We have popped back to Perth for a couple of quick visits – birthday celebrations, some training and to complete upgrades and servicing on TRU.
While back in Perth for one trip we stayed at the Banksia Tourist Park, in Hazelmere. It’s an established caravan park with a bunch of permanent residents, which seems to be the norm for tourist parks in the Perth-metro.
What’s a quenda?
The interesting thing about this place was some of the local residents, who Missy took great interest in. I had to shorten her lead as soon as she spotted them – gosh, imagine if she had pounced!!!
It’s a marsupial cousin of the kangaroo but smaller. It has a pouch that is the reverse orientation to a kangaroo pouch. The opening is at the bottom so the pouch doesn’t fill up with dirt when it digs. It’s a type of bandicoot called a quenda. I had to look it up!
4wd training
After our previous foray into expert caravan driving, braking and reversing we thought it a good idea to learn more about BLU and what we can do in our fab Toyota LC. So, booked in for a day-long 4wd training course…we were so excited! We thought we would be joined by a bunch of people but turned out we were the only participants so received 1-on-1 training for the day. Not complaining at all.
We had such a fun day! We did theory in the morning and then practical training in the arvo. We drove over obstacles and through soft sand. Did an assisted recovery and used our car winch to pull BLU up an incline.
We learnt so much and had an awesome day. We certainly slept well that night!
Highly recommend the caravan training offered by RAC and the 4wd training course by Driver Risk Management, in Perth. Not cheap but well worth it!
A compliant car and caravan
We are compliant! Yeehaa! Not that we weren’t compliant before. It’s just that we needed to move some things around to be more evenly weighted.
Let me start from the beginning…when we got BLU she was set up for 4wd-ing with a lift kit, swing bars on the back and an integrated bumper. All of which added weight to the car.
When we got TRU she had a box on the a-frame and quite a bit of redundant items on board.
In order to balance the vehicle and caravan and be compliant we sought the services of Weigh-Rite. The outcome of our first visit was to get the what’s so and what we need to change, move and adjust. Then we went away and did the work. We removed weight off the back of the vehicle and shifted internal items in the caravan. We also got an engineer to calculate the maximum weight the caravan chaise can take and upgraded the compliance plate in the caravan to reflect this. This was a lengthy process that took about 6 weeks in total and involved taking the caravan over the pits. Find out more about that below.
When all was said and done we re-visited Weigh-Rite and got his tick of approval for a compliant car and caravan set-up – YAY!
Timing is everything
We can all relate the need to book in advance when it comes to getting a vehicle serviced. When you live in said vehicle and have a cat, this can be more challenging. But not when result-producer Kimmie is on the task.
Knowing we were going to be in Perth for a family birthday celebration, I got to work to find a a caravan service centre, tyre shop and an approved vehicle inspection station all within the same block. Weeks out I spoke to each operator to confirm timing and order the correct tyres and even paid them ahead of time. On the day it all went like clockwork and all we had to do was drive in, drop off the caravan then return in the afternoon, drive around the block to the inspection station and taadaa all done.
Oh and all the while Missy was enjoying being a house cat for the day, which she absolutely loves – check out the spot she found to hang out in the cupboard.
