On March 26th we packed Giles into a container and closed and bolted the door. This was not quite as simple as it sounded, given Giles with the tent on top is slightly higher than a standard container door, but with the tyres pretty much flat and Cas and our able assistant standing on the bumper we squeezed him in. Clicking the customs bolt in place felt pretty final, and on April 6th he left the port at Fremantle bound, initially, for Singapore. He had a brief stopover before heading to Tianjin, where he arrived around April 6th.
Snug…
With Giles gone, the rest of our stuff on a container back to the UK, and us having found the last few weeks in Perth pretty stressful we needed a holiday. We’re not going to blog about it, but New Zealand fitted the bill and after the stark contrasts of much of West Australia was like aloe vera for the eyeballs. The plan was to fly from NZ to China, but….no epic adventure of ours would be complete without applying for a job in a different country along the way… So after a brief trip back to the U.K. we are on our way to see what Chinese customs have made of our truck….
Meet Giles, a 2013, 3.0L D4D, automatic Toyota Hilux SR5. Bought as Mike’s commuter vehicle for 70km a day, as toy-transport for bikes, surf skis and kitesurfing gear, and a weekend-warrior beginner-off-road touring machine. We have to say, he has done all these things pretty admirably. Automatic I hear you say…? Well, yes. Automatics hold their value over here better than manuals, and we originally intending on selling him when we leave. Driving an auto up the highway each day was also more appealing to Mike, so we thought we’d give it a go. Neither of us have owned one before. Now, the off-roadies will argue long and hard about whether manual or auto is the way to go on the rough stuff, but either way he’s been awesome. He’s handled everything thrown at him and has way more ability than we do, so it probably didn’t really matter.
Airing up after a trip through the dunes north of Coral Bay
However, once you have a terrain capable vehicle in WA, you have to start pimping it, and the vehicle modification industry here probably dwarfs many medium sized countries GDPs. If you can take it off the vehicle, you can upgrade it, and so we made a few minor alterations over the year. Though these were all pretty functional. Roof bars were fitted on the cab for the surf skis and paddle boards. Then load frame and roof bars were fitted to the canopy for the roof top tent, or RTT to keep up with the Australian passion for creating an acronym for everything. Then roof bars were removed from the front and replaced with a more versatile tray (we didn’t get everything right first time), an awning was bolted on the side, a fridge was wedged in the back and a tyre deflator, compressor, shovel, MaxTrax sand-ladders and a snatch-strap (!) and recovery points made up the recovery gear. Whilst little of this is strictly necessary, it does make camping pretty comfortable and a long way from pitching a tent on a spike of granite sticking out of Lake Huron. The James Baroud RTT is pretty sweet, keeping you away from all the creepy crawly bitey things for which Australia is famous (Cas’s stipulation if we were going camping here…), and giving a pretty awesome viewpoint whilst drinking coffee in the morning. It even has a solar powered fan (which is surprisingly effective!) to garner some air movement on those still nights. And so we wandered around WA in Giles whenever we had a few days off work, bouncing over rocks and avoiding getting bogged on beaches and spending the nights in some pretty awesome spots. The only time our expensive rescue gear was used was to extricate Aussie’s who were stuck and in our way. This, it will not surprise you, was immensely satisfying.
A pretty awesome spot
So, what further upgrades are needed for world-overland travel? We haven’t done it yet. Frankly, we have no idea. It would be easy to replace everything and try to cover every eventuality (Mike’s favourite pastime), or just rock up at your nearest ARB store with a blank cheque. But everything has a cost, not just financial, but physical. Add too much to your vehicle and Newton will be laughing all the way to Pisa.
But, you want to fill your vehicle with gear, ensure it doesn’t collapse or leave you stranded on some remote mountain pass, and make sure it is comfortable enough to spend the next 4 months in. Where to start…..
To be honest, we’ve probably done very little. Under vehicle protection seemed sensible, providing 3mm of steel protection between Giles’ belly and the road from the front of the chassis to the transfer case. A long range fuel tank went on, giving us 145L of diesel to slosh around and maybe meaning we can skip a few of the less salubrious filling stations en route. And we upgraded our suspension, fitting Old Man Emu springs and shocks rated for a 400-600kg load. The initial result of this, with an empty tub and the RTT removed, was quite dramatic and unnerving, and made us consider using the tent ladder simply to get into the back seat. But with our fridge back in, drawer system fitted, and RTT on the top Giles is looking a little less excited. With all the other bits and pieces needed for 4 months on the road (we’ll do a separate kit blog at some point), we hope we’ve got it about right. But we expect to have mechanicals, the only questions are when, and where.
Chris at Custom Installations, Wangara, is responsible for these……..designed so we can fit the mountain bikes in!
Finally, why call him Giles? Well the original license plate had a couple of G’s in it and it’s the first name that sprung to mind. So it stuck. Yes, it’s pretty middle class and a ridiculous name for a 3 tonne 4×4. Which is why we like it.
We wondered if we were being optimistic when we originally tag-lined this site – given that we didn’t know if we’d even manage the Canoeing-across-Canada bit. But here goes: we’re planning another adventure!
Most of you know this already but for those who don’t:
We’ve spent the past 12 months in Perth, Western Australia – one of the most remote and isolated cities on the planet. I’ve completed a fellowship in paediatric anaesthesia and intensive care at the Perth Children’s Hospital and Mike has been doing an anaesthetics and simulation fellowship up the road in a very Australian sounding place called Joondalup.
It’s been an interesting year – back in work after almost a year off, back indoors after 6 months outside, back in a city* after living in the wilderness. At times it’s felt like a bit of an assault on our senses and our time – turns out we’re still not sick of each other. Yet!! And so, not content with 5 months together in a 17 foot canoe we’ve decided to spend another 5 months together in a 17 foot vessel – this time we’ll be driving (home) in a gorgeous great big truck called Giles.
Home….oh how we’ve missed it!!
We knew when we got here that we’d want to explore Western Australia which is vast beyond imagining and seemingly empty (until you look closely), so we bought a truck. Not just any truck, we bought a 2013 Toyota Hilux SR5 which Michael promptly (and inexplicably) named Giles (!).
Toyota Hilux’s (that’s a Tacoma to you folks back in Canada) are ubiquitous in Australia in every incarnation from battered tradie’s trucks to massively jacked, totally pimped off road monsters. What, at home, is a bit of an eye watering gas guzzling beast of a machine is considered normal or fairly modest out here, if not simply… small. But they’re simple, famously reliable, built for hard work and pretty comfy too. They are, in essence, the Australian equivalent of the white van.
As owners of not 1 but 2 camper vans we can’t claim to be the most eco-fastidious people in the world but I confess buying a 4WD truck didn’t sit completely easily with me. How on earth that evolved into wanting to drive the thing home deserves a bit more explanation if only to help justify it to myself.
So, truck bought, we fitted it out with a rooftop tent, a fridge and a stove and duly took off pretty much every chance we got. We have explored Western Australia from north to south and west to.. less far west; from Exmouth to Israelite Bay and so many amazing places in between. And I think it’s fair to say we have both fallen completely and utterly in love… with the truck.
Four-wheel driving in the UK is often seen as a somewhat niche, slightly geeky pursuit of die-hard Land Rover enthusiasts seeking out any opportunity to winch some poor granny out of the ditch she’s just parked in. It’s an unfair stereotype, in reality they are car enthusiasts who often, particularly in remote areas, provide an essential voluntary emergency service. And they enjoy ragging their vehicles around in the mud. But it is not the way of life that it is for many residents of WA. As such, the opportunities for off road adventures here are endless. We have only scratched the surface, but we’ve been thoroughly convinced of the potential for exploration provided by a rough tough 4WD machine.
Our original post-work plan was to head north and explore an area of northwest WA called The Kimberley – a barely charted and remote region of the country full of river crossings and gorges and, allegedly, mountains. I say allegedly because we have been told many times during our year here to go and visit a particular mountain, only to struggle to find so much as a pimple on the otherwise flat landscape. There are a few notable hills, but we haven’t found anything mountainous. Western Australia is, mostly, God’s sandpit. The Kimberley is, we are assured, different. But it is also sub-tropical, having a wet season from December to March and hot humid conditions that make travelling near impossible. So, heading there at this time of year was not an option. Somehow the sensible thing to do became to drive all the way home….
And so it is, with just 2 weeks left in Australia, we are busy preparing to pack our truck into a container and ship it to China where we will meet it in about a months time. From there it’s just 15,000km (give or take the odd detour), a desert or two, a couple of inland seas and quite a few ACTUAL mountain ranges until we reach the familiar shores of Europe, where presumably, we get turned around and sent straight back.
*ok it’s really a big town
Standard WA camping….
To continue the Canadian theme, we already have some people to thank. I know, Aussies aren’t all bad!
First: Cas! She came up with the idea – again! Second: Mike – he went along with it – again! Bob at Indian Ocean Shipping Agency for endless patience and timely answers to our many anxious questions! Patrick and his team at Mosman Park Auto who not only cared for Giles whilst we were in Perth but helped prep him for the journey and even showed us how to carry out maintenance en route. Gary at ARB Osborne Park. Chris at Custom Installations. The Chinese, Russian and Mongolian Embassies all of whom processed our visas without question and in record time. Our families for barely batting an eyelid when we told them what we were up to (and receiving all the random bits of equipment and administration UK side Phil! We have you on speed dial…or the satellite equivalent…for any mechanical mishaps).
