Just a brief rundown on the past 6 weeks..................
On the 19th May 8 trakmaster off-road vans and 2 Ford F250’s with Trakmaster slide-ons left
Hawker in South Australia and drove the
Oodnadatta Track to
Alice Springs and then left Alice on the 25th May to drive to
Marble Bar. Drove along the Tanami until reaching the
Gary Junction Road and proceeded along this crossing the CSR at
well 33.
Of the 16 travel days only 3 days were around the 300km mark. The shortest day being only 110 Km’s. This meant lots of late starts, early finishes, long smoko breaks and long lunches. The whole trip was very civilised.
My van was the 2nd smallest at 14’. The others all measured between 15’6” and 17’6”. These are internal measurements. 3 of the vans including
mine were single axle the others were all dual axle.
Most of our
camp sites were just gravel scrapes beside the road. We spent 2 nights at Jupiter's
Well. You need a far bit of space for this many vehicles so some nights were very friendly eg: vans almost touching.
We all carried enough fuel for 1000 km’s just in case of unforeseen problems. We fuelled at
Papunya on the first day out from Alice at a very reasonable $1.66 per litre and again at the
Kunawarritji community near
well 33 on the CSR at $2.80 per litre.
Problems were few and far between. They consisted of one broken 4wd rear window and four flat tyres. The tyres were all on the rear of 4wd’s. The vans handled the conditions without any problems. Bulldust is almost impossible to keep out but here again not a major problem.
Everyone was heading their own way after
Marble Bar. On the last night we raised $650.00 for the RFDS. My wife and I were fined for having similar christian names and causing lots of confusion (We are
Ross & Ros)
We left
Marble Bar and took the
Shay Gap road to the Great Northern Highway. Highly recommended…it’s very scenic.
We only had limited time to get home to NSW. We stopped in at
Barn Hill Station for a night and will definitely be going back and spending at least a week or longer camped above
the beach. We stayed a few days at
Bell Gorge and several at Windjana before hitting the Tanami. We camped at Woolfe
Creek crater ( and no I have not seen the film). Fuel at Rabbit Flat was $2.08 and they are open 7 days a week till November.
Across the Plenty to Bouila,
Birdsville, down through the
Cordillo Downs road to
Innamincka and home through Western Queensland.
I had several reasons for doing the trip. Even though our van was 3 years old, work commitments had not allowed us to get away for more than a week at a time. I was also interested in knowing how the larger vans would cope with the conditions and if we would buy a Trakmaster van in the future or look at another manufacturer of off-road vans.
We will definitely buy a Trakmaster when we purchase a bigger van.
We drove 10,467 Km’s with just under 5,000 k’s on dirt. Total litres used 2132. On dirt tyre pressures were 28 front 34 rear and van tyres at 30psi. I did not sustain a puncture.
I have added some photos from the trip into my photo gallery.
Regards
!MPG:9!