Well this is it, only 3 and 1/2 months until we leave on our once in a lifetime journey of our great divide.  Leaving day at this stage is July 1.  Firstly a bit about us, Mat 30 is born and bred south aussie, and has been in the Barossa Valley his whole life. And me (Shaie) 29 am from QLD but have lived in SA for the past 10 years.  Together we have been planning this trip since we first met 4 and 1/2 years ago on the Birdsville Track.  Our trip is to be a working holiday with a "no cities" policy. We want to experience this beautiful country we call home, we want to meet the locals and soak up the atmosphere of some of Australia's most beautiful and remote areas, but most of all we want to have fun (and come home with more money than we left with!!!)  We hope to get work in the mines in WA, and on outback cattle stations. We want to see as much of outback  QLD, NT and WA as we can and have some fun doing it. 

 Mat is a plumber/earthmover/horsebreaker, and Shaie is a Registered Nurse.  From what we have heard from the wider travelling community, we should have no drama's finding work.  We have given ourselves a max of 2 years, but we'll just see what happens.  There are no steadfast plans, we don't even know where we are going first, all we know is that there are certain places and people we want to see, all the rest is up to "Murphy".  We decided  all those years ago to do this trip and ever since then we have been slowly planning and getting our rig ready. I've quit my job as a nurse and Mat is finishing up soon, we've ended our lease and are rapidly packing the house up to store everything in a shipping container, to await our return. 

 Our rig is a 75 series landcruiser tray top with a V8 Chevy Diesel (yes we know how much diesel we are going to burn through), but we both love it, it is our pride and joy.  It has a new engine now because we flooded the last one on one of our now infamous 4wding expeditions.  We are in the process of building a tray top camper with a little help from our friends.  it is to have a fully equiped kitchen on the passenger side, a large storage area on the drivers side and a "large" wardrobe at the rear, as i am having trouble culling my clothing and shoes for the trip.  A ladder at the rear will lead to the queen bed on the roof of the camper which is fully enclosed with a canvas awning and fly net windows.  We are taking our two trusty 40 litre Engels, one for freezer and the other as fridge, as we plan on spending as much time away from civilisation as possible.  Solar panels are being installed on the roof of the cruiser to run the fridges.                     

A list of other accessories -                    

                                         1000w power inverter

                                        ARB winch Bar

                                         BF Goodrich mud terrain tyres

                                         Lightforce spotlights X 6

                                         Longrange fuel tanks

                                         Uniden UHF

                                         Full recovery kit

                                        ARB air compressor

We are in the middle of gearing our rig up there are still quite a few more things to come, once the car is finished we will fill you in on all the other accessories  

All in all this trip is to be our final hoorah before we come home and build our dream house on 2 and 1/2 wonderfull acres in the beautiful Barossa Valley, oh and start our longed for family.  MORE TO COME......................