Caravan tour after 1.5 years of travel! What could we change? What we love? An honest review - 088

welcome to big oz explorers we've been touring in a caravan for over a year now and have learned a lot about how to manage in a tiny home while traveling around australia i'm sean and this is chris and our kids jada and jack follow our family and live van life through our eyes while we take you on the trip of a lifetime around australia's hot spots click the subscribe button to join our adventure every thursday and stay up to date with everything big oz [Music] hey guys good morning we're afternoon yeah good evening whatever it is so we're putting a little video together we're going to do a volume 2 caravan walkthrough yep so we thought it'd be a good idea to throw together a video of all the things that we've we started with and what we've ended up with what we've kept what we've thrown away what works what doesn't what things we've made change again from this second time round just because we were very fresh in the beginning it was very very early days we didn't know what to expect it was our first ever van yeah so i think a lot of people are hitting the road these this like this time of year um and there's just so much to learn and i think now doing it for as long as we have we can give you guys some hot tips um some i don't know upgrade information that you might be able to you know imply into your van or your lifestyle for what you're doing on the road so basically just a little video to throw together and just put all our things we've learnt uh together and show you guys so it may help you guys out as well so it's basically a van tour 2.0 yeah basically yeah yeah that's the simple way to put it sorry i like rambling off yeah he does so we're going to start with the inside we've got jack asleep at the moment we're hoping finger's bloody crossed that he stays asleep for the whole time otherwise we won't have to do a take half and half and try again but i think it should be pretty good welcome so we're just gonna go through kind of like what i did last time but i'm just gonna show you things that we've changed things we've improved things we've kept some of the things you always ask us about as well even now about what we've got in the van i'm going to cover those and where we bought them from why we bought them you know how much they were things like that as best i can anyway so at this end of the bed is our bedroom so it's under the bed caravan is our bedroom so everything here is about the same it's still hanging space i still probably have too many clothes the rest of the space is all identical except for the far cupboard which i'll show you in a minute so there's really no differences down here except this so this was chris's modification so this used to be a hanging wardrobe but he didn't have hanging clothes and we forever had our camera bag just laying around and you know jack could get into things so it's easier to have someone to store it all so these are three shells that hit two shells that he put together so that we can put all of our camera gear in here it also means he's got handy access to a shelf where he can put his phone for charging at nighttime so it still works the way it was supposed to um a lot of people told him that he should do an iron-on edge on here and we still haven't so it probably looks unfinished thanks for all the uh the messages guys yes i do know what it is and yes i do want to put it on but it just hasn't happened yeah and i mean we've been so remote for so long like we're just in small towns and the bunnings is the size of a corner shop so but even when you have the opportunity there's always something else going on and it's right at the bottom of the list and it will happen that's how like it covered innocence so we keep everything camera related video related gopro recording anything to do with that in there um all of this is still closed nothing's changed really so bed wise people have asked us as well why we have such a small bed we don't have a small bed it actually folds out so it comes closer it'll actually come to about here and there's what's called a bolster at the back so this piece and that folds back so that's why it looks so small if you have a bolster bed or if this is something that you're going to have as an option on your bed highly highly recommend that you get some extra support at the base for it so give me an idea that's how far the bed will extend yeah so what we've done we've actually done a couple of tent poles quick and easy fix right here this is true big old style diy fix it's simple some people say god it must be annoying but at the end of the day look how easy that was it was just it takes seconds you can whoa probably not maybe when the bed is on there i've never done it on just the frame that's funny when the bed is there you can just sit straight down and it's like it's fine it feels supported no i just sit on it sit on it yeah i think it's just that i put my weight oh it's weird when it's like that i can imagine yeah i just go as a show let's lift your feet just show them that that oh it's weird i need to sit on the actual bed but i think yeah but there you go that's that's holding your whole weight oh it's because it's on the bloody i didn't put it down straight yeah so it does the job it takes because like if you've got that much hanging out just think that there's no support you've got kids jumping on there you got i know you're just sitting on the edge of the bed because this this bed is basically like a big lounge because everyone sits on it yeah so yeah that's our easy fix they're like what 15 20 bucks each or something and we just chopped them down and put on some rubber mounts on the end yeah these are just from just from bunnings they go from the bottom of your chairs and whatnot and then that's that done yep easy done so under the bed now not much has changed it's still really what it was it's just really storage so we have winter clothes in here um all the kids games are up the back and then like the airfryer we've got the cryovacca under here as well as a rice cooker plus an extra fan because you know who doesn't carry an extra paint right half carton of beer but it's just storage space and then this here is our combi water slash air heater so we've had this since the beginning um it's all we ever know in a caravan the pros you have 10 liters of boiling hot water ready instantly the con is that you have to click a button to turn that on and wait probably 10 minutes for it to warm up five to ten minutes it's it's not that bad a lot of people do say they're not the best but we i i rate it it is good but there is obviously better but for what we've got another con though like it takes up a lot of room yeah like there's a lot of your storage space but this runs on gas so yeah gas electricity basically gas electricity or a mix of both as well so there's a lot of things that are really good about this and it'll suit a lot of people's setups it's done us really well when we've been off-grid however going forward we've talked about getting instant hot water and probably a small um trimmer actually do like a small heater which is just one vent so this has three vents yeah you go along the bed we'll just have one vent in a sense and it's just electric on is electric and gas okay gas or just gas yeah okay but for the times we've used it like oh it's very rare when we do and it's really cold probably five ten minutes yeah like if that but like when you're van's grilling when you think about it you don't need a lot to heat up this space like that's not a very big area that's it so like yeah it does have three points down the bottom here so we've got one two three so there's three three air vents that come out of that one the smaller the one that we were looking at uh just has obviously the one but it is a bigger hole but it will do the job yeah anyway moving on so this is what's called a scupper valve i actually didn't even know what the real name for it was when we first were talking about it or it only just learned it if you look really closely it's like kind of red and then white that's because we've siliconed it shut so it's not opening ever again no the one time we opened this was the one time that we had the most dust i've ever had in the van and i just about nearly cried like it was the worst day ever it was up at the cape so then it got shut and it was never opened i don't know if it's just because it's on this angled piece or if it's the combination of our car and van because some people say that it works really really well um but for us and our setup it's basically just a big hole for dust to come in so no more it's silicone it's down it's over didn't work for us and it's done the gopro event at the gopro event the gopro mount here no it's nothing funky because people tend to ask us about that it's not still yet to try that one out there's been a couple of times where we've done time lapses in the van and it's just a good place where you can see everything and that's it yeah so the other thing while we're here is our yellow strip lighting so all vans come with blue lighting and blue lighting attracts bugs white lighting attracts bugs any color attracts bugs yellow however doesn't so this used to be blue we've just taken off the strips and we've put um what would you call it like racing tape on the back side of it it's like painters tape racing tape whatever you want to call it on the back side and clicked it back on and made them yellow this is what we use when we're off grid and we don't want any bugs because you've got to have all your windows open because some of them still come through the fly screens whether you want them to or not so they're right through the van yeah they're really cool but this corner is kind of like our tech area i guess so we still like our keys here there's usually bankies car keys all the rest of it aircon um that's great tv and aerial you'll notice there's no aerial plugged in we'll get to that we have an ipod that's consistently plugged into our music so this is where our music plays from so we can have off-grid stuff downloaded um tv remote on the wall and a broom a broom is a must in a caravan do you need a broom the amount of stuff kids traipse in it's the quickest and easiest way to keep it clean we've got you're probably wondering how it's stuck there yeah it's just like a double-sided velcro tape yeah they're 3m picture hooks hanger hooks so they got like little dots on either side and when they go together they they click on and truth be told that does not fall off no we can be on the worst of worst corrugated and it still stays there the whole time the remote as well yeah um anything that's this is on by them yeah we stuck a lot of anything that's basically stuck on a wall like these ones this one this one all has the same yeah same setup um so the other thing up here that we've got is our sirocco fan so the reason i want to tell you about these is because we started with the sirocco 2 fans now we've gone to the sirocco 2 elite so the difference is again this has a quieter motor uh the run time of the sirocco is 5 000 hours whereas this is 20 000 hours this has four speeds the normal stroker has three speeds so this fan and the one on the other side which we'll show you when we get there they are used every single day all the time like always hey they're always on um the extra speed is amazing and just being so quiet it's they're really good like if i put on high i wonder how much they'll be out of here well i don't know we'll find out so we're going on high oh it sounds like it's going to take off a bit yeah that is really hot it's like ridiculous but if i go low like so now this is on the low speed which is what we used to set it on all the time for the normal zoroko i don't know if you can hear that in the background oh but i don't know how much of a capture bit they're just silent yeah they're amazing all right moving on um rest of our tech corner that i want to talk about so obviously we've got our tv this is different to what we had in the very beginning this is a kogan 24 inch smart tv we used to just have whatever came with the van this gives us the opportunity it connects to wi-fi it's got a youtube button netflix button youtube kids it's got a usb port on the side so we have to show the remote yeah we have downloaded movies as well so a smart tv i think is the way to go it is really good um it's super it's just practical and easy yeah we found the thing about this though this tv we don't watch tv hey yeah we watch normal tv we just don't we haven't watched it we didn't even really watch it like probably a couple years before we even left no we're not tv people we just never have been we watch youtube and netflix and probably the odd movie so that's it so we don't even have an aerial in it at the moment i've actually disconnected the aerial cable that goes to here and this is your aerial port up on the roof and i actually do not have a clue the last time i put that up we were just don't even know we were just saying if we did another van i would literally just take it out completely he's not gonna have it i there's no point we just don't use it it's as simple as that um so yeah smart tv and the links for all of these products things that you guys ask us about all the time that we're explaining i'm going to put them in the description so go through that i'll put a time stamp with them hopefully um and give you a link to all these different things the other thing as well that we have now so back when we first got in the van we didn't know what sort of internet we wanted to have this is a telstra nighthawk wireless 4g 5g motor think i got that right um so this is on a plan we pay we used to pay the five dollar a month which was the minimum because what happens is you go through your 15 gig and then the data slows but it was still usable uh now i pay for more so i'm actually paying for the 200 gigabyte plan and the reason being is just because i value speed i'm on the internet a lot doing youtube stuff and we're doing socials and that so this is 200 gigabyte a month it covers us for uh ipads phones netflix youtube everything so this is great we've always always always had service when there's telstra around we get service on there so it's really good like at the moment our phones oh it's only got one bar but our phones often where we aren't have one but oh no look it's disappeared but the internet will still work it's crazy i've actually been doing messages on uh the socials and stuff yeah like there's not even a bar there's i don't even know how that's working there's no booster aerial there's no other thing like that on there we are thinking of maybe doing a booster of some sort yeah we may down the track we don't know yet but if we do go on that track we'll obviously let you know what we've gone at the moment there's nothing that's exactly as it is yeah so that's that um moving on probably get into the tech area so not a lot has changed up here just move these out of the way oh dummy um so this is our water tanks so we have three water tanks they're all 90 liters each and at the moment you can see they're all in half so we use this when we're off-grid to track our water i will say that it's not accurate i guess not 100 accurate it tells you around about what you've got but if you're getting down your bottom quarter tanks it's like oh are we on the top of the quarter or the bottom of the corner like you know you don't always know exactly where you're at but it does the job uh we've got the bms 30 still installed and the reason being is because if we're on grid with 240 power it goes through this and if we're connected to the car it also goes through this so that's still there i'll tell you what happens with solar in a minute um this is our 12 volt pump for the water to turn it on and off this is the truma water heater which was under the bed so this is how we turn on you got your room like air temperature water temperature whether you want to run on gas and electricity and the fan speed when you've got the gas uh the air thing on um the other thing you can do as well down here in the settings and that you can set a timer so when you do your hot water you can have it preset so ours goes on from four in the afternoon until eight at night and that covers us then for doing washing up uh bath time showers things like that and then it turns off and it's usually in the morning there's actually still like usable warm water if you wanna do a wash up in that as long as it's not too cold if it's freezing it might not be there and then this little thing here is the bluetooth module which is for our rinology 100 amp hour solar regulator so oh my god so many things so when we go under here you might remember in our first tour if you've watched it that this cupboard was what we called our oh i have to beat myself here our poo covered yeah so um this cupboard had nothing in it except for this bms 30. to begin with we actually had this shelf and we we separated the bms 30 and did another couple of little shelves in here and it became just storage for like we got wires and head torches and goggles and your pens pencils all that sort of stuff so that was all stored in here um obviously since we put this 100 amp hour solar regulator in we needed more space so we've removed the bottom shelves now so it's just there's only a couple things in here now so this is a rinology 100 amp hour solar regulator it connects directly to our solar panels on the roof which we've actually completely rewired ourselves now because they used to be kind of like speaker wires attached to the solar panels and we've got the thickest wire that we can use now so we're not losing energy from the solar as it comes through to the regulator yeah they had a smaller gauge in there because we had the 30 amp uh redarc there were smaller wires so we've upgraded them now because we got the system to be able to cope with it which is this which is now the regulator and that's just allowing us to pump a hell of a lot more solar into this van to recharge those batteries so i mean i can't really show you the screen or much about it it does have a phone app uh it's got the bluetooth capability that's on chris's phone so i might just put a little print screen here and show you how that looks and our solar panels at the moment we have the ability to take in we've now learnt about 30 amps of solar on a perfect day however it's never normally a perfect day so i think we're normally like 25 yeah around about 20 to 25. two of the panels we have up there are chinese and they don't even say what wattage they are so we don't even actually know really what they are so we're gonna replace them when we get to a bigger town and put in a couple of bigger panels and then we'll be able to utilize this to its max but at the moment we can have both this going and the car charging at the same time or 240 and this running whereas the bms 30 would only pick the highest charge so you could only use 240 only use solar there's only one input yeah so it's kind of cool from that perspective we have two ways to charge um oh i'll show you this too this is a wireless baby monitor that runs on the internet so when we go to a campsite that's still three sites down just to go and have a beverage and the kids are asleep this goes on and it's basically like a live camera which goes straight to my phone yeah it gives you what motion detections noises all that sort of stuff is actually really impressive i'm pretty good it's pretty cool little product 50 or no i think it was it might have been 99 99 in kmart yeah like perfect so yeah moving on now and all these baby latches that are on the doors this one is simply to stop jack because he's a pain in my bum this one is actually to help because this latch we've replaced it once already and it always goes so there's a button here yeah it's just not suited this this is harsh conditions but that's not the issue it's the bit that's here yeah it snaps it's plastic so it really doesn't need a new one yeah other than that that's our pantry pantry still the same we still use it we've never lost anything glass in here like i've got glass peanut butter um glass dips bits and pieces like that we've never lost anything like that in there it's actually it travels really really well it's it's a good pantry if you get something like this it's a good design and there's extra bench top if you ever need it however i don't think we've ever used it i think i used it once in the beginning because there was a novelty like oh i've got more bench space because you've got to have it out obviously to use it which is in itself a pain in the ass yeah you'll notice like a lot of our things look like this as well so like the labels just go to absolute crap and this is corrugations that is that just goes to show how much we do off-road there's a lot of things like this looks like that yeah when it's stored away somewhere drink bottles and has the ability to move around corrugations will just they suck no one likes corrugations corrugations are fun all right i'll pop all these back up out of the way yeah bench space back so into the kitchen welcome to the kitchen i don't have to move far so in here pretty much everything's still the same as what it used to be um in here we love our yetis we didn't have yetis in the beginning we actually had like plastic cup wear i think we had real mugs we actually had china mugs and we had the corel plates and they're just heavy they risk breaking so everything's changed from that perspective so everything we drink out of now is either yeti or a camelbak so we love the camelbak cups but we love the yeti water bottles that's kind of where we're at now we're going to do a little review video um yeah of the two of the two well we've got yeti we've got camera back and like some navigator stuff as well so yeah we've got a mixture of different things because everybody's doing drinkware now and there's so many out there and it's just cool to sort of break it down because some have good things others don't yeah and it's just yeah we will do something like that very soon we never had any tupperware when we left and i've accumulated two of these and they're the woolworths collector reward point giveaway ones they're actually really good they're perfect for one more food and they're easiest to erase so we have two of those which we use as we need them and then our new plates and bowls so these ones are bamboo and they're from anaconda and the reason that i chose these believe it or not is actually that grippy bottom i love this and this is to do with jack it's also to do with the fact that they're unbreakable um they're lighter well if you just put plastic on a bench like this yeah slippery slippery eyes like that it's it's the best thing ever that grips like just that in itself is crazy all the plates they have them as well all the same and same with the bigger ones on paper but yeah i yeah yeah and then really really really good feature and that's a big reason when you'll find out when we do a review on the cups there's a cup that has something very similar to that that makes it that much better there you go there it is right there we'll talk more about that in another video so these shells i get asked about these so much like people just see them in passing through series and that and they're like oh my god where are your shelves from so these are from howard storage they weren't cheap they were like thirty dollars a shelf or something like i actually probably paid way too much for all the things that i got in here because then afterwards i realized the big w have a similar range i think w's are like eight dollars a shelf so have a look in big w as well they still do the white like covered metal version of them or they have plastic ones in that but this is just because you've got this massive space that you need to break up like you can't just have one level on the bottom it's unrealistic so yeah and these things while you're at it why you took that off you would have seen chris just take that off these are on all of our cupboards these came with the band so i have no idea where you're gonna find them you might be able to make your own version of them oh you can make something like yourself they usually help stuff stay in which is really cool yeah so moving on next this is like my junk and medicine cupboard there's lots of sauce packets and things in here for just different things along the way um i have a stash of skittles which is to do with jada's schooling because whenever she finishes every day she gets a skittle of every color so that's what they're there for recipe books scales medicine where we get little basket things from these ones here are from big w they are they've been really handy yeah big w you'll see them throughout the van actually we've got a few of them i've got one in the fridge like i've got a couple over there as well so containers go such a long way in a caravan because well not just that like if i want to give jack a medicine um this is that's everything you need right there you know that's one of them out and then i can pop it back up so it means everything is easily accessible so yeah doing little things like that is definitely helpful all right um that's about it there moving on so kitchenwise the kitchen hasn't really changed much so we've got paper towel holder up here we've always used this love it the only thing i find is when the windows are open this likes to unravel itself sometimes then you end up with paper towel everywhere so i sometimes put a hairband on it because it frustrates me that was again howard storage or not oh yeah but you can get these things from bunnings yeah they seem to be getting more regularly available remember what they're called now fusion lock fusion lock or something um bunnings have a full range of them and i think they're a bit cheaper there than howard i went stupid at howards in the beginning and i spent hundreds a little bit much increased hundreds i couldn't even believe the receipt it's a very loud song he's not waking up though which is good um yeah so i spent too much in hours go to bunnings go to bw go to kmart because they're all there oh um so this again this is another thing which is from howard's i've not found anything from anywhere else that is the same as this though i love it it is the most easy dish dish rack ever the excuse or like the scaly stuff in it because it's probably a bit gross so there's basically a hole where the water comes out and you can direct where you want it to go and it fits like just to get you plates like you just so much washing up goes on this yeah it's tiny but holds a lot keeps going the thing the the thing i like about these bamboo plates they fit perfectly in here everything i can throw that around a bit and it still doesn't come out whereas others all fall over they just seem to fit really really well you ever see a bit of the back feet cutlery um the other thing about this as well so when we're traveling i fill up the sink and i put lots of stuff in the sink i've got a special sink holder which i'll show you when we get there but it fits in there as well so everything fits into the sink everything kind of interlocks and works so that's that um moving over we've upgraded our coffee machine so we've been on this coffee journey from the day we left until now and we started off with instant then we've gone to pods like cole's pods then we've got nespresso pods then we've been in starbucks pods then we went to reusable pods with our own coffee because we love campos i don't know if you've heard of campos um so we went through that process as well and now we've upgraded to this so this is you choose your own milk you honestly like tamp your own coffee into or into here and make your own coffee so but there's a little milk froth of the goes on the side there too yeah so you've got a shaky hanger you've got three features espresso cappuccino or latte and you can literally you can pick like the level of froth that you wanted and everything else which is so cool there's your coffee in yeah yeah and then your frother comes out here oh so good it's really really really good change coffee for us next level it's really really easy as well so we were sort of a bit worried about the size of it and how bulky it was but in the same token like it's not really that bad if you love coffee oh you'll make it work um and then saying that because a lot of people said to us as well the hassle we used to go through with the reusable pods and the grinding and everything why would we do that but when you break it down if you're buying a coffee every day for five six bucks from a cafe which five six bucks is realistic these days add up everything to buy your machine buy beans and do it all yourself this is sometimes less sometimes more depending on what you're choosing but this machine is only 300 bucks like it's 300 machine and you've got your own coffee anywhere you want to go we can be anywhere and have a good coffee 540 watts i'll put it in if i'm wrong i'm pretty sure it's 540 so it's fine on our inverter we've got a 2001 inverter i think i was looking at the other day i was pulling about 111 amps at its max yeah but when you think about it only it takes 20 seconds yeah 15-20 seconds to make a coffee and you do two of them i think we chewed three percent there's nothing of 200 amp house 200 amp hours yeah sorry and a half one point 1.5 amp hours yeah all right um moving on our knife holder so this is something which again i get asked so much about this like all the time all the time so the knives they're iotion they're really good knives we actually get them sharpened and like they're amazing so this is not the sort of knife you accidentally walk into because you probably like cut yourself in half so these ioshen ones i take off when we're traveling whether we're on road or on corrugations no matter where we go because i care about them um there are times when jack's screaming jade is in my ear and we're in a rush and i actually do forget about it it's not often but when i do they do stay on they'll sometimes move a little bit like this this one likes to come off i don't know why it's got less less less surface well it's got a really heavy base as well so you know but yeah so they move ever so slightly but they do stay on and when they when they come off if this ever comes off it's usually on corrugation so if you get one of these you would be okay to leave them there i'd say um maybe not your little paring knife these guys stay on all the time i never take them off and they're fine and i think it's just they got a thicker blade too i don't know but i love that it's really good it's a nice place it's out of the way of kids you're not gonna accidentally you know stab yourself in the draw because everything's moved around and yes they are still borrowed we will take them back oh the lone star yeah there's a big story behind that ask us one day and i'll tell you in person i'm not putting it on youtube oh god no um anyway so the other thing while we're here these little lights so these are i'll have to find out hardcore lighting with a k so hard ko double r lighting these are little reusable whites so you've got two light settings bright dark orange and then there's a flashing one but i mean unless you're riding a bike i don't think you'll ever need that but we use these off-grid just to save some power so we'll just leave one of these on super super handy we never use we we've had these like way back when we used to camp like swagging days yeah because that one's probably a bad example but on the back here just pull that off it's like a little like hair band and you can wrap it around poles you can put over hooks you can hang it from places you can do all sorts of stuff but yeah they last magnetic last for age well they got three aaa batteries in them yes they got like a little charging case in them yeah they do actually last a fair while we use these quite a fair bit uh there is one in the box yeah we got four of them all up so that's a oh my goodness we'll get to that when we get to the bathroom but we'll show you why we have one in there yeah um what's that in here isn't it i don't think i've missed anything we've got a normal oh no there was one other thing i was going to tell you about actually there's a few things down here so then we've got our oven stovetop what not had we ever been able to change things we would go grill and stove top and burger off the oven because in the time we've been in the van once at the cape we had a really really really bad long day everyone was exhausted it was a crappy road we nearly ran out of fuel just everything went wrong so i baked a cake so everyone put a piece of cake because it was just one of those days that's the only time i've ever used it apart from that don't see what it's used for storage so i've got a couple of extra like stoneware things in here pizza pan perhaps there's plasticware in here which is the microwave and my onions and potatoes because onions and potatoes are good in the dark they last a lot longer and it actually stays really cool in there so that's my storage shelf and i could have had a big pots and pans drawer instead and i totally would go a pots and pans drawer because my pots and pans aren't here and not in a drawer so yeah yeah i don't think i need to even say much more about that i think that sells itself to smell like as to why i would not have an oven oh yeah so yeah that's a pain bum uh drawers wise these all pretty much look the same we've got separated things which again come from howards what are they called dream draw and they're separated so they actually extend hang on so you can see they like get in and out so you can fit different types of drawers and there's different size ones depending on your setup so if that looks too big there are smaller ones so we've done that just to break it all up and so we can fit things in my spare gin very important stuff and then in the top cutlery utensils and bottles because we still go through bottles like it's going out of fashion i can't wait for those things to disappear time will come we use so much water off grid just washing them and refilling them this is a recent tool yes we've just purchased in kanana and the reason being is because when you move in your caravan you're going to find that your freezer always ices up whether you like it or not it's probably going to happen unless you install like a 12 volt fan which some people do we haven't this is a really great scraper it's actually a dough and pizza maker thingy that's perfect it's a massive scraper so you can get all that ice off i just did it yesterday and it took me half the amount of time that it normally takes it's a very handy tool to keep with you yeah and saying that the freezer doesn't freeze that often that's probably been god months since we last did it in the time you've been in the van probably four times yeah so it's not very often i don't personally go for the fan things in there like it will ice up it every now and again but it takes you five minutes clean it out it's done it doesn't take long that's done and dealt with so um microwave wise this is a 900 watt whirlpool this got replaced only a couple weeks ago because our other one rattled itself to pieces because of corrugations you hear a lot of people saying the first thing to go is in the microwave the microwave's just not they just don't like it especially if you're doing as much off-road stuff as we do it's i think a lot of people agree that um they just they can't withstand the uh this one has the glass plate obviously like most do as well and the glass plate i put in the navigator microwave buddy i think it's cool yeah it's like a storage body put your plate into it though and store it away in there which and we've never had a broken one touch wood we've never had a broken one so hopefully that continues that way so we've got the microwave we do use that just to warm bottles up or um re-hit reheat leftovers it's not very often um so freezer fridge freezer this is 198 liter i'm pretty sure dometic i think it's an older model now you can actually get one that's narrower and taller and it's like 224 liters i think it is with a little bar in between here instead um but size-wise i mean there's a lot of looking nice and clean that freezer is see all this ice collecting this over time it does build up and it's extremely full in there at the moment yeah so there's a lot going on we spent about four hundred dollars on shopping before we left the room we've never had an issue with the fridge except for the shelf you can see i've duct taped it in now because this little corner piece just right there has snapped you can see the difference if you look at that one to that one that's a piece yeah and that's missing it so that's it yeah that's only well that was just recently as we just finished the gib gibb was unforgiving yeah so yeah that's the only issue we've ever had with that this fridge as well you'll notice these both have the baby latches on them as well um i put these on when we're traveling the reason being way back at early beach i did a massive massive shock and the door must have been quite heavy and i had or i didn't click it in i don't know because it's got like a clicker on it and um this opened and i had yogurt go all through the van and i was like oh my god i'm never gonna have that happen again so i click this shut when we travel just in case it's just a backup it's just just a guarantee that even if it was going to it can't at the end of the day it is still a box with four walls of moving stuff oh these vans think about everything and how it moves yeah i mean sometimes things happen so i clipped them shut and then i've never had an issue with it since uh so that's that moving on we'll leave this end until last because jack's obviously asleep so this box that's under here is not normally here just in case you want to know about it that's jack's toy box toy box because he didn't want to go to sleep unless um i took it out i'm going to remove some chairs for you i don't usually go to this much detail i normally just leave we're good i normally just go like this and just lift it enough to grab what i want unless i'm doing like a full repack or something um but this here is my food storage so this is all heavy extra stuff like soda waters milks um extra foil bags uh there's bug spray extra sauces that we use all the time flowers rice we only have like kilos of rice in here the next cereal we're going to use anything like that so this is kind of where i store it all and then the other thing obviously which is the most important in here is the 2000 watt anadrive inverter so this is something which didn't come standard in the van this is something that we added we like we said we were so new to banning we didn't really know what we would need or what we wouldn't and things like bms30 we thought that would be so much for a caravan it's not um we didn't think we'd need an inverter we did we thought we'd have enough solar we didn't so we've learnt this along the way so the inverter we actually had installed we wired up the button ourselves which is in our episode when we were at where are we lucinda lucinda yeah so this is how you turn it on so that actually goes through like a channel in the wall all the way down and connects to it so that it can turn it on and the other thing we did we had a 240 guy come out and he's hardwired one of the points to the inverter to here so you can plug two things in at any time into your inverter and then we tend to use this extension lead as well so this extension lead we can plug into here and then we can run that over here to the coffee machine to the microwave um if we're off-grid that little camera that i use for jack as well that can go into the camera uh just trying to think what else so this is not you not your standard sort of setup like most inventors now you'll have a hard wired into the van so you can use any point in the van while that inverter is on and that's something we would do going forward oh 100 yeah again this was just another learning curve something that we didn't know much about and we've learned oh tons and tons since then it's from jada's birthday she got a package and stars all through it um thanks mum so yeah going forward from a battery perspective i guess we would 100 have a 2000 or a 3000 watt inverter we still love the ibis 4 air conditioning um we would go so at the moment we've got 200 amp hours of battery which i'm going to show you in a minute uh we would probably go 4 to 600 dependent and obviously hardwire the inverter as well so that's and well solar will depend on your system and what you know regulators and how you go about it we're definitely going to go bigger than what we got i reckon 600 watts six to 700 yeah so battery system-wise we've made errors in our choice in the beginning but we fixed it in the best way we can so yeah that's that bit um i'll just show you in here real quick i won't take everything the back piece off i'll just take this off so under here this is like our bag storage area so we've got our waterproof north stones no oh my goodness we have waterproof north storm bags under here and one from anaconda as well the 200 amp hour lithium battery and then on here on this side these are shoes so there's like our um a leader water shoes that you love so much i'm even going to put a link to that in this so a leader water shoes guys there's a link in the description so you know um and these are extra thongs because thongs have blowouts and then ice creams i usually leave them there because i can just easily access a couple and put them in the freezer correction ice blocks ice blocks sorry so that's the um caravan plate holder that i use and then this here and the reason they're here is because they're just easy to get to for pack up and set down and this here goes in our sink so i'll show you this real quick so it's really cool crazy dog canvas if you haven't heard of them they actually do some really good products very hearty long-lasting products we had a couple of bags but there's only so much we can carry we've got a couple of waterproof bags that sort of suit us to the tea we still got the crazy dog back yeah yeah yeah but we've had to chop and change a few things because you can't carry everything yeah you choose what you do and don't need yeah but this is definitely one of our favorite ones from these guys use my bum to move things around so um when it comes to pack up see how there's water in the sink now those bits in there so you usually wet in here your drains there you don't want stuff coming back up to ruin what you've got so these are made custom to fit into your sink so we gave them our measurements and they gave us one relevant power sink it's got extra little pockets and things along the side in here if you want to use those and these all velcro on this is velcro right the way around the top you can move them around if you need to it just goes in so then as well so i'll put everything in here we've got like everything and anything really whatever basically anything that lives on the bench yeah so i usually just end up packing everything into here it's all the way let's say we stop somewhere halfway and go oh let's have some lunch um and i need to use the sink i can just take it all out put it somewhere else out of the way use your space as you need to and then you can put it back on and you can get back on the road so yeah that's that um i think that's a really cool addition it's not something we had in the beginning or thought we needed but when you look in the sink i kind of can't see they're wearing away over time but you can see like rub marks and stuff in certain places and that's because i used to just put everything directly in the sink so we could have probably avoided that and had an even newer looking sink not that that probably matters to many people but to some it does small things small things make a big difference yeah so yeah back on the other side of the van now not a lot to show you here it's mainly just pantry um there's a lot in there at the moment actually so again we're using these shelves these are that's a slightly different one it's just a single level shelf it's hard to see because there's so much around it but there is one of those in there as well again from howard's again you can get them from big w um and then in behind here there's another little one of those plastic guys which has more saw spaces and you know powders and things like that so that lives in there as well just makes it easy to get things out this is kind of a chip and popcorn area i guess and then this final one at the end and then this final one at the end is more like you know rice um cereals there's coffee there's sugar there's corn flour so i've got lots of these little containers in here um tea porridge all that stuff these containers are the latest ones that you can get from systemer and they are amazing so the reason being they're that square that you're not losing space and they stack really really well so we have everything in there stacked nothing ever moves these are like the best containers ever and i'm not sponsored by them i'm not told to say that at all that's literally me going out and buying them and figuring that out for myself because i just i just love everything about them and the way they work and how they stack together so if you look in there um you can see just how many like different ones i've got going on for just different products and stuff behind so they all just sit in there and they save so much space so the containers that i used to have in there are all the same ingredients but it used to take up this whole space but now that i'm using these containers i've actually gained an area so we've got a couple of other bits and pieces up in the corner as well so the system arranged they have a name again it'll be in the description just have a look in there and you'll be able to read more about it can we just touch on this clock real quick we get asked absolutely all the time about this clock i can confirm and tell you now after many questions and many bits of research that they do not stock it anymore i don't think it's even available to buy anywhere anymore so we've literally got the one and only i think left off this clock because i haven't seen it anywhere else and nobody can find it when i bought it it was in officeworks and it was on special yeah i don't remember it was clearance but i know it was on special i was like oh that's a good deal and i wanted it because i wanted it to do everything you've got your degrees your date and your time just to keep some sort of orientation in the van in a sense and it was good it fits up on there out of the way without the way of all the cupboards and stuff but yeah we do we get asked about that a lot so it was at office works i think it was about 30 40 bucks or something and the brand is degree i've tried looking for it other people try looking for it and i just cannot find it if you find it drop it in the comments i'll let people know i reckon i'd sell out that day um then there's all these things throughout the van as well so there's one of these in my cupboard there's one here and there's ones in the bunk bed we sandalwood sticks we still use them we haven't used them as much because there's not actually that many issues up here to be honest where we are at the moment keep a diary which is more to do with youtube and work related stuff and then just our maps so this is you know how everyone has their map that they put on their fridge or on the side of their car or whatever it is this is ours i just fold it away so it's out of the way what is this from a post office yeah that was your favorite 95 or something a humor one of them so this is where this caravan has been it's been up to the cape it's been inland queensland lawn hill and up to darwin um and then through all of the kimberleys pretty much all the kimberleys we've just done the gibb river road and we went to karata but we're actually just before 80 mile beach at the moment because we're on our way back down so that's what this caravan has lived through so what you're seeing now has been through a year and a half of half of australia all right and done a bloody good job at it yeah i'm excited when we get home i want to frame this oh so yeah mind if it's got like little rips and things or accidental marks from jack and that you know it makes it ours in a sense and then i've got another one which we use as a trip planner so when we just want to look through it we can do that but this is like the one that has our outreach all right he's pretty passed out let me just get a pain of him i think we'll be right to move on let's turn off all the lights so go shower first all the way in he's right something we have compliments about all the time is how big this shower is and i'm telling you right now i love it it's so good i can like you know you can bend over you can do anything you need to do there's heaps of space and part of the reason for that is because it's a fiberglass shell so there's not like a shower shell in here that's the back of the caravan and over here is the side of the caravan so they haven't had to put an extra wall or anything in there so yeah it makes a big difference to the space we've got a couple of little shelves in here which we've had since the beginning just to hold bits and pieces and stuff since jack has got bigger we've upgraded our bathtub for him so that's now a bigger bathtub it used to be a little round one because we left and he was only six months and he's two in two days so yeah and just outputs and stuff so this is all done really well these little hooks you can buy from bunnings you can buy from kmart they honestly if i show you look i don't want to take it all the way off hang on they just peel they're like sticky stuff and they just stick on they're really good another way that you can save your walls and still hang up cool stuff so that's the shower moving into the bathroom in here not much has really changed to be honest everything's pretty much the way it was i think i told you about this in the last tour my hair straightener that i'd only used it like once i think i've used it maybe three times now and the hair dryer i think we used it more back in calinaro to get some stickers yeah we took stickers off using the hairdryer to heat up all the sticky stuff so we use it for that i might talk a little quieter do you reckon our toothbrush holders they're still the same ones we still use them they used to be over the toilet and people gave us a lot of grief saying that they shouldn't be here because they're in the toilet area so okay good point and we move them so they're here now sink and everything's the same under here this is this is here for jack not because there's a problem because it's our cleaning chemicals and stuff so it's all just bathroom stuff really it's pretty much the same not much has changed in the bathroom and on the wall more of those fusion locks and then this is the other light so you can see here it's like on with the with the wires but at night time that's a really good night light that jada can use when she's going to the toilet and then she can turn it off and go back to bed without like blinding everyone because the big lights that they give you are just way too much so yeah um and then finally we've got the bun carrier to go before we get there because jack's sleeping we install the new fan this is to give our airflow in this area having this here this bolster has stopped a lot of airflow from the aircon i don't know why but having a fan to move it and continue moving it back has helped heaps this is our prison curtain for when adults want to have adult separation time yes no not prison curtain prison sheet prison sheet yeah someone said that to me one day i had a comment now like lost my like marbles i thought that was hilarious so yeah that's our privacy in a sense that that it's funny because it's it's just a cat and people like what's so special about it but honestly that separates half the caravan and you can literally have them out there doing their own thing and you can be in here we don't use it during the day and stuff at night when they're sleeping yeah so like if you're getting changed and stuff like rather than nosey eyes being like oh what's going on out there a curtain changes that hey yeah some people seem to have those like um what would you call them no like a retracting material door sort of thing yeah they're kind of like a they've got like a zigzag shape and they slide into each other and i've heard a lot of things about them breaking or not working or they don't clip up or they don't line up especially if you've got kids because they hang off them and they run into them and they just they're not not practical a simple curtain does the exact same thing we've taken it off a couple of times as well and washed it because of oily fingers and things like that so that way 12. [Music] okay so the last bit that we're going to go through is the bunk area and the rear cupboard so we have a triple bunk and the reason that happened is because we actually planned our build and what we wanted and it was nearly the same as this but then cove it happened and the wait was going to be so long this is march 2020 and um they actually had a three banker three bankers three bunker available so we went with that so we've got jada at the top uh since last time you would have seen it she swapped directions so she used to have a toy box down here and i head up the other end we've now gone the other way around um she seems to like it this way too and it's kind of good this is like a corner where you can shove all the toys out of the way up the far end um and jack has always been that way around with his toy box down there and his head up the scent it's pretty antiques we don't want him to like suffocate and stuff he used to have a zipper front on here which was to stop him from coming out but now that he's a bit older and he understands the idea behind it this is just like a normal bed breaker and so we've got one gap where he can come out and he hasn't fallen out he knows to just sit here and go mom and say hey and stuff and it's been really good for him so that's that and then our bottom bunk is kind of just storage so there's a bit of everything there at the moment we've got a generator we've got a little vacuum cleaner this is the shark vacuum cleaner it is the best thing in the world if you need a little vacuum cleaner it only runs on 240 but like [Music] it sucks it sucks so yeah there's that jack's presents are here he sucks good sucks good doesn't suck no it doesn't suck it sucks good um and then jack's presents are actually underneath this this is our dirty sheets that i've still got to wash but this particular park says you can't use your caravan washing machine because they don't have the salad capabilities to take away water so we're collecting water so i don't really want to wash bed sheets because that takes a couple of loads in the smaller washer but i've got his presence hidden under there because it's like the one place where he won't see them um so yeah so bed sheets don't mind them anyway we have a step stool our washing a washing basket and then down the back is another box which just has things like um nappies wipes swim nappies um nappy bags extra dummies like anything and everything you can imagine for having a young kid in a car so that's kind of the out of the way box that we don't usually need but if i do i can get to it and under here there is storage as well so we kind of just keep paperwork and things that are easy to store in there we've got a shade sail which goes on either side of the caravan really that's in the far corner because we hardly ever use it so it's there and out of the way but we can get to it if we need to so it's just storage really and then um probably the only other thing to mention as well the fans that we use look at jade as it's easiest they're exactly the same they're huxson truck like foot area fans or something i'm going to put the link in the description this again is something that we've been asked a lot about because they're bladeless so when they're on there's no spinning pieces and that however just so you know sirocco fans are actually really good and they're safe to have for kids so like you can see how much data or whoever it is has touched this fan there you can see all the finger marks sorry they're so dirty um but these actually like totally safe hang on i'll give you a like you're not going to hurt yourself so going forward in the next van build i will get these the kids that's yeah because there'll be another one surely okay so had we have had our time over i would have gone for these instead of the huxon fans um but at the time as well jack was only six months old so i don't know it's really up to personal preference i would go to rocco's next time though yeah those hugs and fans have been actually really good yeah they have for what they are like they're a cheap little thing but geez they're still gone like they stopped job rubber i do do haven't yeah like literally robert alley express early experience oh my god that's from all right so onto these cupboards the one i'm not unsure about is this one this is jada's cupboard she has control of that oh it looks pretty good jesus um that's jack's if anything hers actually looks better than jack's you'll eject a lot more separate tiny things yeah so this is their wardrobes they're quite deep cupboards they're probably about that deep so she can have like three piles of stuff in there and she's got winter stuff at the very back and then kind of two levels of other stuff when she needs it so that's their clothes and then up here oh birthday stuff that's one of jack's blankets linen um this is our school work area so this is everything that gets sent to us for jada's schoolwork towels and beach stuff this is my swimwear that's all up here which i know sounds crazy i need a whole shelf but i do because i actually go through a lot of it and this is my crme so it's really just like whatever we need at the time so all the shelves that are in here as well you might have seen the previous episode i actually installed those myself so chris went down had them all chopped up i said i'm gonna do this one i feel like doing this or were you sick or something i think i had a bad back oh that's right you'd hurt your back yeah it was like for weeks yeah absolutely agony but yeah don't risk it i'll do it like i so wanted to do it because i love i enjoy doing these little things but yeah sean um jumped in and did it for us yeah like it just you get these big cavities of like cupboards and stuff and you you're so limited to what you can do there's so much empty space and that's a big reason why we put a lot of shelving in to different areas because it just it it makes it so much more practical and up for shelving oh big time all right so then the last thing as well which is still here hasn't really changed is our washing machine the handy washing machine yep we would highly recommend getting one of some sort because it will save you so many times over dollars as well well it saves you money but it's just so easy you can do it anywhere anytime and you'll be surprised when you can when you can use it and when you don't there's rapid settings 14 30 and 59 and to be honest if it's just a few things i do 14 if it's a decent size load i'll do the 30 and that's it like it uses i think it's about 30 or 35 liters for a wash of water so when you're off grid it's not ideal but usually when we're at the end of our stay and we don't need our water extruder to top back up then i'll do a load of washing and that way you know you're not worrying about losing your water in a sense it's the only issue it's probably given us is that sometimes it's unbalanced and if it's unbalanced it like the van is like like you can feel the whole van going you can see the awning it wants to have a shake as well yeah sometimes it shakes around but at the end of the day it is nothing but it's really nothing top loader i don't really know we've only ever had a front loader yeah um if we were to ever do it again and it was a style where there's a top loader i'm sure it's going to do the exact same job it's really handy to have a washing machine on board highly recommend having one i wouldn't go with that especially for a family oh yeah but i reckon that's probably about it in here so i'm gonna send you outside with chris and chris can show you around the outside and tell you more about what we've changed out there and um yeah i hope you enjoyed that right oh i'm going to take you outside i'm going to show you all around the outside all the things change let's go all right guys we're going to do the outside tour down not a lot has changed but i'm going to go around and just show you a few different little things and we'll go from there right so first up what are we going to start with well in the very beginning we did swap out our toolbox this is one from trade tools it is a much smaller more low price profile and lightweight sort of setup and to be honest it's all we've ever needed still to this day i thought it might have been a bit too small because we had a choice between a slightly bigger one but then we went the smaller one just because we're really saving our weight at the time but i'm pretty happy with the way that's turned out it's yeah it's still not very packed there's still a bit of room in there if i had to put more things in so i'm really happy with how that sort of turned out and all the things that i've got in there uh we did get a powder coated to obviously go with the van it does come in silver but uh so far pretty happy uh on the front here i have upgraded the mud flaps there's a bit of a funny story behind that like these i think they're three mil or four mil or something to start with but obviously over time they just wear and tear and they they fall apart so i actually got some nine mil rubber from clark rubber i think it was a broom actually and i went to bunnings and got some metal strips a few nuts and bolts and a few washes and i've just pre-drilled all the holes put them on but the funny thing is this actually wasn't shaped like that when i first put them on they actually came right down to about the bottom here and they were square because i just i had one big sheet i just cut it in half to make them obviously even and then bolt them on but the downside to that is there is no way for the rocks to go so when the car is actually on towing flicking up rocks which it always does it's actually got nowhere for the rocks to go except up onto the mud flap back up off here and ricochet into the back of the car so the car has been dirty for quite some time we had a detail just recently and realized that there's actually a lot of stone chips on the back of the car and i think it was all just because of that so i actually ended up cutting them right back shaping them up so they actually looked the part but now they're practical at the same time so don't do what i've done and put humongous mud flaps on because you don't need huge ones but the reason why the thick ones is because i shouldn't have to replace them any time soon so with the gas bottles we've still got the four kilos we did originally have the nines we didn't really know if falls were going to cut it or not they were doing really well in the start and they still are to this day we still don't feel like we need the 9 kilos even though we do use a fair bit of gas for a lot of different things especially off grid but can't fold to be honest and again it was down to saving weight and just minimizing everything on that toe ball uh what else we got pretty much everything up here is still the same running gear um honestly nothing's really changed at all the only thing that probably changed is the the jockey wheel so the jockey wheel actually was here in the center but if you watched our episode i think it was one of the early episodes of the cape series we uh we had one of those trail trail mates one of the hydraulic jacks and i didn't i wasn't aware of the time that they actually dropped so i actually left it on there for a trip that we did i think it's about an hour and a half or something like that and it actually dropped just before we pulled up and what had happened is we went over like a little dip or causeway area and it must have caught and it totally bent it like a banana it was an eyeliner i couldn't even get it off i actually had to uh grind the thing off so i did a few uh diy sort of fixes and repairs while we're up in weeper and i've now got a jockey wheel on the outside of the draw bar now instead of in the inside the only reason i haven't put it back there is because there's still a bit of metal and plates and stuff and it's just i haven't got the time to do all that sort of stuff and they're the right tools and that so i've just put on side and it still works just as good never had any issues with it um it's been a quick fix and a long-term fix which i'm pretty happy about so the tunnel boot it's pretty much the same i've actually culled i'm always culling it probably lasts a month or two most things and i start going back through them again still got the trusty navigator bags for our water and electricity i've got a spare one there for another water sometimes you've got to double extend them to get to uh certain water sources um really not much i've just got a couple of chocks i've got my fishing gear in there and rods and just a few little bits and pieces like my my torque wrench which i like to uh talk talk up the tires and the nuts and bolts and stuff on the on the car and the caravan especially when doing a lot of corrugation and dirt roads it does come in handy it's good maintenance that was like 30 40 bucks i think that was from a local store somewhere um yeah perfect other than that it's pretty self-explanatory so i will touch on because a lot of caravans come with the outdoor shower to be honest we thought it was going to be a great idea at the very beginning but i think we've used it three maybe four times and i think those two or three times was way back in the beginning back at home when we're staying at mum's backyard just to uh to bath jack outside and like his little bucket when he was a baby and as yeah literally it's like i get the selling point some people probably use it a hell of a lot more but for us personally yeah it's probably a waste of time not really something we'd go for if we were gonna go another caravan again and just save space because that actually goes in behind the sink so you've got all that sort of cabling and the tubing for the hose and everything in there so it'll just save a bit of space and yeah a hole inside the caravan basically again too we've been asked a few times about this table not many caravans do come with a second table they normally come on the awning side but we got another one installed before we left brisbane uh when we picked up the van and got one stuck on this side and i'll tell you what this has been super handy you think why do you have a table on this side basically what i use it for 90 of the time is when i'm filling up my water so these are our fresh water tanks we've got three underneath to 95 or 92 liters and what i do is i'll get my keys and i'll take the lids off and i'll leave them here and i normally use our freshwater filter that i use to fill the tanks obviously but then connect to the the caravan when we're pulled up for a fair bit um and i'll pull that out and it's just a good little workbench it comes in really really handy for that but then there's other times too if you've got another caravan here or you're socializing you've got someone put drinks there's so many uses for it and it's been super super super handy for us the only the only downside sean's just mentioned is here is the kitchen um sometimes when we're off grid and we're washing out drink bottle uh baby bottles and stuff that we have for jack for the milk we might put a little bit of water and swish it out and just give it a quick flick out the window and this has been down a couple of times and normally you'd just open it up and just tip it straight out but we've now learnt to do it to one side of the window and not to do it straight down because many many times has has been covered in baby milk and leftover i don't know gross stinky stuff because it it doesn't smell very good when it starts to uh to go off but yeah we've now learned that as a little trick um i will just touch on we've still got the original tires for this which i'm really happy about because we've done some pretty harsh hectic sort of tracks and uh adventures so we probably will upgrade eventually down the track as they are starting to wear but they're still going quite well but i will touch on we were at the at the start of the gear we're at jurak river and we're having a fair bit of squeaking and uh noises coming from underneath the caravan so we decided to get underneath and just go over and check a whole heap of different things like just your nuts your bolts your bushes um grease all that sort of thing so lucky we had brad and lauren with us from uh kind of gypsies and they had a grease gun on them and i thought i'll borrow that off and go underneath it was until i started pumping grease in that i was pumping quite a fair bit into these bushes because they hadn't been sort of uh obviously greece for some time we did have a service 10 000 way back in darwin but it hadn't been touched pretty much since then partly my fault for not keeping on top of it but now i've learned a few things from this experience that i now want to share with you guys but it just pays to get underneath especially if you're doing some really hard corrugated roads or those really dusty dirt roads because it takes its toll on these vans massively the amount of things like the conditions these vans go through it's basically just a box on four wheels getting shaken to the absolute crap so your running gear and your suspension everything underneath is like what keeps this thing going so as long as you keep on top of that everything else will work just fine so greasing all your bushes just going over your nuts i had probably a handful of knots probably six maybe seven nuts that i could have or two or three i could have tightened with my finger but the other ones are actually i got two or three turns out of it with a spanner on it so i'm very grateful that i actually got underneath there and we did check that because that could have been very very costly um and quite embarrassing at the same time especially the give of all roads for that to happen just before you start not good at all so just a hot tip make sure you get on the just maintenance is is prevention and prevention is the key to things lasting and going on for the future so make sure you get underneath there and just eyeball things look for cracks cracked welds all those sort of things it does go a long way i still got the fishroll holder which is not the fish rod holder anymore that's basically yeah well it's it's mainly all sean's um fire twirling stick stuff and uh we've got a couple of citronella sort of those candle things you can stick in the ground and if it's like really bad for mosquitoes and that we have used them a few times but i haven't got them out for some time now but that's basically like our flammable tube i guess now for all those sort of things but it's still very handy i'm glad i still got it there because even if we were to change that i could put fishing rods back in there or just about anything it's just another storage everything was caravating storage uh still got the two jerry cans on the back that's 40 20 liters in each size so 40 liters we've got fuel i was explaining the other day that uh obviously with our car we got unleaded so everything is unleaded that we have so we've got unleader on the back we've got a letter for the car we've got generators we've got uh oh everything's oh chainsaw we've got everything that runs on later which is really really handy so we don't have to chop and change with diesel or anything like that uh still got the arb bag on the back that's always handy doesn't matter what brand they are they all do the same thing but they're super super handy especially within your grid you can throw all sorts of stuff in there whether it's sandy toys from the beach or it's literally just a rubbish a bag a bag of rubbish if you've been out free camping somewhere and you don't have to you know stick it anywhere that you don't want it to and it's stinking and smelling we've got the mats on the back this is our outdoor map i've just got my mirrors sitting here because they're out of the way i'll be putting them on later uh outdoor mat sits on there surprisingly enough that doesn't budge it doesn't move whatsoever which is really really handy and i've also put like if my bag in here is full of rubbish or we're just going down around the corner i'll stick other rubbish bags on the back there and it's just a really quick easy handy way to to store some things if you're not going far and the new addition this is the yakima it's a yakima bike rack so you can see it can hold up to four bikes we don't have any other bikes at the moment except for jaders but we are in the process of getting some bikes for us as well because it's we've been talking about it for ages but we just haven't done it but to know that we've got a bike rack here that can carry everyone's bikes is really really handy one thing i will mention is it's just yeah it's basically just a normal slot in setup where it goes into a hitch pin but this does not come with it this is something that i had to buy separately this was again in darwin i think i found this and it's basically just one little set so it comes with the hitch and then the plate and the four screws so you can almost bolt that to absolutely anything and that's been on there since darwin and we've done oh we've done all through the kimberley we've done the give river road now we've been off grid and doing all sorts of camping and stuff we've had the one bike on there so it hasn't budged it hasn't moved it hasn't bent anything it hasn't done anything i was quite skeptical about it to know if it was going to be doing anything funky because when you think about all that weight hanging off the back there like yeah i don't know the physics of that doesn't sit well but it's been performing really really well uh what else is it it's not too much more to be honest like everything's still very very much the same still got the same awning we've got the table on this side too we've got a little another one of those big w things that shawn's got inside these things are so handy we use them all over the place this one's kmart actually oh it came up i'll just go to show you can buy them just about anywhere so i'll show you just a few things that we have outdoors or outside all the time so it's basically all bug related mainly so that's our sandalwood sort of burner that we uh we showed you way back in canada we haven't used it for a little while because bugs haven't been too bad but it's got your aero guards we've got bushmens another aero guard sunscreen especially if we're out near the beach or doing something like that it's there ready to go uh what do we got there naturals botanical nature's potato well nature's botanical so it's for like bites and things like that it's a like aerogarden yeah like an aero guard mozzie bands we wanted to try and give these go i don't know i'm still skeptical about these and how they work but in saying that i haven't really used them much either because we've obviously got so much more going on here um oh this thing is like the best thing ever this is something that we learnt about when we were up at the cape cape levique damping peninsula just up north of broome we were up there well not too long after the wet in the kimberley which meant that the mosquitoes and all the nasties hung around a little bit longer so we absolutely got smashed with mosquitoes we were up there for four days five days and every single night was just chaotic it was mayhem we didn't have one of these at the time but it wasn't until we started talking to a few locals and explaining our experience so they said get yourself a thermosole so this is the thermostat you've probably heard us talk about a couple times but it's basically just that top half there and you can buy these canisters this is one of the biggest ones you can get they come in all different sizes it's the same sort of butane tanks you use for like cookers and portable camping gear and things like that so it just literally screws into the top and you've got these little blue pads that go on the top there as well which they all come in like little individual packs so you can buy a small pack a huge pack whatever you want depending on how much you use it and you basically just flick that on and this is an igniter so it's like a lighter and that'll just slowly burn away so each pad you get up to about four hours so that's fairly good considering if you're using it for that full four hours that's a lot of sitting around and enjoying yourself without getting absolutely picked up and taken away with mosquitoes and whatnot so yeah that that is now like our go-to we've been using it ever since that experience and i'll tell you what it actually does work we've had a really good experience with that over the last few months and we would not go anywhere without it so that's basically just our little outdoor sort of collection of things it's mainly just bug sprays and whatnot but um again too like when we're packing up we're about to leave this well today it's coming on lunchtime we're about to leave so what we can do is i'll just hand that in or jade will hand that into mum and then she'll put it away somewhere in the caravan but like look how many things are in that one one space and it's all just nice and neat and you can pick it all up and move around wherever you want it to go you're coming back around to the front of the van the door i'll tell you it's i don't know we've learned a lot about this door and stole the doors over the last few months because with the our van and i guarantee you're going to have issues with just about any van it could be the most expensive van on the market i feel like he's still going to get issues but for us and our issue is the door for when it's on dust so on dusty roads we're going to have little bits of issues in the corner here of dust so we actually still tape the door to this day we have looked into caravans and dometic setups and all that sort of stuff but and saying that they're hundreds of dollars when we can just spend a couple of dollars on a bit of tape because we're not always on dirt it's not always a thing so when we do it's a very simple setup yes there's a couple of downsides if you forget something you've got to take all the table which has happened quite a few times but it's a quick easy fix and that's just personally how we like how to how to keep rolling like that this is an atrv aussie traveler door so i don't know if it's just the design of their doors i don't know if anyone else is having the same issues but i find we've had a few people that have the doors the other way so you've got the handle here and the door opens that way and they seem to have less issues with dust they get it around here still but obviously because the hinges are there and it's a bit more tighter they don't seem to have as many problems so i don't know if that's maybe a design thing too i don't really know but i reckon if we were going to do this again i'd give it a crack the other way and maybe look at a slightly different door and to be honest it's actually like the only real serious problem we've had with this van the whole time with dust other than that other than that scupper valve that charm was talking about inside we haven't had really anything that major because that's been fixed since because we're never gonna open it again the door yes in saying that like it doesn't it doesn't push that much dust in it's mainly in the footwell and around sort of the step area but if we were to do like a all-day dust dusty track it will go further into the van so it's just easier just to tape if you know you're going to be on that road for some time or at least quite a few hours outside this is a new little setup that we've got this right here this has been our little test piece for the last few weeks it's basically just fake grass it's something you can buy from bunnings it's just got the plastic bottom it's got the fake sort of grass over the top we've got this actually in our foot well just in here so it's the first or the last step when you get into the van we've cut it out to shape and do all sorts of stuff like that but then we've been testing this out just to see how it goes because ultimately i think now we're going to get another piece like this but do it within the same shape as that actual austral mat so it's just like a nice patch of grass i guess when you walk out but it does the same properties as cleaning your feet it's soft in the ground you're not picking up crap everywhere you can brush them off but it's just as easy to just to give it a quick sort of shake out and everything sort of comes out quite easy so that's our quick quick easy fix for outside because i know there are a few things like mark mart there's another one that i can't think of the name right now all well and good that's personal choice again at the end of the day but for us that's quick and easy and it's super bloody cheap um last but not least ziggy so we get multiple multiple questions about our ziggy and the setup and everything we have so this is basically how we travel all the time this is how i pack it this is how it sits and it honestly doesn't move very much at all we've been on so many corrugated rows and shitty roads that um yes it does move slightly but it doesn't do to a point where it's going to break anything or it's rubbing up against anything in the tunnel boot it's actually been really reliable um so this is basically this is done in watson so done watson 60 litre fridge slime and then there's a little bench that comes with these fridge slides too so this is super handy obviously you've got the fridge side there to keep your cooking and your barbecue on and then we use this obviously to serve on but it's great for socializing too or if you've got people hanging around there's somewhere to put food and a couple of drinks and whatnot and on the end there you've got utensil holder you put your tongs you can put your scrapers you can put all sorts of stuff i don't like really hanging them there because jack always comes up and grabs everything uh what else do we got i always like to carry a few alfalfa trays with me i'm always picking them up where everywhere it goes so quick and easy and our famous pan that apparently you cannot buy anymore which is a real shame because if you've got a ziggy you know that it fits absolutely perfect it's like the snuggers fit outtakes outtakes so i should probably take that out so i'll show you this again and why it's perfect for the ziggy no there far out that's not touching or anything you just got to get a perfect but it just goes to show it is a very big pan and yes it can fit we've had roasts and stuff in it that sit about this high when you think about it there's quite a bit of headroom there to stack up or you know put some big uh roasts and sort of setups in there but that's that yeah again why we chose ziggy it's i don't know for us at the time we're very new to it all so we wanted things that were going to be practically on work and the biggest reason why a lot of people go with the ziggy's especially in tunnel boots is because it goes half once that lid goes over like this it's a fairly big barbecue when you think about it height wise to be able to flip that lid and have half the barbecue obviously it's a it's a simple straight up choice why are we going something like this and why other people do go that uh the barbecue itself i'm pretty happy with it like i like it because it's a big open area it's got plenty of room where you can stack you know big amounts of food if you want to do that but the heat as soon as you whacked it on high and shut that lid that temperature goes just go it climbs so quick and it's awesome for roast we love our pork rice as a lot of you know and you can get some of the best rice you've ever cooked in these things i know some people struggle in web isn't that but again personal choice but for us going forward and into the future we'll definitely be sticking with a ziggy it's just been such a great option and choice for us and i can't see it changing anytime soon i have plumbed this in permanently too so what i actually did is i got a gas cable which you would normally most people just let it sort of sit in you could let it sit in this tray where it's actually sitting down on the fridge slide and then just pull it out because the gas the gas fitting is actually up underneath here so most people just pull it out click it in and then when you finish with it pull it out throw it in i probably could have left it that way but i i want to get a bit creative and mix it up a bit so i actually drilled a humongous hole straight through the tunnel boot through the floor and came out the other side so what i did is i got the longest uh gas cable i could wired it up to this feather through that hole and then back to that point so i made sure that it was obviously going to work i wasn't just going to drill a hole and hope for the best but it's measured out just perfect so i can slide that in and out and i have no issues and it's got enough there for it to obviously sit here and i can still move that around and do things with it that i want to do so it's not too restricted but i just don't have to worry about you know plugging in and plugging it out every time again some people like that's great are there some people like that's probably stupid when you just plug it in every single time but again personal choice everyone's got their own ways of doing things um other than that that's pretty much it i'll just pack it up real quick and show you how actually easy it is easy as so that gas fitting is literally just here so that's the one that goes into most caravans will have that probably in about the same area too because a lot of these caravans and other styles always have some sort of pull out kitchen or something and that's all there so i've actually got hot and cold water underneath there too if i ever want to put a sink or something like that in there so that's basically the caravan in a nutshell without sort of going into things that you already know about the van but i must say i'm very very very happy with this van like we've put it through some stuff we've we've gone down some serious tracks some you know harsh conditions we've been in some really cool off-grid locations and this van has always just performed there's never been anything that's gone majorly wrong um for like a cheaper van that uh not many people know about a small business fan it's just i can't fault it i really can't fold it for the little issue on the door easy fix you could get a caravan you could even probably change the door like there's there's always ways to fix things but ultimately love in the van it's really cool so without further ado we'll go back inside and we'll have a little bit of a run down on everything we'll finish the video up so other than pretty much everything we've said the only thing i'd like to touch on as well is things we would change if we were doing this again so the kitchen and the lounge we would definitely swap that would be the other way around so the kitchen would go here and the lounge there the reason being is having a kitchen here you can have like that curved bench top you get a lot more space there's deeper storage for your shelves as well there's deep just having a kitchen here be better and to be able to stand here and look out the front at your outdoor area and where the kids are playing and stuff and just be in your environment in a sense like that to me is better rather than standing over here because i often find especially if we're in a park we look at the next caravan and it's like oh hey how you going mate like really nice to look under your awning i'm just doing my stuff in the kitchen you know so yeah i definitely do that over there and sophie here and the other thing i'd go a double bunker over a triple bunker and the reason being is the lowest bunk it's great to have indoor storage to put things there but it's even better to have a hatch on the outside that you can access so you can put chairs in there you've got tables in there you can do whatever you like really whereas at the moment we're kind of limited as to what we can use that space for but out there you endless endless but not to mention the bunks are much bigger yeah the increase in size as well when you go a double bunk versus triple jada can't sit up in this jack can still because he's small enough but jada can't sit up if it was a double she'd have a lot more room and she'd be able to sit in her bed and do things in her bed whereas at the moment she either lays there or she's like it's just like ever so like slightly so head sort of thing so yeah that's the downside to a triple bunk if you don't need it so apart from that as a major caravan change like swapping things around the only other big swap that we would do is put the bunks on this side and the kitchen uh sorry the bathroom on that side so having the bunks on this side means that when there's afternoon sun morning sun or anything that's where our awning is which means that their beds would always be shaded so at the moment if the sun on their beds it gets hot down here like really really hot so that would be beneficial to them but it would also mean that we can keep an eye on them so if their windows open are their blinds open like go to sleep you know even when we're outside of a night time so it's good from that perspective too they can open us go mom and have a quick chat so we definitely love to have bunks on this side but really other than that we love our caravan it's done amazingly it's seen us through what it must be like coming on twenty thousand k's now yeah we probably yeah probably over yeah probably twenty thousand k's we haven't had to change tires yet um a couple of general bits of service things like you know maybe a silicon piece is cracked so we've re-siliconed um but other than that like this van has seen us through everything and it's done it really really really well like if we had to go another trail caravan if you ask us now will we have another trail caravan yes we would have another trail caravan they're a really good fan i've said it to countless people like just recently i've seen to get more of an influx of messages from you guys asking about trail would you buy another one do you recommend them like i get asked a fair bit about it but i always answer the same way like sean just a hundred percent would we go a trail again we punished this thing we like you if you've been following us from the start you've seen everything we've done with this van and it's been to some pretty crazy gnarly places it's seen some insane roads corrugation like there's so many things this van has done and yet it's still in one piece nothing major's gone wrong all the running gear is good like everything still is exactly the same as it was when we first bought it the other thing to note about this is that our model was actually made in china so the initial framework which is like the roof and the walls and all the structural pieces are made there yeah the shell and then it would be sent here and then in australia they would fit all the things like aircon or fridges and things like that however trail now have actually moved to an australian warehouse so the fiberglass model and the wooden framework model are both being made in australia now so not only are they like a good van the way they were but now being australian made like that in itself is a massive selling point especially after covert and everything you know everyone wants australian made and to have something from this country and trail is growing in leaps and bounds and i would almost call that i think they're going to be an up-and-coming larger brand down the track because i reckon so i'm gonna call it too yeah we know the team really well now and they care about their vans it's family-based it's australian-based now like they're just doing things to make it better for the market so yes we would buy a trail again 100 yeah without a doubt yeah yeah it's it's proven itself time and time but like we it speaks for itself you just have to watch our videos and you can see everywhere we've been um so yeah going forward very good chance that we probably if we got to build again we'll go with trail um just because it's been reliable it's what more do you want to ban so yeah hopefully fingers crossed something like that does happen down the track which would be absolutely amazing because like like most people if you do something the first time sorry if you do something the first time like you don't know what to expect or what to you don't know what to expect or what's going to come what you're going to need what you're not going to need it's just one of those things it's like anything in life you've got to learn how to do it and how to do it better and that's exactly what we've done here in the last year and a half with this van is picking up little bits and pieces like there's not a great deal that would change but there's just a few things would change but it actually just works really well it's it's an awesome van but um other than that i think we might wrap it up there i think we're done i'm listening i'm sorry oh i don't know how we got through this yeah that was insane like it is so hard to get anything like this like this video is going to be a fairly longer one but to be able to get the amount of footage quietly and without any interruptions is like almost impossible it's better to break it up for us rather than one big long stretch these days oh man if you have any questions whatsoever please drop them in the comments below we want to get back to you at all i'm sure there's information that we've forgotten can you come this way don't forget to like this video subscribe to our channel if you haven't already because i think we're at like 40 subscribers so there's like 60 percent of you that are letting us down right now we still love you anyway um and what else that's about it that's it we'll catch you on our next episode i guess hope you enjoyed this see you guys see you [Music] you

Channel: Big Oz Explorers

Views: 158,483

Keywords: 1.5 years of travel, an honest review, big oz, big oz explorers, bigoz, caravan, caravan review, caravan reviews australia, caravan tour, caravan tour australia, caravanning australia, caravanning for beginners, review, road trip, rv living, tiny home, tiny home tour, tiny home tours family of 4, tiny home tours rv, tiny home tours van, travel, van life, van life australia, van life tour, van life vlog, van life with kids, van tour, what we could change?, what we love?

Id: eTxPhJogKgQ

Length: 95min 55sec (5755 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 14 2021