Go West 'Ole Man

River crossing on the Telegraph Track 2010

Well its only a week now before we head off once more. One of the most exciting things about travel is the preparation and planning. Not that I tend to do much planning, preferring to go where the whim leads us or should I say "Tom Tom" leads us. We plan on leaving Cobargo next Tuesday and meet up with our traveling companions Stan and Shirley at Young. They   are great traveling companions, sharing similar interests and a love for wide horizons. Last year our trip took us to Cape York and central Queensland, this year the plan is to go west across the Nullabor to WA and then do a coast crawl north to the Kimberley if things work out.
Mary is getting excited now and has almost packed the van. Holidaying in the winter means that she must pack both winter and summer clothes, as soon as we approach the tropics all thoughts of winter quickly vanish.We plan to take our slide-on AHA camper as well, in that way we have the best of the both worlds, the caravan for luxury comfort and the camper when we get to go bush off the beaten track. A big challenge when one travels with both combo's is the management of weight. The van should come in around 1900kg loaded, add to that about 6-700kg for the camper and we will have an all-up weight between 2,500 and 3,000 kg. The Mazda BT-50 seems to handle that sort of weight with comfort. We have been looking at weather reports for WA, 25-27C day temp. This wont be hard to take considering this last week's icy blast for the east coast of the continent, 14-18c has been typical.
I confess to being a gadget nerd, and that means I must check that I have all the cables and chargers. Have downloaded a recommended audio book for the iPod that plays through the car stereo, checked the iPad to be used for blogging and business at WiFi points, the iBook for downloading photos, the iPhone for calling home and accessing mail, the SLR for still photography and the HD video camera for movies. Two GPS units, one for street navigation and the other for topo navigation off the beaten track, and a reversing camera for hitching up and keeping an eye on rearward traffic.