We have been caravanning for five months and amazingly we are still alive. Being novices of the most extreme order, we started with no knowledge and a little help from other caravanners in caravan parks as we travelled. Recently we had a road incident and I needed to calm my nerves. Although we are learning as we go, this incident showed us that you just cannot control fate. You can be as prepared as possible though!
Our first adventure was while I was towing the caravan back from Sydney on our first trip south after buying it. We had never towed nor owned a caravan in the past and knew nothing.
When you buy a caravan the previous owner never tells you what they have been doing with it or what is wrong with it. This particular day we were going up the M1 highway just north of the Gold Coast at Yatala in Queensland when a grey four-wheel drive utility slowed down beside our car and told me to get off the road.
I thought something must be wrong as he seemed to be very convincing. I pulled over to find one of our tyres on the caravan stripped into pieces. Here we were sitting on the side of the highway trying to work out who we had roadside assistance with.
Hubby had organised it with some group called 365 Roadside Assist and we were sure we were covered for both car and caravan. Wrong. They told us that we were covered for only the car and would come and rescue us the next day for a cost of $300. I could just imagine my hazards going flat and sitting overnight in the dark.
The first thing I did while feeling helpless was call my son. But he was busy at work and wasn’t able to help us unless we were willing to wait hours for him to organise a rescue from Brisbane. He told me to ring RACQ roadside assist, so we did and we joined on the spot.
What a relief, they were there in 5 minutes with a truck to protect us from behind and another big truck behind that for protection. Fifteen minutes later we were being towed off the highway to a tyre shop nearby.
The problem seemed to be that the caravan had been sitting too long (three years) and the tyres had become too old. Nobody mentioned this when they handed us a roadworthy certificate when we bought the caravan. The tyre shop told us if tyres have been sitting one year they should be changed as they crack. The previous lady he helped with a caravan tyre blowout had her caravan catch fire when she did not notice the tyre had blown.
The next adventure was a storm in Queensland. We had moved into the caravan into Bli Bli on the Sunshine Coast and all of a sudden there was an afternoon super-cell storm. Just what we needed.
There was hail and rain but the wind was the worst. There were huge gusts of wind hitting our caravan from the side and the caravan felt as if it was being lifted off the ground.
In the caravan park numerous awnings were damaged by the wind and it was really quite frightening. When the storm passed everyone in the park was out to survey the damage and help people clean up.
The next day there was another storm forecast, but we were all prepared for the hail and the wind and people had put their awnings away. Such storms do make you wonder about how safe it is to live in a caravan with the weather changing and getting more violent.
Our next disaster was due to our ignorance. We were driving across the back of Cradle Mountain from Waratah to Gowrie Park in Tasmania. We had gone south for the rest of summer and were planning to drive around for five months. It was a great idea except summer in Tasmania can be worse than winter in Queensland.
We found Waratah very cold and it was snowing above in the mountains so we thought we would drive on to Gowrie Park towards the east. I spoke to a couple of nomads asking them what speeds they were doing on the roads and the man actually said he did 45 kilometres per hour most of the time in the mountains. It was not until I started driving over about 10 steep hills I understood what he was talking about.
Having an automatic car, I had been using the brakes a lot so after a while I said to my husband I was going to pull over and check everything was all right. The car had trouble stopping and the caravan seemed to push it into the gravel. As I stopped clouds of smoke came out from the brakes … So badly that I thought the whole car was on fire.
We sat there for two hours in shock, waiting for the brakes to cool. We were half way down a steep incline and had at least 2km to go on that downhill alone. I was not game to move the caravan to see if the brakes worked, so we sat there and discussed where we were going to get help from.
With no phone reception, no internet, nobody on the CB radio, and obviously no brakes I wrote down all our details and pulled over the next car. This lovely couple and their father from Brisbane were only too happy to help and after comparing notes on where we came from, he asked me why I had not put the car in second gear.
I remember telling him there was no manual system as it was an automatic, however I had not seen the ‘1’ and ‘2’ marked on the automatic gearbox, so I assumed there was no manual gears. There was a cross with a plus and minus written below the automatic gears. The gentleman marked our location on their map and rang RACT when they got to the next town.
Within an hour we had help and the RACT said my brakes were still there and had now cooled. He suggested that he would follow me down the mountain in second gear. He proceeded to show me there was a full 5-speed manual system in my automatic car. Gosh I felt dumb.
Most recently, my husband and I were travelling on Frankford Road between Exerter and Devonport in Tasmania towing our 23-foot caravan with our Isuzu 4×4 car. I am by no means a quick driver and would have been doing 70km/h max.
As we approached a hill my car slowed a little. Suddenly I saw a B-double truck coming over the hill in the opposite lane, and a white car (trying to pass the truck) heading straight for me. My immediate thoughts were “do not go off the road or you will lose the caravan”. There was about a metre of gravel on the side so I took the risk and moved a small way onto the gravel.
It all happened so quickly and the white car missed us by centimetres. The B-double truck had gone off the road to allow the white car to move back just enough. I looked back and could see his truck and trailer land in the grass at the bottom of the hill. It was his actions that saved us and I never got to thank him as there was nowhere to turn around.
This incident was not the first driver I have seen passing without any vision of the road ahead. We have been in Tasmania one month and this was the second time.
We are still travelling around Tasmania nomadding, however it did take quite a bit of time for the nerves to settle. It just shows us that no matter what the weather or how hard you try to control things you can not stop a lot of these scary things happening.
We do drive quite slowly for nomads and try to check everything is in working order, but there is always the unknown and the unexpected. However, even with this in mind, we are fully enjoying ourselves.
We now have tyre pressure monitors, new tyres and regularly check brakes and fluids on the car and caravan. We do not put the awning to the caravan out in bad weather and move on if we find the winds are too high. Caravanning is an adventure and we would not give it up unless we had to.