Shut the front gate!!

Wow, amaizing, fantastic and how exiting David and Carol.

OK then, you had a shaky start but hey you have started and now just add that experience to all the good ones ahead of you both. I sure hope we get to be neighbours one day my friends. If you are looking for warmer weather it's pretty warm up here in the tropics, um, let me say HOT better describes it at this point in time. I will even try and ask the weather gods NOT to send anymore Cyclones this way until later this year at the earliest.

The main thing is you now have your new toy so enjoy it.

Edit....Ooops, typo (again)

Hi Plendo, you are not alone with first time panics, we picked up our van,had the big handover and didn't finish till 4.30 pm so the place we were going to set up for a few days to get use to everything was too far away,so we travelled an hour down the road to a caravan park well the only position they had was so small but eventually after much tooling and forming we finally got it in beside a row of 40 garbage bins great hey but later learnt that if we had taken to bars off we would have been able to back it better another lesson learned, also the towing mirrors we originally bought spent most of the driving time looking at the road( have now replaced with ones we should have put on originally cheaper isn't always best)  there were so many small things that weren't gone over in handover that came up oh no what do we do and lots phone calls for help. Now finally ( and I say this with fingers crossed) after 10 months of on road I think we finally have everything reasonably under control but yes still is damn big to tow. But now we take time ,pull over if necessary and enjoy.

we love our new home to bits and are ver proud of it.

have lovely safe travels and I believe that the only dumb question is " why didn't I ask that in the first place"

Might catch up for a cuppa somewhere in the great outdoors

Di and Greg

Thank you all for your kind wishes, and I am happy to report that things have just got better, everything works exactly as it should, the biggest problem is we forgot to get fly spray, and we have a couple of visitors that are driving us nuts.

Di and Greg, you mentioned mirrors, we initially bought a pair on special at Aldi, and crossed that off the list. Wrong, they vibrated so much, they were more distraction than anything else, so after much research we ordered a set of Milenco XXL from an ebay seller in melbourne, sold 3 10 available the add said. Two weeks later found a phone number, and asked when will you send the mirrors, when I have orders for ten and can get them at a discount! Cancelled that order, then had to find who was now selling them as the importer had changed. Found a set in Ferntree Gully, so had to go there before we picked up the van. The Milenco mirrors are good, well worth getting.

Juergen, you asked how the system is going, brilliantly. Picked the van up with batteries low, so charged on the way up, when we parked we still had weak sun, and were pushing in about 26 amps. The 12volt was well down so suspect not getting much charge from the tow vehicle, but will check that out on the way back. We started today on 26.2V, and it has been solidly overcast all day, so not generating much. Arrived back about an hour ago, and found the charger in float at 28v. Been dumping 40A into the 12V since, and now sitting on 27.1  Cell difference is 7mv, and you would have to be happy with that.

Garry it is nice when you are able to tell a story with some adversity and laugh as you are telling it, I suppose because it worked out well. I must admit I enjoyed telling the tale. Now I need to start to learn to tell stories with pictures, the way some of the long established members here can.

Pardon for being ofay with the story Plendo, butfor my sake can you tell me what make and model the caravan and tow vehicle is that you have?

Plendo wrote:

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Hi Ray, we tow a Retreat Brampton with a Land Rover Discovery 4.

We spent two years researching what style of van would suit us, then we set about selecting a manufacturer. We ordered our van in March 2013, and picked it up last Thursday for the maiden voyage.

After the first shake down trip, the only things we would change would be to get the van set up with a common key, and to pay more attention to the balance of the van, it is significantly light on the towball.

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 Nice to catch up and meet today as you headed home David and Carol. An extremely nice set up. 

Aussie Paul.