Initially this was all about web-searching: many, many forums (Caravaners Forum, Toyota Landcruiser Club of Australia (TLCC), Land Cruiser Owners On-line (LCOOL), Elite Owners, etc). We posted so many questions and issues and got an amazing range of views and experiences. Such a powerful resource.
We also looked at other people’s blogs and particularly liked 1yearoff (well done you guys), and got some great travel information from their site.
We had no previous experience of 4WD’ing nor of serious towing. So we joined the Toyota Landcruiser Club of Australia (TLCC) and completed their accredited 4WD Training course at their Willowglen property, about 35km south east of Goulburn, NSW. The course was great and we were not shielded from some rugged tracks, at times feeling we were being thrown into the deep end.
But we loved it, especially Kerry, and came away incredibly impressed with The Cruiser – what a vehicle it is. We put a few dings in the running boards but that was simply earning our stripes.
We also met some really good like-minded people.
Later we did a TLCC towing course at the same venue where we learnt heaps, and also got lots and lots of practice of pushing a trailer backwards.
A critical issue for us will be communications – phone contact and internet services as well as emergency services.
We don’t have NBN at home and our ADSL speeds are pretty appalling – 3,000 kps is typical. So 4G mobile broadband would offer much faster speeds, but data allowances would be low. We would have to have at least one Telstra contract to get coverage in the more remote areas, but we knew that the data provisions of a Telstra contract are down around my boot size.
So in the end we opted for a mobile phone contract with Telstra (15 GB at $39 a month) to do the hard yards, backed up by an Optus-based mobile phone plan from Jeenee (5 GB at $22 a month) and an Optus based mobile wifi plan (140 GB at $52 a month).
As well we bought a Thuraya SatSleeve Hotspot as our emergency link to the rest of the world. This is a satellite based unit that creates a wifi hot spot no matter where we will be in Australia (or most other parts of the world). It costs $888 for the unit and then there is an Optus based satellite plan for $15 a month. Calling or texting out is expensive but receiving calls or texts is cheap. We thought this would be much better than an epirb, which costs much less but only sends out a location signal. With the Thuraya we can talk to the emergency people and tell them what has happened.
Finally, we bought a GPS tracker for Mobi as an anti-theft device – we needed a cheap sim card to make this work and got this from Jeenee (Optus based) – 1.2 GB at $9.90 a month.
Excluding the $15 Thuraya plan, which des not specify a data limit, we are paying $122.90 a month for 151.2 GB.
Following are some of the “other” things we bought.
| OTHER | ||
|---|---|---|
| Items | ||
| Phantom 4 drone | $2,425.74 | Kogan |
| Walking poles (1 pair) | $49.27 | E-bay |
| Huawei Broadband router | $217.90 | Buy Mobile |
| Telstra mobile phone plan (Kerry for year) | $468.00 | Telstra |
| Optus Broadband plan (year) | $630.00 | Optus |
| Jeenee mobile (Des for year) | $264.00 | Jeenee (Optus network) |
| Jeenee mobile (Trakker for year) | $118.80 | Jeenee (Optus network) |
| Thuraya SatSleeve Hotspot | $898.00 | Optus |
| Sat Hotspot Plan (a year for the Thuraya) | $180.00 | Optus |
| $5,071.71 |