Planning

The planning has been approximately one year since we started looking for a caravan to house us all. Finding very few family triple bunk vans available second hand we opted to buy new. We also decided that we wanted to try and do the Gibb River road and therefore would need a full Off road van. Caravan hunting was not as easy as we perhaps thought it might be. Mainly because of the over 100 different manufacturers only about 20 are in Western Australia and even then some have dealers in way out places such as Geraldton (four and half hours away….why would you bother).

Finally settling on a manufacturer with only an agent in Perth called Legend. Because of this we did not even see a family van before we ordered. We went for the Legend Trackline off road.

Once that was on order we had to sort out the vehicle. We has a 2007 Landrover Discovery 3. A wonderful car and capable of towing the van, but at 12 years old we were a bit nervous to expect it to go round Australia towing a van. We therefore decided we needed a new car.

Options were limited. Basically a new Discovery or a Landcruiser. The Discovery was a great car, but unfortunately as it was relatively new there were no aftermarket accessories such as bull bars or roof racks available. Therefore it had to be a Toyota. The Prado did not have the towing capacity so it had to be a Landcruiser. GL was too basic. Sahara was a lot of extra money for things we did not really need so it was GXL or VX. Unfortunately the way Toyota run things is that you have very limited options available. Therefore the extras we wanted made it financially not sensible to have the GXL, yet the problem with the VX is it came with a sunroof which reduced headroom ( I am too tall at 6ft 2 to sit in the back and have to have the chair reclined when driving) and there was no option to leave this off. No Matter . VX it was.

The Car arrived end of June and the caravan in end of November. First trial run was to Serpentine dam and the Esperence in January. Both very enjoyable. One further brieft trip to Cervantes for the long weekend where we learnt to keep the 8 yr old away from the TV!!!