The last few months we have been working our way back to Sydney from Perth via the Great Central Road, Lambert Centre & Oodnadatta Track. Also did the south west corner of Australia all the way to Poison Creek & back up to Kalgoorlie. Out to Lake Eyre, there was some water in it at Halligan Bay. Back home through the Flinders Ranges which was a lot drier than 2 years ago. Broken Hill, Wollemi National Park & finally back to the east coast.

We drove a little bit up Balladonia Road from Poison Creek but turned around as the road was very rough, rain was on the way & the car would get far too many scratches down the sides from the bush.

The car went really well. 17" rims would be better, anything for more flexible tyres. The front right roof rack corner was squeaky, bracket into the extrusion so stuffed a piece of 1mm teflon in. The rear right roof rack bolt snapped. That was the only real problem, which I could fix on the run, 2 hours work.

The car took a hammering on the rough roads. The acoustic insulation took the edge off the corrugated road noise making driving less tiring. So it is doing a good job.


Road to Lambert Centre.


Oodnadatta Track.


Lake Eyre near Halligan Bay


Dust everywhere. It also comes in through the window switches & door handles. Also around the edge of the fuel tank pump access under the rear seat.


Front & rear doors covered in dust all the way up past the door hinges.


A B-double passing.


Make sure you have enough water if you break down.


New floodway sign, the last one was washed away.


It is sometimes easier to have a flynet on in the car until the flies are out.
 Procrastination, mankind's greatest labour saving device!

Acoustic insulation ARB TPMS 3xARB air compressors After cooler Air tank On-board OCD pressure air/water cleaning Additional 50L fuel Carpet in doors ABE 2x1kg Waeco 28L modified fridge Battery 4x26ah Solar 120w Victron MPPT 100/20 DC-DC 18amps 175amp jumper plug Awning 6x255/60R18

Last edited by Lightwater on 5th Oct 2019 6:03 pm. Edited 1 time in total

Gotta love that red dust !! We're still cleaning our camper after our trip last year. Look forward to more pics

Australia's longest shortcut, we did about half of it from Kalgoorlie to Uluru.

Typical outback corrugated road, fortunately for this section it was not covered in stones as well like the northern end of the Oodnadatta Track.

Tyres at 24 PSI. The 18 inch 'poodle' rims with larger 255/60R18 tyres are ok, but one really should have 17 inch rims, especially when driving on these roads day after day.
https://vimeo.com/364281135

The reason why one pulls over as far as possible & stops for a roadtrain!
https://vimeo.com/364283817

Lambert Centre, the centre of mainland Australia. The red flag taking over Australia!


The top of the boot gutter filled with dust.


Kata Tjuta.


Proper Defender.


Perth architecture.


Bluff Knoll, & we got a tiny bit of snow up there but it melted as it landed.


Sterling Range.


Outlander Freelander.


Backyard at Dolphin Bay.


Milky way.


Sand track.


Dog transport.


Looking north to Lucky Bay.


Lucky Bay, whitest sand in Australia.


Two Peoples Bay.


Fitzgerald Nation Park.


Hamersley Bay.


Whale & a calf at Dolphin Bay, 40mm lens.


Starvation Bay.


Poison Creek.


Poison Creek meets the sea.


Some signage near Poison Creek, if boat people get this close good luck to them!


A Twenty Eight, saying 28 in French sounds like the call of the bird.
 Procrastination, mankind's greatest labour saving device!

Acoustic insulation ARB TPMS 3xARB air compressors After cooler Air tank On-board OCD pressure air/water cleaning Additional 50L fuel Carpet in doors ABE 2x1kg Waeco 28L modified fridge Battery 4x26ah Solar 120w Victron MPPT 100/20 DC-DC 18amps 175amp jumper plug Awning 6x255/60R18

Some great roads there Lightwater, not envious at all mate
any idea what the plant is in the 8th photo in?
Dave DAVE.

Western Australia is full of interesting & very different plants.

Banksia Coccinea.



Banksia Formosa.


Banksia Hookeriana.


Hakea Victoria. The leaves on this one are so hard & stiff they feel as though they are made out of sheet metal.


Australian Native Plants ISBN 187633490-8 I have the fifth edition, there are probably a few more editions since I bought it. Procrastination, mankind's greatest labour saving device!

Acoustic insulation ARB TPMS 3xARB air compressors After cooler Air tank On-board OCD pressure air/water cleaning Additional 50L fuel Carpet in doors ABE 2x1kg Waeco 28L modified fridge Battery 4x26ah Solar 120w Victron MPPT 100/20 DC-DC 18amps 175amp jumper plug Awning 6x255/60R18

A bit of ice on the car west on Bathurst in the morning. -1 outside, 7 inside but it didn't seem that cold with all the acoustic foam insulation I have installed https://www.freel2.com/forum/topic33026.html Also had the same temperatures 250 km east of Norseman.


Great Australian Bight. Next morning there was sea fog & could only see 100 metres maximum.


I had dinner with the Disco owners. They were surprised that I grind coffee with the little space I have. One has to get one's priorities right!


I had a great hamburger with the lot in Cocklebiddy.


Due to quarantine I could only buy fresh food in Kalgoorlie.


Red & blue cars in Kalgoorlie seems to be the trend.


Freelander in Fremantle, driving lights & light bar on roof platform.


Lake cave, Caves Road, south west corner.


Farming near Manjimup.


Emus on beach, right side, dad with 4 kids! Near Dolphin Bay.


There is a surprising amount of room under the rear seats if they are removed & the backs lay down permanently.


A bit of sealed road on the Great Central Road.


One of the few cars not on its roof to remove wheels.


Great Central Road.


Dead caravan Great Central Road.


Red dust.


Red dust gets everywhere.


Didn't use the sand tracks but they get dust as well.


Peterman Ranges WA NT border.


Kata Tjuta.


Signage at the northern end of the Oodnadatta Track. We ran our tyres at 24 PSI so around 27 PSI when up to temperature. The northern end 120 km is rough with stones so we had to drive slowly. Down to 30 kph at times. A Toyota with fat tyres flew past at 100+ kph. You simply can't do that with Land Rover's 'poodle' rims.


The road was identical to this.


Rear M6 bolt roof rack bolt broke so replaced it with a galvanized M10 x 50mm with about 5 large galvanized washers for spacers. Some teflon on the thread as well. Only had one spare bolt with me & a round file to enlarge the hole in the bracket.


I noticed that the rear inside corner of the bracket was rubbing on the roof prior to the bolt failing. So you all might want to check the rear brackets to make sure there is clearance. Add a washer if needed.


Oodnadatta Track.


Water is available at Oodnadatta.


But you have to pay for it.


Oodnadatta lunch was reasonably priced.


We had a dust storm while out there.


Oodnadatta railway.


Near Lake Eyre heading to Halligan Bay. A fairly rough road with corrugations.


Lake Eyre Yacht Club.


Strangways Springs Oodnadatta Track. There were Springs all along the track, the reason it took that route.


Rav 3 door has a 100 kg roof load. Freelander 75 kg!


Wilcannia river water level at zero. 3 years ago we saw about 5 metres. In its day Wilcannia was the third largest shipping port in Australia with up to 222 steamers. It's 1530 km from the sea.


Toyota accessories.


Flinders Ranges south.


Bottle Brush in Broken Hill.


If you are heading south from Cobar NSW. It's a few km for fuel. Cobar is not remote.


Wollemi National Park.


Blowing out the boot hinges with air only first. Probably half a cup of dust in each hinge.


The battery bay was spotless before the trip after installing acoustic insulation.


The plastic trim always has dust under it.
 Procrastination, mankind's greatest labour saving device!

Acoustic insulation ARB TPMS 3xARB air compressors After cooler Air tank On-board OCD pressure air/water cleaning Additional 50L fuel Carpet in doors ABE 2x1kg Waeco 28L modified fridge Battery 4x26ah Solar 120w Victron MPPT 100/20 DC-DC 18amps 175amp jumper plug Awning 6x255/60R18

Thanks Lightwater
You've certainly got some impressive plants down under.
Dave DAVE.

After about 1900km of pretty ordinary unsealed roads & about a third of that was pretty horrible corrugated roads of which a fair bit also had stones. I asked my mechanic to check the suspension & steering thoroughly & service the car in general, it is ok. Just the usual tightening up of things. The car really had a thrashing!

Also quite a few stone chips all over the front, just how it is out here. It doesn't help as most people don't slow down to oncoming traffic. We do our bit & there are a few who appreciate the effort.

Engine air filter had a fair bit of dust in it even though we were careful to avoid it.

Short frame sequence of dust blown out of the boot hinges.
https://vimeo.com/365636879
After this I blew it out with water on the air hose. There seemed to be no end with the amount of dust which came out.


Roadtrain through Leonora Western Australia.


Gibber stones landscape.


Gibber stones. Gibber stones can look almost a purple black colour looking into the sun & bright orange red colour when looking away from the sun.


Great Central Road camping for the night.


Dusted this part of the car every day to keep the inside reasonably clean.


More dust! Building up inside the rims.


Remains of the first Blue Streak Rocket launched from Woomera June 5 1964. Discovered 50 km SE of Giles Western Australia in 1984, & displayed at Giles, which is Australia's most remote weather station.


Warrakurna Roadhouse, as usual fuel in a cage.


Camping for the night Great Central Road.


Great Central Road. One of the hundreds of cars on its roof to remove wheels.


Coffee break in water runoff between WA border & Uluru.


A little bit bulldust on Oodnadatta Track, it's looks like sand but it has no density, luckily it was only thin & no potholes in the road.


Oodnadatta Track.


A view from Oodnadatta Track.


A hitchhiker, managed to save the Huntsman & put it outside.


Rylstone NSW. I don't actually own a chainsaw.


One of these sunscreens on the dash works really well to reduce windscreen reflections, especially on corrugated roads where you are continuously looking for the best path to avoid stones, or at least the larger ones. It is just plain tiring doing this for hundreds of km, anything to make things easier.

We have a couple more of these screens to sit behind the sun visor for the passenger to reduce some of the sun's intense radiation through the windscreen. Procrastination, mankind's greatest labour saving device!

Acoustic insulation ARB TPMS 3xARB air compressors After cooler Air tank On-board OCD pressure air/water cleaning Additional 50L fuel Carpet in doors ABE 2x1kg Waeco 28L modified fridge Battery 4x26ah Solar 120w Victron MPPT 100/20 DC-DC 18amps 175amp jumper plug Awning 6x255/60R18

Top photos mate



 If it wasn't so bad it'd be funny.

🐑
Freelander 2 HSE auto 2014 ( Florrie ) ..... Try again.
Freelander 2 GS 2012...... Gone.

Fantastic photos and descriptions, always love to read this!
Just one my observation - for the sun reflection in the dash the best solution is sunglasses with a polarising layer. I have these and it just removes the reflection completely. A huge benefit especially for driving under Aussie sun.

Thanks for the comments!

I have top quality polaroid sunglasses, had a few of them, which work well. But the issue is with corrugated rock strewn & pot holed roads where you are really trying your best to pick your path to minimise damage/save tyres.

To get good contrast & pick out details I often find it easier without glasses but you do need to remove as much of the reflections as possible. Even the dashboard is irritating as its surface is not mat enough.

Little things on these long stretches can make things a lot less tiring.


I will mention it again, the acoustic insulation makes a big difference reducing noise. Less tiring having the outback road noise reduced. Procrastination, mankind's greatest labour saving device!

Acoustic insulation ARB TPMS 3xARB air compressors After cooler Air tank On-board OCD pressure air/water cleaning Additional 50L fuel Carpet in doors ABE 2x1kg Waeco 28L modified fridge Battery 4x26ah Solar 120w Victron MPPT 100/20 DC-DC 18amps 175amp jumper plug Awning 6x255/60R18

Last edited by Lightwater on 23rd Sep 2020 11:34 am. Edited 1 time in total

Have you tried yellow polarized lenses to improve contrast? I used them for years to improve sight fishing. The contrast does take a bit of getting used too.......