Category Archives: Australia 2014

The Journey Home

Roof tent off, ready to go in the container

Roof tent off, ready to go in the container

This morning pretty much went to plan. Thankfully there wasn’t any dew so the tent was nice and dry when we packed it away for the final time of the trip.
We drove across to the shipping agents at Botany Bay to drop the Land Rover off. Once there I finished off unbolting the roof tent and with the aid of a fork lift the tent was soon off and into the bonded warehouse.
With that done and the Carnet de Passage handed over it was time to say our fond farewells to the Land Rover after making sure that the battery isolator instructions were in place so with any luck the battery will be good to go when we see it again.

Our transport home awaits...

Our transport home awaits…

With everything sorted we grabbed a taxi to the airport to begin the long flight home. The Land Rover will take the slower route in it’s container and while we’ll arrive home on Tuesday morning the Land Rover won’t get back to the UK until the end of August.

The Java Sea – Jakarta

We have the tracking info for the container now. It left Sydney on July 13th and has been to Melbourne and then Adelaide and is now well on it’s way to Singapore where it will be transferred to another ship for the journey to the UK. It’s due to arrive in Felixstowe on August 31st.

Back on home soil

The container (and hopefully the 90 inside it !) has now arrived back in the UK 🙂

The carnet has gone back to the RAC so we should get some money back and we are going down to the shipping company on Friday to collect it – can’t wait to have it back again.

The wanderer returns

Ready to pick upToday marks the end of our Australian adventure proper as we drove down to Suffolk to collect the 90 from the shipping agent.

All was present and correct when we arrived, it felt strange to be reunited with it after all this time. I didn’t completely bolt the roof tent on as it takes a while to do up the rearmost nuts and bolts. To save time we just bolted the front two mounts and used a ratchet strap at the back.

After half an hour of tinkering and checking it over we headed north for the final leg of the journey home. As expected we got home without a hitch, kind of an anti-climax really but it’s nice to have the 90 back home.

Back home and safe in the driveWe can now start planning our next adventure although we’ll need to make some changes to our setup now as we’ve bought a puppy since returning from Australia and now we need to figure out a way of making room in the back for a dog !

The 90 needs some TLC, on the whole it survived the trip well but the front diff is getting noisier and will need rebuilding. I suspect the constant hammering it took in the Simpson Desert has taken it’s toll.