Overland Adventure - UK, Central Asia, SE Asia, Oz, South America

Hi Humphrey,

Thanks for the link an interesting read..... i still think stripping it down was the quickest, and best way to ensure it passes inspection, the door trim has to come off, the loose carpet has to come out and be cleaned, we have to clean under the seats, the tar and mud has to be scraped off the plastic wheel arches and the bumper, the dust and debris has to be removed from the loose dash and rear trim where we have a spare battery, if our car had less plastic maybe it would be easier, we could have just hoovered up inside, but given its age, its condition and 3 days of labour...

From the Link:

http://xor.org.uk/travel/oz2010/20091118.htm

This page is a summary of, and an index to, the cleaning of Man (my Bimobil EX480 expedition campervan). Even though Man is a relatively new vehicle and has not (yet) been to many countries the process of cleaning it inside and out "as new" has taken more than 130 hours!
1. Wheels and Tyres. (9 Hours)
2. Rear Storage Boxes. (5 Hours)
3. Wheel arches and mud guards. (7 Hours)
4. Air Filter. (3 Hours)
5. Toilet. (5 Hours)
6. Gas Locker. (1 Hour)
7. Table Locker. (2 Hours)
8. Battery Compartment. (3 Hours)
9. Underrun Bar. (1 Hour)
10. Water and Water Tanks. (2 Hours)
11. Engine and Under Cab. (6 Hours)
12. Cab Interior. (10 Hours)
13. Dirty Things.
14. The Roof. (6 Hours)
15. Storage Locker. (4 Hours)
16. The Cabin Interior. (16 Hours)
17. Fumigation and Insects. (2 Hour)
18. Outside, Windows and Doors. (6 Hours)
19. Electric Steps. (7 Hours)
20. The Chassis. (30 Hours)
The best source of detailed information I found about how to clean a vehicle destined for Australia was this one prepared for the Australian military. (Read, weep and think hard if you really want to take your vehicle to Oz!).
Note: If you were wondering if I had someone standing around all the time taking photographs, no I didn't. I often just set my camera up on a tripod to take one photograph every 10 seconds and selected the best shots afterwards.
 
Last edited:

HumphreyBear

Adventurer
Well, as long as it all gets put back together properly then at least you'll have the cleanest car in Darwin/Brisbane or wherever you land!
 

Ray Hyland

Expedition Leader
Martin,
I think the approach you have taken is wise. Given the cost of labour in TL vs in Darwin, getting the work done there makes sense. Plus, given the number of countries you have passed through and the length of time you have been on the road, I assume the Aussie authorities would give your vehicle a very thorough going over.

Does it still need to be "gassed" once it is in the container? When I shipped a vehicle from Singapore I had to have that done as well.

Please keep posting, the pictures and reports are great. I read some of them here, and some on FB, and some on your blog, but I do read almost all of them.

Have you had a chance to explore much of TL?

Ray
 
Tomorrow’s D-day, when we have the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service (AQIS) inspect our car, if all goes well we should be on the road by late afternoon!!

Our rough plan for the next few months below:

• Darwin - Cairns, along the Savannah way, (Litchfield Park, Kakadu National Park, Katherine, Roper Hwy, Lawn Hill, Gregory) time and weather permitting we will try and head up to Cape York.
• Cairns to Katherine via Alice Springs
• Katherine to Bromme via the Gibb river road, kununurra
• Broome to Perth via Karijini national Park, Exmouth, Shark Bay, Kalbarri NP, Pinnacles Desert

We expect the temperature and humidity on the way back through Katherine and WA to skyrocket up to 38c, which will make the journey a little more uncomfortable… with the possibly of rain too, we will need to be careful and keep an eye on the weather.

It looks like Australia is going to be one hell of an adventure!

If anyone else has driven any of these routes, it would be great to hear your experiences…
 
Passed our inspection!! Will be back on the road tomorrow!!

We did need a little more cleaning though, they went through everything from under the car to every single bag!
 
Over the last few days we have travelled south from Darwin, via Katherine, we're currently making a camp for the night in Borroloola, on the Savannah Way, day time temp is up at 39C.. with no air con to save fuel, it's a little uncomfortable, not to mention the night!!

Tomorrow we have 600km to cover, and a couple of river crossings on the way!!
 

hks3sgte

César Gómez
:Wow1: holy crap, I may have just skipped OZ if I had to tear apart my car like that... Good thing it all worked out in the end for you! Good reading
 
OverlandShpere.com new overland blog website

Hi All

New Site: http://overlandsphere.comOver the last few weeks we have put together an new overlanding site. The site will bring you the latest blog updates from around the world and is designed to be a research tool for overlanders archiving past and current blogs. We hope it will become a great resource for overlanders going forward.

The site is now live, so please have a look, it's during the early stages of website, when we have the flexibility to make numerous changes, so any suggestions would be welcome.

If you have your own blog and would like to sign up please follow this link: Register

Overland Sphere

Spanning the globe to bring you the latest overland news and blogs

About

Overland Sphere is a collective of overland blogs from around the world. The purpose is to make available not just the latest blogs but also provide an archive of past adventures for the overlanding community.

Whether you're researching your next big trip or just looking for inspiration, we have carefully scanned through hundreds of posts and categorised them in an easily navigable format, so that you can find the information that most interests you!

While planning our own Overland Adventure we spent hundreds of hours researching; we found the most relevant information was contained within other people's blogs. We continued this on the road too but found browsing through many blogs, trying to search for information about a specific country extremely time-consuming.

This gave us the idea to set up this site.

How does it work?


The site uses your blogs RSS feed to populate blog posts. It can do this in two ways, the entire feed including all text and pictures or just an excerpt from the feed.

Our site posts your blog, categorises it by location, tags the post with additional other useful information like border crossings, sites of interest, towns, to make your manual navigation of the site and posts easier.

We have also installed a search engine which searches all the posts and will output relevant results, based on your search terms.
 
Last edited:

Forum statistics

Threads
185,527
Messages
2,875,546
Members
224,922
Latest member
Randy Towles
Top