Free Camping Gibb River Road / Home Valley / DIY with Sian: Sirocco Fans / Ellenbrae Scones - 084

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 good morning guys so today is an exciting day we're finally getting on the gib we've been at el questo for a few days we haven't filmed much there because we've been there before and we kind of just wanted to have some time to ourselves and then so we were going to film when we got down to the pentecost crossing because i know you guys are going to want to see that but we've had to stop prior i haven't even got to the pentecost yet and we've done a tire like proper in the sidewall of the tyre like i don't know how that's even possible like it's yeah so welcome to the give everyone said that the road is horrible and we have a flat so apparently this end is the worst worst like my all-time biggest fear was to get a bloody tie up now within the first like 15 minutes it doesn't give me any confidence whatsoever going forward however there is a greater coming our direction so it should get better now we're down to our spare tire now so we go another one i have to drive into canada get a repair or spam [Music] are you happy we're over yes with all four times not five just four no i can't believe we blew a tire just before that it was honestly like 50 meters up the road you could almost see the bitumen on on the next hill and that's where it comes into the pentecost typical oh man oh well hopefully that's the worst of it all over and done with onwards and upwards to home valley yeah we're all set up now i've got a nice spot under the shade of a tree far enough away from the playground that we can't hear them and it's not bad just too bad about chris's confidence which has been shattered has it not uh i'm sort of nervous excited about the whole trip to begin with she hears so much carnage and things that are going on and whatnot we've just been on the phone to the tire stores in kanan and we've been chatting with yokohama and just seeing what we can get together because our tyre size as well isn't exactly mainstream so the joys so we've been here one night already we're here for another two nights we're actually hanging out with sean's parents so they've come up for uh another last hurrah in a sense we did that when we first left last time and now we've come back and we're doing it again and um yeah so this is just the very start of the gib so we've already blown a tyre as you probably know which is uh quite daunting but luckily we've got a few things sorted out crestro with people we know so we're going to get that sorted tomorrow so it's really helpful and it gives me a bit more confidence now going forward but um so far i'm pretty impressed with this place it's actually really nice you wouldn't expect this well i didn't expect this when we're coming up here uh to be so far away from everything and have such nice stuff so they've got pool um they've got powered sights water you've got unpowered as well they're like they've got a kitchen a restaurant a bar but apparently they don't sell alcohol because they missed out on the license just so that's a bit of a shame because i'm looking at it now it looks massive i'll go and show you around the place because this is my first time actually looking around here too so i'll show you the sights i'll show you what's on offer here and just actually how nice it actually is so yeah take you for a guided tour and do it together well as you can see it's actually really nice in there it's a huge bar area they've got a big restaurant like it's it's really well maintained and looked after and again it's just it's quiet i know for me personally i didn't expect it to be this nice but it's really cool you've got the fair sized sort of camping area it's all grassy again you've got your powered sides you've got your non-powered i will mention though it is very expensive i think it was 74 if i'm wrong i'll put in the bottom here the correct price for powered i think it ended up being like 80 something dollars because we've got jade of with us so obviously having extra kids sometimes does kill that but unpowered i think was about 68 bucks so you're looking just under 10 sort of dollars and you can have power versus unpower which is pretty crazy to think that you're paying that much you might also just go all out and get power and water so um other than that the washing machines too probably the most expensive i've ever seen seven bucks that's for a load of watching so if you've got your own washing machine i'd probably highly recommend doing that do your power and water um and then just wash your stuff in your caravan much much cheaper but i'm just in the caravan park bit here this is the powered and watertight so it's it's pretty nice like enough trees around you can sit underneath the shade you can see where we are over here a nice little tree over there that we've tucked up underneath any of the parents there it's a nice level site but um yeah not bad can't complain so another great little feature they got here is these little fire pits so go ahead and grab your own timber they have to be in these designated fire pits to have a fire but they're easy enough to move around they're not too heavy it's just nice to know you can have a fire because a lot of places you can't do that in certain areas so we are truly hanging out for some more fires there's going to be a lot more free camps as we're going in so really hanging out for that we have been having a few fliers in canada at the back of the house but yeah it's nothing like having your own and going out and chopping up your own wood and coming back with a big stash so yeah pretty excited quite a bit not yet why not i'm busy it's my toothbrush it's my toothbrush [Music] good afternoon guys so i'm currently in the van i'm kid-free and i'm about to do a diy with sean so last time when i did the cupboards in the back of the van a lot of you said how cool it was to see a chick getting involved and doing all this sort of stuff so i thought what better way to show you that we can do that again so this is a job that anyone can do all you're going to need is a small shifter and a what's it called a phillips head screwdriver so you know what i mean i just don't usually say these things so what we're doing today these sirocco 2 fans by kaframo are getting swapped out for the sirocco elite by kefrano so this is them here so you might be wondering why we're considering doing this so basically these ones that we've got here we've had these since we very first got the van we've got one on either side of the bed they are running pretty much 24 7. so the motor on that particular model of fan lasts for around about 5 000 hours we've just started having some issues where when they're running for a period of time the fan will slow down or we've had a slight rattle in it and i think it's just that they've genuinely lived a long long life in the australian outback so they're often running 24 hours a day for what's that nearly a year and a half now so i'll put the mass below so these motors are supposed to last for about 5 000 hours and they've done well over that so we're really grateful that they last as long as they have um the reason we're upgrading to the sirocco elite fan is because they actually have a longer motor lifetime so it's a brushless motor they go for 20 000 hours they also have four fan speeds they do a faster fan speed and um they still run on bugger all energy so your amperage to run these just nothing so this afternoon i've already installed one here so this was my practice fan i thought well i better at least do one and make sure that i can do a good job of it because i didn't want to try and show you how it works if i can't do it right and i've just got to do this one here behind me so i'm going to get into it let's go so the only tools you're going to need for this install is a little socket or this is a size 7 so i've got a size 7 on the end here and a small phillips head screwdriver if you don't have a socket set you can also use one of these and just set it to the setting you want um obviously these are just a lot easier to use so that's all you should need for this apart from that everything's provided for you in the kit all right time for some unboxing so this is our brand new fan so when you get these sorry excuse my one-handedness you'll get your fan and then you also get a very small pack there's not really many tools or bits and pieces involved with it and you'll get your instruction manual as easy as they are to install you still get some instructions i recommend reading them but this page has been i recommend reading them make sure you do it the right way the first time then you don't ruin your fan you obviously get your fan you've got a backing plate which is going to go on your wall with a sticky piece that you can add on the back of it like this and then you've got your wire as well to connect it and a small kit of little nuts and bolts and um i think they call them locking washers these little funny looking flower things anyway they do a good job so yeah that's all you get in the box that's all you should need um these ones actually have four speed levels they've got a four year warranty versus the two year that you get with the traditional sirocco uh they're twenty thousand hour motor instead of five thousand hour and you still get all the timer settings up here but you get the extra speed down the bottom um they also blow air a lot faster so i'm really keen to get these up and give them a go and see what we think about them in my case today i'm going to be taking out this old fan so it's a really easy process i've just got to remove these two screws that are on either side and this will pop off so i'll set up the camera and you can watch [Music] how easy is that done i'm gonna put the new one on so when you buy a new set they will send you out this little wire which has your two little ends that can go on the back of the fan it's also got your positive and your negative wire which is easily marked out with that little label there if you can see that um so this is what i've used when i've done the fans before we've got one that's down the bunk end of the bed and i use this to hardwire it into the caravan however this one in particular has been set up with a little 12 or 12 volt port so this plugs in up next to the fan so i'm just going to do this one the same so i'm basically going to steal the cord that we had on the old fan so it was screwed in the back of here the same way the other cord would be so i'm going to steal that and put it up with the new fan as well so this is our new one and our old one so you can see both fans are very similar they're set up the same way so i'm just going to take these off [Music] if you've never done anything like this before in most cases the red is your positive and the black is your negative on the back of the fan in here it actually says negative and positive as well so you shouldn't be able to make a mistake on that one so i did check on this one before that it was definitely red positive black negative so we're going to be putting the red back on the positive like it was and the black on the negative so i'll just connect these quickly give me a minute [Music] okay it's ready to go and if there's any of you electricians out there or you know carpenters or any of you blokes out there and you've been watching me and i'm not doing things the things the easiest way possible be nice i'm just going to plug it in really quickly and check that it works before i connect it and then after that it should be good to go i'm going to have a nice cool night tonight watch a good sign the lights are on hey we've got power now remember i showed you this backing plate and the piece of sticky stuff i'm not using them today the ones that they provided me and the reason being is because they're actually already there so this is what came with our sirocco the original sirocco fans it's been attached when it was done at the caravan manufacturer so i'm just going to leave those ones there's no point in changing it over [Music] oh moment of truth let's plug it in oh we got lights that's a good sign so i think they have to go through some sort of start-up phase because it seems that it likes to flash blue lights a few times and then it turns off and then it seems to be ready to go there we go so [Music] yay [Music] so that's fan speed three fan speed four it's pretty full on like there's a lot of wind there hey we've been big sirocco fans since the very beginning we loved having our other ones in here and i'm sure we're going to love these ones just as much it's funny you know like just overall everything in them feels a little bit stiffer a little bit newer like they're just they're ready for van life and the fan blade itself i don't know just the way it moves everything about it with this brushless motor it just feels a little bit like it's gonna last us a lot longer so i'm really excited to see how these go so i know for some of you maybe this is just normal day-to-day stuff and it's not all that exciting but if you're just moving in a van and you you know you want to learn about these sort of things uh we highly recommend the stroker fans we think that they're great like we've had ours in our van now for a year and a half this is our first upgrade that we've ever done on them um we're just excited to try something with a slightly higher fan speed obviously as you know we've always stayed in the areas that sometimes are 40 degree plus so to have that little bit higher airflow is really important to us what i'll do i'll actually pop right here right now just about the amperage on the fan as well so it has an extremely low draw you really just don't use much power at all so they're the best things to have so now we've got three in the van so at any time we might be using an amp power a little less than an amp power during the day so rocco runs under the brand seeker swkr and seeker is a brand which is made by keframo so most people know keframo on the market they recognize the logo seeker's a new brand name that they brought in which is linking to sirocco so if you ever see that in the market that's what it is and um yeah you should go out and check them out for yourself if you're interested in trying a fan up here this link that i'm putting on top of the page right now is where you can go and see this rocker fans for yourself and check out the stats and see if it's something that's right for you [Music] we're at uh where's the duroc river do you like a river yeah it's a free camp it's a wiki camp one i'll chuck it in the corner like i normally do yeah we've spoken to a few people the campsites and stuff and just finding out what's good what they recommend um this is one of the big ones that came up with the durak river and for very good reason because i'll spin you around right now and i'll show you exactly what we're looking at incredible how's that for a view so we went to one right up the other end but it didn't have a much of this sort of i don't know platform down here to walk on the banks so this is even better again but yeah there's no trees here either because at the other side there was heaps of trees in front of all this caravan well you can see so we've got kind of gypsies over here in the background there's brad but uh yeah killer spot very happy with this there's apparently a few more a little bit further up along the uh the river banks there so i don't think we'll be going to check it out because we found our vip swap that's for sure so yeah that's us for the night we'll probably punch them again in the morning uh get an allen bray get some scones have a look around there and i don't know see what happens no real plan at this stage so this is our spare tire we're carrying around with us we're going back to the old dixie packs these are actually our old tires we had on the car um before we changed over to the yoki so it's quite funny that we've ended up with the old tire again well there's plenty of tread still on they're always you know brand new so we just got that sitting inside the caravan here so see there's mat here we got this from oz trail so it's just like a foam mat used for camping which by the way i was undecided about but i actually really like it yeah it's handy in it and yeah you can take your feet off and stand on here and wipe them off and go straight in the van yeah that's been probably the biggest plus side is you're brushing all your feet off on a big surface before you go in unlike the fake grass stuff like the stuff we've got in the door yeah that holds everything this doesn't yeah it does yeah once out there they've got muck mats and stuff like but i don't know we we found it all right but there's obviously better stuff i guess as an outdoor mat i think this is great yeah it works well i'll shake it out and it's all gone yeah yeah carrying on with your spare tires oh that's all good i was just i was gonna uh talk about this anyway so that's good that we've talked about that yeah we've literally just laid it on the ground here and just throw the tire straight on top and it's been fine because my biggest concern was rubbing on the floor we didn't want a big bloody black marks all over the floor so that's worked out really well so it's it's already uh paying for itself as a transport spare spare tyre setup and also too i'll show you really quickly brad gave me one of his spare uh cardboard boxes that he had this must have been from one of his rims that he got um but yeah it's just a rim box that i've cut up taped up and put over the back of the window i wasn't too concerned to start with but um you only need one little rock to hit that and smash that whole back window and you're done like i've had i've seen some people and some friends that have had it done and they're sitting in the car and it's actually just filling up with dust it's just like a big old tornado or dust inside and i wouldn't like to do that just before or even halfway through the gib and then having to go all the way out the other side just absolutely choking on dust all because of one little rock hit the back of the window so i i just said i'll burger do it because prevention is the best key if you can do something about it that's so quick and easy by the time you get to the end of the other side of the road you just peel it off be done with it you won't even know what was on there so yeah that's what i've done because i've seen quite a other few other people doing it and i thought it's not a bad idea might also give it a crack it's just piece of mind the other day so yeah just a bit of duct tape a cardboard box it actually fit perfectly for that back window i couldn't believe it it's awesome so yeah just a little thing to do on these little tracks they're not your everyday tracks they're sort of this is a very notorious road and everything that we've heard about it too so you just try and do as much as you can to prevent prevent anything going wrong running your uh eyes over suspension you know chassis tires all that sort of stuff it just it all helps because if you can pick up something before it happens you're definitely going to be better off i think it's safe to say we're a very productive team aren't we hans mate yeah we've only just gone up and grabbed a few limbs and then we've come back in about two weeks worth of timber i reckon oh yeah i think that definitely calls for a uh a nice frosty frothy frothy frosty frothy frosty frothy try and say that ten times there you go mate thanks for your efforts thank you legend i think we're gonna have a nice bonfire tonight with this right look at this view it's tequila [Music] hey i heard you want to leave this place when we grew up this whole time just put it all behind remember you and i would always find somewhere to hide when we broke it so we could see and hear the waterfront the river's gonna cry when you're gone [Music] waiting for your [Music] god [Music] so we made it to ellen bray station the cars behind us as you can see chris is still in there because of course jack's asleep um so we're just coming in here we're gonna get some scones scones whatever you call them with some jam and cream in that and then we're continuing on to the durac river next so how cool is this setup this guy is walking the gibb river road with this it's full on a but anyway we're here there it is welcome to ellen bray i'm so keen to get some of these scones scones oh veggie patch there'd probably be some ladybugs in there i wonder what they are the finch is here mum hey is that how nice is it how nice is the green grass [Music] no prickles you probably walk around barefoot here famous scones mango frappe thank you toasty wish a lot yeah amazing ham and cheese toasty and it's gone and the other toasties won't be too far thank you guys [Music] about a breaker guys [Music] [Music] so it's official we made it we've just come from this direction and we're turning to go in the columbaru direction so we're just going to get some gopro footage on the back of the caravan thought it might be a bit interesting just to see it from that perspective um i don't know how dusty it's going to be i'm hoping it's going to work yeah um if this row has been graded like the rest of it far out onwards and up with getting there that road is mickey mouse mint or now anyway oh it's amazing cruising through but then not far so this is the free camp area at the intersection to the columbaru turn off it's not bad like it's all level there's a couple tables there's chairs and things there's all the information signs behind me too about the area they just tell you a bit more about the road and how far things are away and what's around so worth having to stop in if you haven't looked at it before we spoke with a few families and locals about the columbia roads condition and the general reply was that it was really bad no grader had been here in a long time and the corrugations were in full swing due to covered only honeymoon bay was open at columbia and with no access to fuel or food in the community what if something went wrong it was also a lot of stress on the van for an over 500 kilometer return trip to see just one place so instead we drove only four kilometers of the corrugations to a free camp which came highly recommended for its swimming hole and stopped for lunch before heading back along the gibb river road towards derby whether you were taking the columbia turn-off or not we highly recommend a quick stop at this swimming hole it's a great spot for both the kids and the adults [Music] [Music] oh ghetto legends we are at the other campsite it's called hands or hans hands h a double n from memory so it's a hands river so you'll see it on the gps you'll see it on your maps as you're coming through and there's cancer campsites either side of it um as we're coming from east to west we've actually gone to the right hand side and we've found that the right hand side is actually really bloody nice there's uh it seems a bit more secluded there's not as many campsites as maybe the uh the other side of the river there um from what we know we haven't physically gone over and seen it yet but there's quite a few more campsites over there and there's a few more vans and you know camper trailers and whatnot but uh on this side you got us i don't know if you can see we're just up in the back there there was enough definitely enough room for two vans and two cars we haven't unhitched so we've got the uh the car still on there so there's plenty of room and i don't know if you can see up the back there there's someone up there too that's just pulled in this afternoon and yeah that's probably one little campsite there this one down here but in saying that there is this little track but it's very soft someone has gone down there just with their car and they've set up their the tent and the swag i don't know how they're going to go out uh go in the morning reversing out of there because i reckon it's going to be pretty bloody interesting because this is very very soft sand um but yeah i don't know it's it's a really cool spot i must admit it's very relaxing it's very secluded it's just nice to be away from crowds of people as well um and you've got this nice little lagoon here so it's a small body of water it doesn't go too much further up the road there and then it comes back around here just here in front of me is probably the deepest port point of it and that's probably i'd reckon maybe up over your head no one's game enough to get on there and check check the depth but the rest of it's it's probably about ankle halfway up your shin sort of deep so it's nothing dramatic and over the top but it's just enough to sort of come down sit in the water you know have a relaxing refreshing afternoon with a couple of beers and just cool off we were down here just earlier it was actually quite lazy because we're having such a good time having a few beers and just chatting that i didn't even get a pan of what we were doing earlier i don't know if you can see behind me but the kids have made a few sand castles and whatnot so kids with sand and water you've got hours of entertainment there it's nice to get off that dusty corrugated road um and just pull into a nice little oasis like this that's just absolutely beautiful but yeah if you if you're chewing along whether you're coming from one side of the next this is a really cool spot if you've got a couple of years with a couple of vans you can easily get in there it's just yeah nothing nothing at all you got nothing to stress about but the only problem is if it's quite busy like it has been you might might miss out i don't know it's one of those things it's free camps you're just first in best rest basically and so up there where those guys are it's all dirt and then it comes into here and it's quite soft in around here i had to chuck mine into full low to get around the corner but i was reversing it just meant that i could drive back out of here with no dramas and has given us heaps of room down here i've got the jenny running today because you can tell how many trees we've got it's quite a fair bit so the sun comes up over in this side and it goes up and then sets over and the other side there jesus i think my balls just dropped it sets just over there so there's quite a few trees in between i think we got a couple hours of sort of proper sun but just wasn't enough to top everything up well we got the generator got a bit of fuel miles will bring her out crack her out and throw her on um i'll be probably shutting that down in the next half an hour because we're almost at full and yeah we're having tacos tonight i think we're cooking on the uh fire so looking forward to this this is camp two vans either side everything's hooked up still here we go what's on the menu tonight brad mate we are doing tacos tonight tacos yeah dirty old tacos tonight buddy how good is that cam oven good i reckon that's even better yeah we're out bush we got the fire cranking camp oven's gone i reckon we can uh we can nail this quite well i reckon we'll do that with a couple of beverages my friend we're just getting a little bit left [Laughter] and we'll be on mate we'll be on happy days i'm looking to see how this all turns out everyone's sitting around relaxing having a good afternoon i've uh trained i think i've trained i've trained bradley yeah i've caught the fairy himself in the background trying to sneak a bit but the thing is if there's an empty beer around and we know it the beer's coming out someone grabs a beer and then they sneak it next to the next one so you just you turn around and it's like where the hell does it come from and it's now turned into the beer ferry game so yeah we are both beer fairies yes it's going to be uh quite an entertaining night it'll be fun at this stage it'll be fun the rum fairies will come in later yeah yeah [Music] oh it's rolling [Music] yeah that much as i'd say what [Music] some people feel awkward say coming some people won't be going [Music] cheating [Music] if anyone knows garlic why'd you put it in i'll put the salt and pepper in there oh i like that that's a cool little idea grinding it yeah good stuff [Music] what's he cooking what's he doing yeah is he [Music] [Music] if it doesn't fit make it'll work yeah it does thought i had a bit oh you got it i feel like there's a lot of pressure on you on it it's really quiet everybody in the camp staring at you his camera is out [Music] nothing better than a good set of tacos another location it's been a pretty cool little camp spot i reckon it's it's nice it's by the river there's enough water to swim in fires all around it's private it's secluded yeah this side yeah you did so this side of it's really cool compared to the other side it seems like a bit more mainstream and a bit more populated well the other side is what is on camp so majority people just go there yeah don't look outside the blocks yeah so we got told to come down and whatever the side wiki can tell you you go to the opposite side and it's normally always better because nobody really knows about it and it's definitely one of those spots it's been really good yeah the only issues we had here someone left glass in the five ways yeah like a whole bottle like a big one we cleaned it up jd bottle yeah well no actually brad cleaned it up yeah we discussed about cleaning it up yeah um and then someone like buried a hole to do a number two yeah but it wasn't just one it was like four or five of them they're like there's a few over there but they're like that far under the sand they literally just done their beers and threw a bit of sand over top like it's disgusting it's so bad and it's like within the area where you can yeah like it's not even over and out in the grass or something but if you're that guy go for a walk yeah seriously further away yeah it's pretty bad so we've done a bit well together yeah but yeah it's a really cool spot i definitely recommend coming checking out for sure um it is a sandy entry so maybe come and walk it first and make sure that there's no one down here because yeah there's no turning around space well it is when you get in here by yourself but yeah it's pretty hard especially we've got a caravan on the back we've had a lot of people come down and in and then they've reversed back up and out of here again one of them got bogged yeah one got boxer yeah but they got out all right but yeah just come down give it a bit of an eye see what's down here but perfect little spot [Music] you

Channel: Big Oz Explorers

Views: 19,972

Rating: 4.9568343 out of 5

Keywords: Free camping, Gibb River Road, GRR, camping, caravanning, free, Gibb River, caravan diy, drone footage, durack river, ellenbrae station, ellenbrae station scone recipe, free camping, gibb river road, gibb river road 2021, gibb river road 4x4, gibb river road caravan, gibb river road trip, gibb river road western australia, hann river, home valley station, home valley station vs el questro, kalumburu, kalumburu road, kimberley wa, western australia, western australia road trip

Id: mziJq4rdorw

Length: 39min 22sec (2362 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 16 2021