The Monkey

November 4, 2018

Sunday’s Big Breakfast

Black Ben cooked up a storm aboard the good ship Opulence and all on board were treated to his scrambled eggs, mushrooms and bacon. then it was off further down the river. We eventually found a good spot to pull in only to be confronted by a snarling dog as we were pulling in. A few conciliatory words from our group seemed to temporarily sooth the savage beast, but I’m guessing she won’t win any tourism awards for customer service. Once again it was around the fire for another night of fun and games. At this rate I’ll have to go on a holiday to get over the late nights.

November 3, 2018

Saturday Night at Murray

Pulled into the southern bank of the Murray River downstream from Echuca after we found a top spot for the two boats to moor. We had dinner on board our own boats before gathering around the roaring fire that Red Ben had prepared for us. We were entertained by Lachie’s singing while Black Ben accompanied him on guitar. Really fun night that everyone seemed to enjoy. Went to bed at a reasonable hour as we prepared to face the big breakfast in the morning.

November 2, 2018

Houseboat Down The Murray

We arrived in Echuca at lunchtime. Jenny and Sharon headed out to the supermarkets to stock up on more food for our planned houseboat cruise before we headed down to the houseboat moorings to load up. I’m surprised the boats were still floating by the time all the grog and food was stored away. Steve, Andrea, Ally and Ben arrived around seven so, along with the McCrackens, we headed up to the Shamrock Hotel for dinner where the rest of the McCracken crew arrived to join us for dinner. Then it was back home to sleep on the houseboats to depart Saturday at 8.30 am

September 12, 2018

Stairway to Heaven

We decided that we were going to be brutal in our assessment of where we will be travelling from now on. Jenny has given up on the really rough outback tracks after we finally worked out that it was the corrugations that wrecked our batteries (broken plates). That still leaves the vast majority of Oz available to us but it means that we can cut back on what we carry, which in turn means that we can reduce our weight and therefore running costs.

To this end we have decided that one spare tyre is sufficient and that we could leave the extending ladder home if we installed a fixed, lightweight ladder on the side of the vehicle. We have to be able to get to the roof for maintenance/repairs to the solar panels and additionally it will provide a bit of a photography platform. So now we just have to get back on the road after this year’s sad events.

Can’t wait till the new year.

March 31, 2018

Getting Closer to Perfection

A rather late update to our progress on the electrical situation with the motorhome. After replacing the fridge, the freezer and the solar controller things were looking up. The batteries were charging fully and the solar system was maintaining the power while just the freezer was running. As soon as I introduced any other load the system would fall over. I had bought a battery tester online and the one that I got measured cold cranking amps – not the best way to measure deep cycle batteries. In any case it said the batteries were fine but I was starting to have my doubts so I bought another battery tester that applied a known load (100 amps) to the battery and measured the response. It cost me a grand total of $24 which would have saved me a fortune if I had bought it first. The test showed that there was a faulty cell in one battery and that the other was getting towards the end of its life (which only figures as it had been carrying most of the load for who knows how long). I ended up replacing both batteries and slightly reduced the amount of storage (270 Ah compared to 300 Ah) to improve charging time. This seems to have done the trick with the fridge and freezer running on hot days without fully depleting the batteries. My tests showed that we still had 70% capacity following a hot, overcast day.

Only on the road trialling will tell us the true story so I guess we will wait until then for real confirmation.

January 9, 2018

Still Losing Our Cool

Well Christmas has come and gone so I’ve been able to do some more testing. It turns out that the MPPT Solar Controller is actually drawing more power than is going in – probably explains why it wasn’t working properly at Winton. The new freezer is much more efficient but the fridge still seems to be using to much power so I will run another series of tests tomorrow .

September 20, 2017

Losing Our Cool

One of the problems we came across during our trip was the current draw of our chest freezer and the upright fridge in hot weather. We were finding that we were drawing more power than we ever had before. A temporary solution was to cryovac all our meat then freeze it in the chest freezer along with a bag of ice. It worked well enough but it showed that something wasn’t right because we had never run out of power overnight before.

When we got home I ran a few experiments to see if I could track down the problem. I was able to use a temperature logger to see how the freezer was working and compared it to the ambient temperature. It was from that experiment that I discovered that the freezer was not turning off when it reached the correct temperature. We decided to bite the bullet and buy a replacement freezer as the old one was seven years old. When the new freezer arrived we were able to run it on one of the auxiliary batteries for three days without flattening the battery completely. Similarly the fridge ran for a couple of days without problems on just one battery. We had struck a problem earlier in the trip when our solar panels weren’t charging properly because of a dirty connection. Once that was cleaned the system then worked properly again. With this in mind we purchased a blanket type solar panel that will allow us to add extra charging to the system when we pull in of a night. I also added some computer fans that turn on when the compressor of the fridge or freezer is running so that we get better air movement over the compressors and the cooling coils. I also ran new 240V wiring so that when we are plugged into mains power the fridge and freezer run directly off the mains power and allows our batteries to fully charge while connected to the power.

I’ll wait till after Christmas to experiment on how the system now works off grid in hot weather.

September 14, 2017

The Usual Housekeeping

Having returned home its time for our usual review of the motorhome’s performance. We’ve reached the conclusion that we probably won’t be doing any more of the real rugged off road tracks in the future so we are going to alter our setup to suit.

This means removing the things we are unlikely to need in future (like the Max Trax used to get out sandy or muddy situations). We are also removing the second spare wheel, the tyre is blown anyway and as we will probably spend the majority of our time on bitumen we don’t really need the second wheel. We are also removing the hand winch and the bungee straps. I’ve disconnected the HF Radio so no VKS737 rescues anymore.

In addition to these changes I have to go through all the little equipment failures and some of the more important ones (both rear shock absorbers are stuffed). Then I’ll rethink the layout of the under bed storage.

September 1, 2017

And Then We’re Home

Well all good things must come to an end and so it is with our holiday. After 13,050 kilometres, 1686 litres of fuel at an average cost of $1.49 litre, 20 nights at caravan parks and 28 free camps we have returned home. We saw some amazing stuff including the light show at Uluru, got eaten by mosquitoes at Kakadu, ate fresh fish at Karumba and partied most nights (well as much as old people party).

Thanks to our fellow travellers for their company, to Bronny for looking after our Molly so well and for Lyn for keeping an eye on the house.

Until next year …

August 31, 2017

Easing Ourselves Out of Holiday Mode.

What is it with New South Wales and cold mornings? Minus 3.5° this morning, more frost on the vehicles. We only had a short morning’s drive this morning – into Wodonga for a farewell cuppa.

As we returned to our vehicles we noticed coolant under The Turtle. Fortunately RACV Total Care came to the rescue and they diagnosed a faulty water pump, so the Willies are having an unplanned extended break in Wodonga. Every cloud has a silver lining!