Suburban Recovery

I know I should be posting about the ski trip but I couldn't let my lovely wife's attempt to park the car in the garage go un-commented.

Perhaps we should let the pictures tell the story:


Ended up ripping a 10cm gash in the tire wall. These are armored tires mind.

Camping

We got away for a bit of camping this month just gone.
The first was up to Stockton Beach, just north of New Castle for a weekend of driving with the Toyota club, the other was with friends a little way up north (at a nudist beach :-) The weather was not on it's best behavior. With enough rain to cause a decent flood in Sydney. The morning was made all the ore exciting with a little brown snake (v. deadly) sharing the camp ground with us.







Stockton

The Propper Car Wash

And other picks from our trip with the Toyota Landcruser Club out to the Wollondilly River via the tracks south east from Oberon.

Driver Training

Alex and I completed the Driver Training and Recovery modules of the Toyota Land Cruiser Club over the weekend.
Rain, frost, fires, mud - it was a hoot.
If I get 10 spare mins I'll edit up some of the other picks and vids and but raw stuff is here

The Gall Boys

The Gall Boys are a family of 5? brothers from Queensland that build caravans for a living. They practiced what they preached and dragged their vans around remote corners of Australia and made some home movies of their antics to sell the vans. The Videos - now DVDs - have become an institution in themselves. I've just been checking out the latest from their youtube. Especially this one (watch it in HQ). Featuring the truck I'm currently lusting after - a bushed up 76.
I did a lot of traveling when I was working as a Geo and I can't wait to get back out there. The kids are getting old enough to camp now. Next big purchase: camper.

See you out there

Pretending to be a man

Last weekend I got to pretend to be a man and play with power tools.

With my own two little hands (and copious assistance - actually he did most of the work - from brother in law, Diego) I built and attached a baseboard into the back of the $X$ and mounted a fridge slide for the car fridge.

Whoo wee - now I can have cold beer when I go camping.

Pick up the car today

Roo bar, fully sick flood lights, lifted suspension.

Modifying the $X$, sorry, that's 4X4

Yes I drive an obnoxious 4X4, get over it.
The 02 95 series Prado 3.4 VX auto sits like a monster in the uni car park beside the students clapped out bugs and mopeds. Closer inspection would reveal the three child seats in the second row and pram the boot making it look more like mum's taxi than a Tarago.
We are planning to modify it a little to make it safer and better equipped to use for camping and touring and perhaps towing a camper trailer.
To date we've got the car fridge (Waco 60) and roll around on All Terrain Tyres (cooper ATR's).

Planned modifications include:
- roof basket to carry more stuff
- cargo barrier so we don't end up with a fridge in the back of the head if we have to jump on the anchors
- Second battery so we can still start the car in the morning after running the fridge all night
- Bull bar because hitting a roo hurts but mostly because you need one to mount a winch and spotlights (so you can see the roos and hop-fully not hit them), To date I've hit a horse, a cow, several roos, several owls, an eagle, a goat and one very cross emu that ended up in the back seat of a ute with minus its legs. Anything I can put between me and the queue of beasts like that which assembled before Noa's Arc on the road ahead of me is money well sepnt.
- Spotlights / driving lights bright enough to be seen from Venus
- Stiffer suspension and rear poly air bags to make the suspension adjustable for towing variable loads.
- Winch to haul our sorry asses out of a hole
- Snorkel because engines don't run too well when they are full of water
- UHF radio

There are a few other odds and ends that will make life a little easier like a better mapping solution than the stand alone GPS and paper maps or extended range fuel tanks to extend our already ridiculous 1000km range but ultimately we drool after one of These
quero mucho