views and scenery. I stopped at the WA – SA border to fix myself some lunch and get rid of the few veggies I had left in my fridge. There isn’t a quarantine point here when headed east but heading west you have to stop to get searched for veggies before entering WA. Then it was a drive across the Nullarbor and along the cliffs overlooking the Great Australian Bight. This is a pretty desolate area but with it’s own real beauty. Not a lot of traffic but not a desolate drive either. Coming into Ceduna, in the dark, I hit the quarantine station and was “inspected” for fruit and veg. I knew it was coming so had already thrown the little that I had away. Camped for the night at the Ceduna Foreshore Caravan Park. This wasn’t cheap and got high ratings on WikiCamps but it was one of my least favorite camp sites. Parked up close to everyone else and lots of caravans. Kind of like camping in a WalMart parking lot when it’s full of shoppers. 960 km for the day.

Got up early the next morning planning to get rolling for a long hard day. But when I was packed up, coffee made and ready to go the “radio” in my car went south. It was playing really loud and I couldn’t turn the volume down and it was beeping constantly. I thought I might be able to fix it but after close to an hour of dinking around, no luck. So I unplugged it, went to get fuel, and headed out. So now I’ve got no music to drive by. The “radio” is a head unit that we put in when I added all of the interior upgrades. It’s a Chinese branded Android unit with a pretty large screen. I liked the Android setup because I can play my own music, load map programs, and a few other useful things. But this one had been giving me intermittent problems from the get go. And all of the documentation get’s the Nikita Award for being poorly translated from the Chinese. I suspect that it was defective from the start with an intermittent defect. So in some ways having it finally fail is kind of a relief. I haven’t yet decided what I’ll do about replacing it but that can wait. Anyway, the day’s drive was quite varied. A lot of grain farming and then some drive along the water – Port Augusta. Then into the Murray River area which is a major agricultural area with fruit orchards and lots of vineyards. I made it to the Mildura Buronga Discovery Parks caravan park well after dark. That was about 1010 km for the day.

That got me to Friday morning and my first task was to go to a car wash and hose the Troop Carrier off. It was covered in red dust. Then to the mechanic to get inspected. There were some glitches here but in the end I got the inspection paperwork and took it along with the information from the suspension upgrade to the Service NSW office and after a little work and online searching by the woman in the office I completed everything, paid my registration fee and now I’m all legal. It was a real ordeal but in the end I’m happy to be done with it and relieved of the stress.

That’s the end of that story. I’ve got a few interesting posts to make of things I did a few weeks ago and I’ll see when I can get to them. Now I’ll take care of a few things around here, like cleaning up some stuff (there’s still a bit of red dust in the Troopy) and I’ll start a somewhat slower return to WA.

The Troopy

Photos taken about 24 February 2025

I’ve been asked by several people about my vehicle and how I’m traveling Australia so I thought I’d put together a bunch of photos and some description. It will just tell about the Troopy, not about driving and camping in Australia. These are interesting topics themselves because there are notable similarities and significant differences to the US. To start, the vehicle is a Toyota Land Cruiser, 78 Series. This vehicle is made in two versions. One is the two door version that I have and it’s commonly called a Troop Carrier or Troopy, in Aussie. There is a 4 door version that I think is almost the same and it’s referred to as a station wagon. There is also a pickup version, ute (for utility vehicle) in Aussie, that is almost the same but it’s the 79 series. I think I see a lot more of the 79 series vehicles than the 78s. None of these were imported to the United States so they cannot be brought in and registered unless they are 25 years old and qualify as “antiques”. So don’t ask me if I’m going to bring it back…not possible. Mine is a 2018 that I bought used with about 97,000 km on the clock. It’s a V8 diesel engine with a 5 speed manual gearbox. Obviously; right hand drive and that means shifting with your left hand. When I bought it, it had the Alucab roof conversion that makes into a bed. It had the winch, a few other modifications including some drawers made by Drifta and an old version refrigerator. I drove it around New South Wales about a year ago for about 2 weeks and decided that it was definitely insufficient. So, I left it with a company called Project Overlander for more fitout. In fact we basically threw away the drawers, the crude solar setup, and the refrigerator. Now it’s very well set up for the kind of touring that I’ve been doing. It’s not as comfortable or spacious as an adventure van like a Sprinter. But it is capable of serious four wheel driving, although I haven’t done much of that.

Here’s what it looks like just sitting in the forest.

And when things are opened up to get ready to camp, it looks like this.

A few things to note. The table that comes down on the side is also where my Maxtrax are stored. It takes only a few minutes to pop the roof up and put the spreaders in the little vestibule. That vestibule mainly serves to provide shade and protection from rain, it’s not like the entry vestibule on a lot of roof top tents. The black box on the rear bumper is designed for a Weber grill but I don’t have one so it’s where I keep my kitchen gear like camp stove and pots and pans. The little opening next to the table is water and compressed air and I’ll say more about that below.

I’ve got lots of different lights I can use and here are some of them. You can also see the camp stove on the table and the gull wind window opened to the interior of the Troopy.

That’s the basic exterior. On the interior, here are a couple of pictures with the bed down and with it up. When it’s up I can fully stand up and move around. That’s useful when the weather is kind of bad.

Looking at the back you can see the two drawers, accessible from outside, the fridge and bench seat. Inside, there are two sizeable drawers and a couple of large storage shelves. I use these for clothes and extraneous gear. I brought way too many clothes but don’t want to just throw them all away. This storage could probably be better used.

There’s also a pull out table that is great for working on my laptop, like right now, and for any other writing. I have, a few times, eaten in here and even done minor cooking. I have a single induction hob but haven’t felt the need to use it yet. Most of my cooking is outside.

These next couple show the fridge and the two rear drawers that I use mostly for storing food and a few other items that I have to get at relatively often. These are really long drawers with a lot of space in them.

Not shown are a couple of storage areas under the bench right behind the seats. The area behind the driver’s seat is where the lithium house battery is stored and there are another couple of storage places. I have a chemical toilet in one of them. I’ve never used it because I’ve always found some kind of toilet or been able to dig a cat hole. Both of those are preferable to using the toilet even though they are easy to manage and don’t smell when used properly.

There are two things that were done in the upgrade that are hard to show. First, they added sound insulation to the interior. When everything was removed from the car they put a thin layer of foam through a lot of the inside. It’s still not a quiet car but it’s a lot quieter than I recall from before. And the road noise in the high frequencies is reduced. I think this makes a difference. The other is that they wrapped the exterior. The product used is called BushWrapz and it’s a sort of self healing film that is installed on most of the exterior. It made a big difference in the appearance, just making it shinier and smoother. The big advantage is that I’ve been through places where trees have scratched the paint and there’s almost no bush striping. These weren’t exactly cheap and I wondered if they were worth it when making the early decisions. Well, they were!

As for the mechanicals… This is kind of arcane but in its original configuration the series 78 and 79 have different tracks, front and back. The front track is slightly wider than the rear. There’s a long history but it can make for problems driving in sand and mud because you are setting 4 tracks instead of 2. I had them upgrade the entire suspension, including a track correction, which means modifying the rear differential. OK. Here are a couple of shots of the upgrades. In the second picture you can see the 90 liter water tank that sits right behind the rear axle. That required modifications of the exhaust as well.

The vehicle came with a winch when I bought it and all I’ve done is to check out the winch rope and add an aluminum shackle instead of the heavy steel hook.

We also put in a complete electrical house system that includes a 180 watt solar panel and 200 amp hour lithium battery. (no photos) There are extensive Redarc controls and fusing and an inverter so I can get 240 volts for things like charging my laptop and Starlink.

There is a shower setup (photos below) and it even includes a heater to get hot water for the shower. I have used the shower but never needed the heater but here it is, behind the passenger seat.

The water tank has a pump that provides water next to the Maxtrax table. In the small panel you can see water out, water in, and compressed air out. It’s equipped with an ARB compressor that is sufficient to fill the tires after airing down for bad conditions. Airing up takes about 20 minutes or so.

And here’s the shower. The shower head and hose are removed most of the time but it’s an easy hook up. The shower head is on a suction cup mount so it can be positioned as desired. If you look above the shower you’ll see the shower tent that can be opened to give privacy if you want to shower in a populated area.

Lastly the head unit was replaced with a Chinese brand Android tablet. Unfortunately the version of Android and the underlying software is pretty hard to understand. But it does the things I really want. It plays music, I can run a few different mapping software apps, and it has a backup camera.

That’s the majority of the descriptions of the system. I’m pretty happy with it. Project Overlander is one of the more expensive companies for doing this kind of outfitting. But there are several reasons I really like their work. It’s all really well done and seamlessly integrated. I like the fact that the majority of the components are powder coated aluminum. That’s lighter than plywood and probably more durable. And, it just feels good to me. If I could start all over again there are a few things I’d do a little differently, mostly a different rooftop conversion, but overall it’s working well. I carry a box of spare things and a very complete set of “ropes” and pulleys that go on the floor when I’m traveling. I avoid anything on the roof rack except the solar panel and a shovel. For reasons of aerodynamics (fuel consumption because the Troopy itself is an aerodynamic brick) and the fact that much more weight on the rack and I wouldn’t be able to open it when setting up.

Israelite Bay

Date of Adventure about 2 February 2025 to about 5 February 2025

Israelite Bay is a relatively isolated bay not too far east of Esperance. If you look at the map, the drive from Esperance to Boyatup is tarmac or graded dirt. Then it turns a lot more difficult.

At the start of the rough track, I dropped tire pressures to about 22 psi and started on the deep sand. As long as I was in the sand, I could keep a speed of close to 40 kph. You’ve got to keep moving in that sand or you’re sure to bog. But a bunch of the drive was really rough corrugations. Big enough that I couldn’t drive fast enough to skim across the top. And the track is narrow and winds enough to make high speeds pretty dangerous. Unfortunately, videos with an action cam are automatically corrected a bit for bounce and jerking so you can’t appreciate what it is really like driving this track. But you can get some idea.

But in some ways the scariest part of the drive in came towards the end. I was following tracks that had been set by earlier drivers coming into the bay. They ended up along the edge of a salt lake. These are notorious for looking solid on the surface but being really soft and muddy underneath. So if you get out on one and break through it can mean bogging and serious difficulty getting out. So I had to cruise along the edge, hoping for the best, until I found a place to turn around. Then I was able to drive back along the edge and over a small dune to a safer track.

Starting the drive in, there’s plenty of official warnings. The dieback mentioned is a disease that kills the native plants and is terribly destructive. I’ve seen lots of warnings about it and some places even have places to scrape your shoes off before hiking.

And, there’s a major washout along the road. Well marked with a “detour”. It’s pretty indicative of the kinds of problems caused by rain on some of the outback tracks.

So the drive was somewhere between 40 kph in sand and 15 kph on the corrugations and took a couple of hours. It was an interesting drive and well worth doing. It had been windy for a long time so it was good to find a campsite that was well protected. In the bay area there are a huge number of campsites, kind of like this one.

In the three days I spent camped here I saw 3 vehicles drive by. I was camped pretty close to the main trail that leads from the track in to the ruins and other campsites. Never talked to anyone. This is a really pretty bay but not exactly a swimming beach. The water is cold and lots of seaweed. And the whole time I was there was pretty windy. I only had a few opportunities to get the drone up for a bit of overview.

There are a number of ruins in the bay, including a long abandoned jetty.

I never did figure out what they were shipping from here.

There are several ruins in the general area. One set of ruins includes a structure, I hesitate to call it a building, that is clearly occupied at some times. This isn’t a “National Park” in the sense that I doubt if this is a caretaker’s cabin.

There was a telegraph station in Israelite Bay. It was clearly a pretty big deal because the main structure is large and impressive.

Like a lot of these remote ruins of telegraph stations, mine areas, and homesteads; there are a couple of small graveyards. I spent a large part of one morning just walking the area and checking out the graveyards. My maps indicated other single gravesites but I couldn’t’ find them. I’m not sure if the map is wrong or they are just so overgrown and hard to find.

The last thing I’ll mention about Israelite Bay is that there is a small lake area, pretty close to where I camped, that is really pink. It must be the red algae that seem to be relatively common in these salty lakes in Oz. Still photos just don’t show it at all well and the wind was usually strong enough to make drone flying impossible but I did manage to get a bit of video of it. I’m not sure why, but I find these salt lakes and salt flats (what we would call playas in the Western US) really interesting. I see them all over and will have to make a point of taking more photos and posting them.

Camping Over the Last Few Weeks

Date of Adventure about 29 January to about 23 February 2025

This posting is just a way to cover some time that has been interesting but not super exciting and to get some of the photos into the blog so you guys can see what Australia is like. After crossing the Nullarbor the only really exciting trip was a drive to Israelite Bay from Esperance. I’ll do a posting of that trip after I get some of this stuff taken care of. Just to put it all in perspective, before getting down to details the travel has been mostly on tarmac. I’m in a place where kludging a map is not reasonable so you can look it all up online. Google is your buddy here. The travel was: End of Nullarbor in Norseman. Then drive down to Esperance. Esperance is supposed to be a really great place but I was a little disappointed. Camping is difficult. I camped about 30 km out of town in a nice campground but it was pretty expensive. From there I went to Israelite Bay. You’ll have to wait until I post that trip. Then over to Denmark, which is named for a person, not for the country of Denmark. I thought Denmark was a nice town with little cafés and shops. I camped at a vineyard that was nice even though the campsites were really close. The wind blew like snot!! In fact I’d been in wind for a while, that’s part of the reason I didn’t care that much for Esperance. From there I headed west with the plan of camping on the beach at a place called Black Point. Apparently it’s a basaltic cliff over the Southern Ocean. Well, I didn’t make it because there was a bush fire in the area and when I got about 30 km away the smoke was serious and I was supposed to turn right in the direction of the smoke. Even though none of the roads were closed I decided to give up and head on towards Margaret River. Earlier in the day there had been a lot of side roads that were closed because of fire. Since I use an app that gives information about fires, cyclones, etc. I checked and the general area I was headed wasn’t closed but it did get closed two days later. Anyway, on to Margaret River. This is a wine region and I will say that I really liked the town and the wineries. Again, camping choices were pretty limited for my types of campgrounds. I did camp in a “caravan park” about 10 km out of town. Campsites were closer than I like but it was well done, cheap, and they have great, hot showers. That’s not a trivial thing when you travel the way I am. So I spent six nights. This is definitely a resort/tourist area. I really liked the town of Margaret River. And the wineries were just great. There are a couple of famous capes along the ocean here. Cape Leeuwin has a famous lighthouse and it’s the point where the Southern Ocean meets the Indian Ocean. And then just up the way is Cape Naturaliste with another lighthouse and some famous rock formations, including Sugarloaf Rock. It ain’t the Sugarloaf that I knew as a kid.

I’ve left Margaret Bay, headed to Perth to take care of some small things. I’m camped in a National Park, in a serious gum tree forest with no internet. I’ll probably manage to get enough of this together that I can get it online in a few days or so. I’ll drive a few km away to where the trees have been cleared so Starlink will work. Damn you Elon!!

OK let’s get to the pictures with little commentary so you can see what it’s been like.

At one point, before Norseman I’d planned to drive down to the ocean and camp on the beach. Well, I got to this point and the track was really gnarly. It was evening and the wind was blowing like crazy so I didn’t take the track in this photo to the beach, I turned around and found free camping along the road.

Norseman is pretty uninspiring but it’s the end of the Nullarbor, maybe plus a little. But like a lot of the towns I’ve been through it was a mining town. Gold was found in the area. They have maintained a 30 km unsealed road with a lot of remnants and ruins from the days. This one is interesting and a little hard to see. Originally there was some gold mined here but it gave out and later they started open digging for iron. That’s a pretty big change.

Like all of these remote old mining places there are frequent graves that are pretty interesting.

Along the route there was a headframe for one of the gold mines. This is interesting because almost all of the headframes I’ve seen in the US are made of wood. I don’t know when this one was used but it’s mostly metal

And as I was kind of looking for a campsite in the area, by the dam that was used in the early times, I encountered this guy on a web that crossed the track. I’ve seen a few spiders since I’ve been here but I think this might be the largest. It was weird because even though I shook the web around this dude didn’t move at all.

Just driving around I’ve run into all sorts of public artwork. Some pretty cool and some just ordinary.

The last couple of weeks haven’t had as many abandoned homesteads and old mines as I had in the Flinders and east of here but they crop up from time to time. Here’s one that I really wanted to explore but there were no trespassing signs on the fence. That’s not something I see a lot of, no trespassing.

The little towns are actually quite different and interesting but by now I’ve been through so many of them, I think I’m getting just a little jaded. But still… Here are a couple of pictures I took in Salmon Gums. For the uninitiated, gums are eucalyptus trees and there are literally over 100 varieties. Most look quite different from those in California. But up close they have the same leaves and similar bark.

Here are a few pictures taken close to a campsite I was in after Denmark. It is along a pretty dry river, although there’s still water in the pools. And it gives you some idea of the eucalyptus forests.

There are interesting hotels (with pubs) and roadhouses all along the trip. At first I’d stop at a lot of them but I’m getting a bit more discriminating… Too much beer!

Margaret River is a nice town. And it’s close to Cape Leeuwin where the Southern and Indian Oceans meet.

North of Margaret River is Cape Naturiste. It’s popular as well especially for Sugarloaf Rock

Of course part of my reason for visiting Margaret River was to try out some of the wines. Most of the vineyards I visited were small, boutique places. But the first one I stopped at, just because it was on the way, was pretty fancy.

I stayed in Margaret River long enough to get to their Saturday morning Farmers Market. I’ve been to a few markets. This one is small and doesn’t have the strict rules that Santa Fe Farmers Market does but they make a big effort to keep it local. It was an opportunity to get some non-supermarket food.

And the scenery has been different and inspiring for the majority of the trip