West MacDonnell Ranges to Palm Valley. Comms kit for remote Australia van travel
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- čas přidán 17. 11. 2023
- This week @nextleveloz we hit Central Australia and head into the stunning MacDonnell Ranges, starting with Trephina Gorge in the less visited East MacDonnells. Are they as special as they say?
And what a stunning and beautiful place it is. The birdlife is abundant but those pesky flies are persistent and plentiful. And watch out for the European bees swarming around the water taps. We do a couple of the local walks and take in the breathtaking views and we day trip out to the Arltunga Historical Reserve to see the ruins and history of Central Australia's first town - long since abandoned. We then head to the West MacDonnells, camp and swim at Ormiston Gorge before taking the Defender and Van down the rough track into Palm Valley.
Continuing from the last few week we also do another bonus, special segment responding to subscriber requests . This time we cover off on what communications gear we carry for everyday and for emergencies.
Welcome to Episode 43 of our Big Lap Gap Year. We're David and Paula @nextleveloz. Like many of you, we've worked hard for 40 years, but we are too young to retire. So we're taking a gap year from work, we've bought our first ever caravan and are doing a Big Lap around Australia taking in the iconic destinations of our fabulous country.
This channel is for fun and to share our trip of a lifetime and 100% of any ad revenue earned goes to charity.
We'd love your comments, questions and tips. We hope you will like and subscribe and share the videos with others as we look forward to sharing our journey around this magnificent country.
Some links relevant to content in this video:
NT Parks Pass: nt.gov.au/parks/parks-pass
Trephina Gorge Nature Park Fact Sheet: nt.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_f...
East MacDonnell Ranges: northernterritory.com/alice-s...
West MacDonnell Ranges: northernterritory.com/alice-s...
Arltunga Historical Reserve: nt.gov.au/parks/find-a-park/a...
Ormiston Gorge Fact Sheet: nt.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_f...
Finke Gorge National Park/ Palm Valley: nt.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_f...
For someone who claims (in your previous episode) to not be a very good video producer I think you do a bang up job. Informative, helpful, professional and every now and then some attempted humour thrown in😊
Attempted humour ??? 🤔😆🤭
But seriously thank you. We try but we aren’t professionals but hopefully we get the message across for others interested in some of the places we go and things we do. And I have a huge repertoire of excellent (Dad) jokes! 🙏🙏cheers
How good are fly nets 😂😂. The bird calls are beautiful and your pics of them are great. What an amazing adventure you are having, I’m loving each episode. You are both so easy to watch and Paula I love your laugh 😍
Fly nets are an essential piece of kit on the lap! They look silly and at first you wonder - but the value of being able to enjoy an area without constantly sweeping flies off …. It is a great adventure and Paula laughed about her laugh! Gotta laugh don’t you. cheers
Great channel, possibly the best of its kind.regarding communication, I have a satellite phone, monthly sub. So I subscribe only when I travel. What I particularly like about your presentation, is it’s not blatant advertising of products all the time. Keep up the good work.
Thank so much for watching and the feedback. We love sharing. The aim of our Gap year was to see the place and enjoy the journey - away from the rat race. We thought family and a few bored friends might watch the channel so
we still get amazed about the small but growing collection of subscribers. But in all that if we were going to put it out there we thought it was best to do some good and raise some money for charity. In all
that - sales of kit was not what we wanted or needed. And i’d rather pile myself in the eye than be an influencer 😂. Not that I have an issue with some
of the very good ones out there - but it wasn’t us. All the best and thanks again.
Probably? I have my map out and olanning
Having visited the West MacDonnell Ranges we felt it deserved better coverage.
East MacDonnell coverage was excellent.
Thanks for watching and the feedback - much appreciated . The Macs are great aren’t they? . We’ve been before as well. This VLOG series really only covers where we’ve been so we agree also that the West Macs are great also. However, on this trip we wanted to get to some places we hadn’t been like the East Macs and Palm Valley. And to be honest we loved Ormiston Gorge itself but not so much the camp ground so we didn’t go into it much further. But hope you understand this VLOG is about where our Lap takes us and not alway a travel commentary on all the other magical places you can go as well. Regrettably we can’t fit in everything even in the places we do get to go to (we’re getting tired fitting in what we have 🤣🤣. Hope that explains why our Central Australia series doesn’t tick off on every wonderful place in the region. - just those we got to this time. Thanks again - and yes, we agree the whole MacDonnells are wonderful. You could do weeks of VLOG episodes there and if people haven’t been in the region before we’d strongly recommend they start with the West Macs. cheers
Absolutely I totally understand so much to see in this wonderful country. Happy travels & stay safe. Cheers.
Great video guys, kept up the good word! Love the equipment suggestion/reviews!
Thanks for watching and taking the time to give feedback. Much appreciated. We don’t always include an equipment update but glad you like them. The past few have certainly prompted some good responses. All the best and thanks again.
Another great video very different carnt wait till we get there
The MacDonnells are underrated by comparison with say Uluru and Kata Tjuṯa but we loved them. I’d love to see some water in Trephina Gorge. The only downs side on that region as it warms up is the flies. Thanks for watching again. cheers
Great episodes.
I may have mentioned that before.
Hi, thanks again for watching and the feedback, it is much appreciated. And of course you watching helps us send some donations off to a couple of great charities as well. All the best.
Have to agree with you on Starlink been using it for a while now. Safe travels
Hi thanks for watching. Starlink is great, but it is a bit expensive give we don’t set it up if we have good mobile broadband coverage. But still a lot of extra comfort we aren’t too far out of contact if necessary.
Recently found your channel and would like to congratulate both of you an your excellent content. My wife and i have done a lap and a half over the last 2 years but in a camper trailer and its good to see our great land through some one else's eyes. And very thoughtful of you donating the proceeds to such worthy charities. Looking forward to catching up on the past videos.
Hi, thank you for watching and the great feedback it is much appreciated. Wow, you guys are very experienced and with 2 years you’ve been able to do more of the things we’ve had to miss and the camper trailer gives a different experience ! It is a great land. We will be letting people know shortly what we’ve been able to raise for charity this year with viewer help, but as you’ve probably picked up we didn’t do the channel to be influencers or professional content creators - so we thought we should do a little bit of good for a couple of causes to make it worthwhile. All the best and thanks again. Hope the past episodes are ok and we’ve got a few more for this lap. Have a Merry Christmas
Great job Dave and Pauline, sometimes it is difficult to hear your commentary over the back ground music.
Thanks for watching. We do try to balance it and test on a couple of devices but sounds like we needed to tweak it better in a few places if the voice audio has faded out a bit. Sorry about that. We keep working on it - but also appreciate you letting us know. Thanks again for watching and helping us send some shekels off to RFDS and Legacy while we do it. cheers
I got fed up with your excellent videos interrupting my Sunday beach walk and coffee, so I went for my walk first today..
Well then!! 😂. We sat there waiting for you and… nothing! But seriously of course you want to enjoy your part of the world at this time of year. Thanks for watching and the feedback as always. 🙏🙏 cheers
@@nextleveloz next week I'll take the headphones and enjoy a coffee with your video,.. best of both worlds
We save for Sunday nights.
@@ryanturner9457 Thank you for watching.
@@ryanturner9457These videos are so good I can't wait that long, how do you do it, ?
great video again Dave and Pauline especially the type of comms you use, would the SOS function and Optimised Assistance button functions work in the Defender if needed....
Thanks again for watching. Great question l. I didn’t think of that but I’m sure it would also. I will
check out how it works and light comment on it when i do the wrap
on how the car went.
Stunning episode guys. Thank you.
Having followed since day 1, I am wondering if the gap year may turn into a longer term rebalance of life/work.
It’s something I’m wondering about as we start a gap quarter in March.
Apologies if the question evokes thoughts of work etc.
Thanks for watching our journey🙏. I’m sure it was time to rebalance anyway but we will put some more thought into what that looks like when we get home.
Another great video David - interested to know what Garmin plan you are using with your inReach for remote travel?
Thanks again, really appreciated. We’re on the Freedom Safety Plan. I know they have recently adjusted plans so not sure what that means for what we originally signed up for but on short gives us the connection, the emergency backup, unlimited sends of our three preset messages and something like 10 free text messages a month. It’s been more than adequate given our various comms options. cheers
Excellent video as always. In regard to the airing down of tyres, how much do you drop the pressure? I haven’t seen you do but I suppose you do likewise with the van. I have the safety Dave’s TPMS, will the lower pressure effect that?
Hi, thanks for watching. Yes we air down all around car and van for corrugated roads, soft sand etc. Our van manufacturer gives a bit of a guide for pressures for the different types of road, but if we know it’s going to be reaps ly corrugated we generally run at mid to low 20s psi o the front of the car and the van and higher 20s to 30 on the rear of the car because if the extra weight on the rear when towing. If it gets really, really corrugated we can go down a bit further and same with sand where we might be at low 20s all around and go a bit lower if needed (we haven’t needed to). The worst time is when you have alternating corrugated road and reasonable stretches of sealed in between - like Cape York when you aren’t sure if the stretches are long enough to air back up and of course you don’t want to be at high speed or run on sealed with tyres well down. So in those cases we just slowed down on the sealed road to protect the tyres a bite The lower pressures don’t affect the safety dave TPMS, all you do is change the settings so the new tyre pressure range reflects your wired down pressures. That is reset the max and minimum pressures down a corresponding amount so your aired down pressure doesn’t set off the alarms straight away unless they lose another say 20%. I generally make the low pressure threshold about 20% below my aired down pressure. just remember to change the settings again when you air back up. It sounds fiddly but really only adds a few minutes to the overall airing down exercise and it’s a few minutes worth it to ensure you get warning if the tyres get a leak.
Great informative video once again.
Can I pls ask what time of the year eg month that you did this trip out to the East and West as we are planning a very similar trip out that way but trying to avoid the very hot time.
Thanks for watching. We were there in late September to early October. IMO that’s as late as you’d want to leave it as it’s starting to warm back up. As it was we hit some 38-40 degree days. I’m not sure where you’re from or if you’ve been there but the centre is generally quite dry (low humidity), so the temperature is a few degrees more tolerable in our view than if it was humid - but 35 plus is 35 plus so heating you on the heat. It can get very cold in winter and it’s a very popular area- especially West Macs, Kings Canyon and Uluru in school holidays. When we were there it was just out of season so not so crowded but that does mean some services start to shut down in some places from that time - but all the major stuff was still fine. Hope that helps your thought process - but it’s a must do region!! Thanks again.
Hi David. Been following you guys and really enjoy the reviews . We are building our new Zone atm and just looking for your feedback. After water we have 400 kgs left for all personal item, food, booze, utensils etc. is that adequate? Your thoughts would be appreciated. Anthony
Hi thanks for watching. Short answer is yes of course you can pack within 400kg but it will add up quickly. I had to think carefully about answering this great question -
because the issue isn’t so much if 400kg is enough gear, but whether you want to be fully loaded at 3.5 tonnes and what impact that has on your towing set up/ rear axle as well. So my best advice is start creating the most comprehensive list you can and weigh the individual items and total it and even then have a 20% or more safety margin for things you forget and even then try not to load to capacity. It seriously adds up. So as some tips - a slab of beer is 10kg, a carton of wine is a bit over that. Try to remove glass for weight and breakage (so if you like a spirit get some of the Standard Squeeze plastic bottles and transfer the contents. next big grocery shop weigh and total the bags before you unpack and double it to try to account for cleaning products and sprays etc you don’t buy every week. Tools, even the van tools supplied by Zone, won’t be included in your ATM and they can add up. Max trax are 3kg each. A weber baby q is 12kg. Your hoses and cables etc will add to 5kg plus, some people carry thermomix ( heavy), coffee machine ( ours is 4kg and the grinder is 2 kg), ipads and computers. Bedding is several more kg. And a big mistake we see is people imagining they can deal with it by moving some kit to the car when in reality the weight issues mean they have to move much if their gear out of the car when hitched to deal with rear axle capacity. And get the whole rig weighed loaded as soon as you can and before travelling. I heard of an even recently where people gathered and had a weigh company come along and give tips and weighed many of the rigs there and 80% failed. So while you can minimise clothing (good quality layers rather than complete sets of bulky seasonal gear) and yes of course you can pack to 400kg but if all that plus water puts you close to the 3.5 tonnes you do risk being over somewhere in the weight equation. My suggestion is aim to not load the van to more than 3.2 or 3.3 tonnes and then reverse engineer your lists. Worst case you might review of there is some of your van build options you don’t need because that is much harder weight to lose after the build. Do that as a highly critical exercise and you are more likely to be OK, than find out after the fact. So yes you can pack within 400kg - many people do. BUT, big BUT if that 400kg brings you into the 3.4-3.5 T gross trailer mass range, demanding on your tow rig - you might be pushing it. Hope that helps but there are many, many weight related youtube episodes out there and the general rule is people end up overweight or underestimating the gear they will travel with. The good news is the Gen 2 vans are lighter on the tow ball - and that’s very helpful, but try not to come close to you max GTM before you even start. As an aside, while you do need to account for full water tanks as you are, in practice it’s best not to tow with full water tanks unless you know younger going to be off grid or a long way from water on that leg. That doesn’t give you extra payload capacity but does safe some wear and tear on the rig. Hope that helps but you can’t sugar coat advice when it comes to weights - we’ve seen too many clearly overweight and we all, all, underestimate how quickly the weights add up. So shoot to load with a couple of hundred kg under max GTM from the get go and that means elton will confront the choices you have to make earlier and stay safer doing it. Thanks again for watching and hope that’s not depressing - it’s not meant to be. We loaded up as much as we could and we’ve always been within GVM and GCM by a fair bit - but we weighed two days after getting the van and discovered that our load distribution etc even at 3.2T put us over on the rear axle. And that’s fine - that’s why we did it. But it forced big choices - we removed roof platform, temporarily removed third row seats and redistributed gear all to make it work better. We hardly ever fill all three tanks. Hope that helps.
Hi David, Thanks for the reply, very helpful and informative particularly your comment on the need to travel with full water tanks. Enjoy and I will keep watching.
I have a problem with these videos, I am planning a trip in the next few years, the standard of these is a high bar, but I do have a landrover so there will be some dramas to report, my van is old so something will break..
Just roll with it Peter. Life is not a dress rehearsal! 😂. And we will
need something to watch with our coffee on Sunday mornings! 😉cheers.
Because central Australia is the only place with the MacDonnel Ranges.
Droll. 😂😉Thanks for watching