The 1986
Holden Calais we used for our
first Australia tour.
Introduction
to the Australia
tour
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Although the trip around
Australia is 25,000 km (15,000
miles), when taken in short segments
of about 300 km a day, with rest
breaks of a few days at places that
take your fancy, it's a relaxing yet
exciting adventure Australia tour.
The road is highway standard right
around, and you can plug into
electric power mains at every stop.
So you have all the comforts of home,
with many Van Parks providing shower
and toilet facilties right at your
site (called ensuite
sites).
The car shown above is a
1986 Holden sedan, with a 6 cylinder
3 litre engine and automatic
transmission. The caravan is only
12ft 6ins in length overall, and
weighs about one ton loaded. This rig
is quite satisfactory for such a long
trip. So if your family car is in
this bracket, then all you need is a
similar sized van and a few
accessories which I'll mention later.
For overseas visitors to Australia,
the Around OZ trip can be made by
leasing a rental car and a
van.
Although it may
seem a trivial matter, the direction to
tour around Australia during your Australia
tour is a critical issue. In a nutshell,
you go around anti-clockwise. Why is this
critical?
Because you take advantage of the
prevailing winds, which will be East to
South-Easterly when driving up the east
coast - Easterly when travelling westwards
across the top of the continent -
North-Westerly when driving south down
Western Australia, and generally of a
Westerly component when finally heading
east from Perth towards the East
coast.
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Just consider
heading the other way around. You are
bucking into a 15 kph wind as you drive
from, say Mount Isa eastwards towards Julia
Creek. Your safe travel speed will be about
80 kph, so your fuel consumption goes way
up due to the headwind. Your transmission
and engine would probably start to
overheat.
If you were
travelling in the other direction, you
would have a 15 kph tail wind helping you
along, and your fuel consumption would be
down below the average for the trip. The
overall fuel consumption for a six cylinder
car pulling a one ton loaded van
anticlockwise around OZ, would be about 17
miles per (Imp.) gallon (16.5 litres per
100 km). Going the other way around it
would increase to about 14 mpg or 20 litres
per 100 km. The map below shows the route,
generally referred to as Highway
One.
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