Travel Planning Is Important - Althought Best-Laid Plans Can Go Astray

We have been planning a trip around Australia now for about 5 months. We bought a better stronger caravan, and did everything to ensure that our car was in top condition, having an extra battery to keep the freezer working. We have it set up so I can use my laptop on 240w power and charge up all the batteries and mobile phones etc. It has a turbo and runs on diesel and DGas, which means it, uses gas at the same time as the diesel giving the vehicle extra power.

We organised house sitters for our peace of mind and security. We took these precautions, as you cannot be too careful these days. I have sorted out the house so the sitters can store some of their furniture in and still use ours making room for them to put their things in the cupboards. This idea suits both parties. That way we do not have to pack everything away and they can still display their possessions.

I organized to have our phone and internet disconnected today and

Our vehicles were insured we thought we had nearly finished. How wrong could we be? Last Friday a week away from leaving, my husband noticed a tiny bubble coming from the head gasket on the Nissan. Later confirming we could not take the risk of driving thousands of miles on the off chance that it would be okay or blow up somewhere on the Nullabour or worse.

You guessed it. My husband decided to pull the motor down and rebuild it. You have to realize this is a major step, because it has so much gear on it before you even get to work on the head. In all honesty, I do not think he could possibly fit anything else under the bonnet on this poor old girl.

It is now a week later since this discovery. He pulled the motor down, had the head redone. The turbo checked out. Then, he pulled the sump off and has virtually rebuilt it all now with new rings, big end bearings, new studs, and the list goes on. I failed to mention he broke his neck years ago and has a bad back and he has spent the last week working on and under this beast. His poor neck has taken a battering that is for sure. But, he has not complained, I cannot believe how calm this normal impatient person at the best of times, has been.

Too be honest, I think he is too worn out to bother. I hope that this afternoon he will start to put some of the extras back on again. Even then, we will still have to run the vehicle in again to make sure that everything is going ok.

We have now changed our plans to leave here next Friday, another week away. I am writing this today, because I will not have any internet connection after tonight as I had made these arrangements before this all happened and am not going through all of that again.

Therefore, the moral of the story is, Plan, Plan and still things can test our patience. As I said in the title - best laid plans can and do go astray.

I am thankful for my very observant husband for seeing this problem in time. It is far better that it has happened at home, than thousands of miles away. The only problem is now I need to earn more with ad sense to help us pay for it. We might have to go back to work to make up for this very expensive project.

All the best, I will let you know what is happening from time to time. I hope so anyway

Additional info

Well this is years later and we had a good trip but had to buy a new car in Adelaide other than that it was great.

We have gone around Australia a few times since and many trips across the Nullabour, last count it was 31 times and enjoyed all the sites and met some great people.