Darren and Justine's Blog

Last Day. What a whirlwind. We are renting the house out fully furnished for the whole time we are away (so there is no coming back). So we need to pack away all our personal stuff and leave the place ready for the people who are renting it.

The van is finally registered, the Blue Slip needed to be done manually as the RMS did not have a Wonderland Amaroo 1806 recorded as a model. Seems the inspectors don’t do to many van blueslips in the inner west, so the process between the inspection station and the RMS became a bit confused. I think it took 4 trips to get it completed.

A few modifications to the van.

I’ve realised I would like to shift a little weigh to the rear, if I move over the spare tyre, I can fit a small toolbox to the rear bumper bar and use that to balance the weight and to have a little more storage room. So off with the bumper bar to take it to a steel fabricator and have some support brackets welded on. The only toolboxes I could seem to find were just plain aluminum checker plate, given everything else is black checker plate, there was no choice but to send it off to the powder coater’s to get it fixed up

Underside of the bed is a great place to put the map.

Where do I start?  

We pack up and get ready early to leave for home.   I want to get back around midday, partly as the traffic should be lighter, but also need to get back to the office and do some work.     The pack-up was pretty easy and we were on the freeway again.

They finished the last of the work,  gave the van a quick wash.

We go through the hitch up routine, hand over a large cheque, we’re almost right to go.  The van and the car are wired up for the van’s reversing camera, we’ve plugged it all in, but it’s not working.   A problem for another time.

We where meant to be picking up the Van today, but they advised us a few days ago that there has been a short delay, and it won’t be ready till tomorrow.   We decided to come down yesterday as planned anyway so we can do a better inspection,  let them have time to fix any issues we find and do a handover today so we can be on the road sooner tomorrow.

Today we drove down to Melbourne to pick up the Van.  We could have had it delivered to Belmont, but it was cheaper to pick it up from Melbourne and I felt the drive up the Hume would be a good way to refresh my towing skills, or lack thereof.   800k’s without the van on the way down and then the same again on the way back with the van on should get us use to everything.