almost there!

previously our little snowflake got a snokel and a bull (or roo) bar. but if you know me you will appreciate that i just can’t leave things half done.

after all we will be travelling all the way around the country and as countries go australia is a rather big one with some really remote and rough areas. i’d like to ensure the car is set up to survive as best as possible, offer sufficient comfort for a 20.000 km trip and has the ability to carry what we need for a year of living minimalistic.

our friend ben thinks the car won’t stand a snowflake’s chance in hell to survive the trip anyway and keeps telling us stories of discos spontaneously combusting or just plain getting a general computer melt-down. he has a point, that thing has more computers than an average classroom but that is true for almost any modern car. i think fingers crossed will be our new battle cry …

i really like the idea of daytime running lights. when we brought our van back from adelaide i felt they increase visibility, especially across the straight stretches of road in the outback. good thing i found a set that was easy enough to mount under the new roo bar. i like the way they look.

kris is starting to panick about not being able to bring half our house. if you have been to our place you know that we’d need an 18 wheeler to achieve that, but a roof platform will help get some stuff out of the car or the van and on the roof. like our boat, the maxtrax or a second spare wheel (which i just bought online).

the roo bar is also an excellent platform for an antenna. we will be using a cb radio to be able to stay in touch with traffic around us or to communicate across short distances. so i installed this gme unit; i like the fact that only the head in the picture above is visible, everything else is hidden. elegant and clean.

kris got this little handset for christmas. we can use that to communicate, e.g. when navigating a difficult section where an outside pair of eyes is required or when nat and i need to call in our shuttle: ‘come in mummy, we are waiting to be picked up for our next downhill run’.

kris also got a shade sail (she gets all the cool stuff around here). that’s now mounted to the platform and can be pulled out in a few minutes. we can use it for quick stops or when we want to have a bigger shaded campsite.

so that’s it for now. there is only one thing left; i’ve been dreading this for a while which i why i left it for last.

this compressor needs to go under the hood. when the going gets tough (sand, corrugations, …) we will have to reduce the tyre pressure but i wanted to have the ability to re-inflate the tyres when required. this little unit will go under the hood, in a tiny spot in front of the driver’s seat, and it will require a fair bit of creativity.

fingers crossed …