2002/11 Australia trip - Sandie to Ballina |
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Dear All,
This vacation really started over a year ago, when we began to plan the trip and started looking for a campervan suitable for extended trips in Australia. We’ve rented a number of campervans in the past and while they’re great on main roads they don’t handle the outback roads very well. Nor is the renter’s insurance valid on such roads so we’d be liable for any accidents or loss. So we decided to buy a four-wheel drive unit and convert it into a camper, reckoning that with retirement just around the corner we’d get enough use out of it, and we could sell it when we became too decrepit to go on camping trips.
We found a conversion company in Ballina, New South Wales, which had something close to what we wanted, and we worked out a definition with them over last winter, beginning with a Toyota Landcruiser. This is a very different vehicle from the Landcruiser sold in the USA, which is an expensive, luxury Sports Utility Vehicle, with lots of leather and gadgets. The Australian version is very Spartan, is called a Troopcarrier, and is intended to take the foreman plus 10 workers out to Outback worksites. Ballina Campervans has added a sofa-bed, stove, fridge, sink, water tank, windows screens, winch, rear screen room, a pop-up roof and roof bed, and some decent front seats, as I’ve never yet found a comfortable Toyota seat. Guess I’m not the standard Japanese shape.
Governments and banks have never been good at dealing with gypsies, particularly alien gypsies. Consequently we’ve spent a lot of time arranging the finances, licensing, etc. The only way we could get a bank account was to behave as immigrants. This allowed us to open an account and send money to it, but not to access any of the money. At least, not until we show up in Ballina with our passports and convince them that we aren’t drug dealers laundering our money. That’s also the reason why Sandie went out to Australia before me, to establish residence in New South Wales by paying rent on a Leisure Lee holiday apartment, so that we could license the vehicle.
This is no hardship, as Ballina is a pleasant little seaside town in the northern part of New South Wales, closer to Brisbane than Sydney. But there’s still some worry over whether things will all work out, particularly as we haven’t even talked to any of the people involved. The whole process has been done by Internet, e-mail, and faxes.
Wednesday October 2nd
Sandie arrived on the Wednesday, having skipped a day on crossing the date line. We had the same flights two days apart, so she had much the same experiences as me, with some extra excitement as one of her bags showed up late. We wouldn’t be collecting the campervan for a couple of days, so she picked up a rental car from Avis. We don’t drive a stick-shift here, so she rented one just to get some practice in on someone else’s car before driving our campervan. So she set off into Ballina, trying to remember to use the clutch and to drive on the left.
First stop was with Clayton, our builder. He turned out to be a lot younger than he “sounded” on the Internet. He’d taken the business over when his Dad retired. She got her first real look at the campervan, though Clayton had e-mailed us some pictures as soon as they’d finished building it.
She also visited the Commonwealth Bank to make sure they were prepared to open the account for us on Friday. This was all OK, but we wouldn’t get our cash cards until we got to Melbourne. To make things worse, she found that the cash cards from our new US bank also didn’t work, either there or at the ANZ Bank. So I got a phone call (still Tuesday evening in the US) telling me to bring handfuls of US cash so that we had some money we could exchange.
Her holiday apartment was fully furnished, overlooking the river so she could watch the boats going out to 
sea, with walks along the causeway. Lots of birds: pelicans, swans, and kites.
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Ballina (12.48) |  |
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Sharon and her husband made her feel very welcome even though this was only a two-night rental. The “welcome” glass of wine went down very well after two days of traveling. She also enjoyed the dragons (economy-sized lizards) they keep in the back garden.
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Ballina dragons (4.25) |
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Thursday October 3rd
After a surprisingly cheap breakfast, Sandie settled down to a day of power shopping. Food, drink, blankets, pillows, cups: all kinds of equipment for the campervan. We were going to be camping for a month, so we had some long shopping lists in addition to the stuff we hauled out from the USA. She did her best, but ran out of time. You can’t go late-night shopping in Ballina.