All latitudes and longitudes given in the following diary use the Australia Geodetic Datum 1966 unless otherwise specified.
This four week trip was made between Sunday 24 March 2002 and Friday 19 April 2002, and covered most of the Great Victoria Desert. This trip diary is the result of an emormous amount of effort by my son, Andrew. Andrew took most of the photos in this diary. The panoramas are his work. He was also the one who made extensive notes during the trip. He also wrote and marked up these pages as a web based presentation. I have made some editorial changes and have added more information in parts. He has done a great job.
The main goals of the trip was to see the British atomic bomb test sites of Maralinga and Emu in South Australia, to visit some of the caves on the Nullarbor and to travel some of Len Beadell's tracks in the area. Unfortunately, we did not fully achieve these goals. By the end of the trip had we travelled on most of Len Beadell's tracks in the visited area, explored some very interesting caves, but we did not visit any of the atomic bomb test sites. We'll simply have to take another holiday!
The blue line on the map to the right shows the route we took. Apart from the Great Eastern Highway from Perth to Kalgoorlie, the remaining route looks a little like a figure of eight lying on its side. Our outwards travel was via the southern half and we came home via the northern half.
Prior to the trip, many months of careful and meticulous planning was involved. Most of the planning was made using paper and electronic maps, and a mapping software package called OziExplorer. Accurate distances were plotted to enable an estimation of the amount of fuel required. Most of the trip was in very remote areas with long distances between fuel points. In fact, we took sufficient fuel to travel in excess of 2,000 kms on sandy desert tracks without refuelling. As it turned out, our longest distance between fuel stops was from Nullarbor Motel to Laverton over rough and sandy tracks and dunes, covering nine days and a distance of about 2,100 kms!
What couldn't be planned for was the anticipated km/day that we would get driving on the desert tracks. We had planned on averaging 250km/day. What we ended up achieving was more like 150km/day! It seriously altered our travel plans once we got out there and realized how much we had over estimated how far we would get each day. Luckily, we underestimated our fuel economy. We based the fuel requirements on getting 20L/100km when we ended up getting about 13L/100km on desert tracks (it was 9L/100km on the highway!) and this was fully laden carrying in excess of 1 1/2 tonnes.
The vehicle we used was a 1998 Land Rover Defender 130 dual cab with a canvas covered frame on the ute back. The Land Rover had a long range 120 litre fuel tank replacing the original tank and had extra sill tanks installed underneath; one for fuel (75L) and one for water (60L). In addition we carried 60L of water in a bladder under a custom wooden housing in the rear seat floor area and 40L in 2 plastic drums which were lashed to a bench which replaced the rear seat. We also carried seven jerry cans of diesel; 5 in the ute tray and 2 on a swing- away holder at the rear. If you add all this up we carried about 235 litres of diesel and 160 litres of water.
In addition to the extra fuel and water tanks, the Land Rover was fitted with:-
The HF radio was the most important radio. It allowed us to check in almost every night with the National 4WD Radio Network back in Perth. We could also pick up their stations in Sandstone, Alice Springs, Adelaide, and St Marys (Tasmania).
For navigation we had the Garmin 12XL GPS receiver with an external antenna, plus Auslig 1:250,000 paper maps of everywhere we were going. Andrew also took his PDA (an Ericsson MC218) and loaded electronic copies of the maps into it and connected into the GPS for continually updating moving maps. We always knew where we were, even if we didn't always know where we were going!
On the passenger side of the roof rack is a PVC tube with a screw end that holds the tent poles and extra radio antennas.
The Shipp Shape roof top tent is great. It only takes a couple of minutes to put up and it's very reassuring to know we had a comfortable place to sleep everywhere we went. No bumpy ground, no puffing up air matresses. We left the sleeping bags up there flat and ready to get into. We also kept our clothes up there in suit bags. It is important to only carry light gear high on the vehicle.
At the very back there is a spare wheel carrier that had the second complete pare wheel, plus a carrier with two jerry cans of diesel. The first complete spare wheel was mounted on the bonnet.
The canvas covered frame completely protected the back from the weather and even kept most of the dust out. We had expected a reasonable covering of dust to get in, but even after four weeks there was hardly any dust inside. We were very impressed.
The ute back has a false floor with two drawers underneath and some compartments around the wheel arches accessed via removeable panels in the false floor. One of the panels of the false floor is designed to be able to be slid out and is intended for you to put your refridgerators on for easier access. As it turned out, we had so much gear in the back it was piled up against the fridges and we couldn't slide them out without things falling about all over the place.
In the ute section we packed:-
In the rear of the dual cabin we had:
Here you can see the front cabin. From left to right is the PDA (for moving maps and trip notes), the GPS hand held unit mounted in dash cradle, HF radio (with orange light - it's just the remote head as the actual radio is at the rear of the cabin). Above that, attached to the ceiling shelf, are the UHF CB (small box) wqhich was attached to the large VHF CB (bigger box attached to the overhead shelf).
Underneath the PDA was a small shelf where Andrew kept his 12V regulated power supply for his PDA (so he didn't need to worry about batteries as much). This power supply was connected to one of two power outlets on the dashboard. He also kept the battery charger for charging batteries AA batteries from the 12v supply. If you're interested, there are some details of the equipment Andrew took on the trip. In case you're wondering, the PDA was attached to the dash with some stick-on velcro spots.
Some statistics: