I flew to Perth in March 2016 where I went to an English school for 6 months! 🙂

When I was in Switzerland, I planned to stay 6 months in Perth, then travel for 2 month in Australia and 1 month in New Zealand (I had already the return ticket). Later I changed my plans. Here is the reason :

Before the end of the school, I started to organize my trip. I started watching the prices for renting a car and I discovered that it would be just extremely expensive! I finally decided to buy one! 🙂 To make it more profitable, I decided to travel longer and decided to try to drive all around Australia and sell it back in Perth.

I saw some ads on the Internet and decided to see one of them. It was the only one I saw and I decided to buy it! That was quick! 😀 The people who sold me the car are a Belgium couple who just drove around Australia for 10 months with it. 🙂 Something quite amazing is that we discovered that they knew the uncle of my brother-in-law. 😀

They baptized her Coconut, so I decided to keep her name. 😉

Coconut was fully equipped and ready for another trip around Australia.

It’s a Toyota Hiace Hitop 2003. She had already 400,000 km, but the engine had “only” 100,000. km.

Is this old Coconut going to survive for the whole trip?? Discover it by reading her amazing adventure through this blog! 🙂

 

Coconut on a park area

 

Some information about coconut:

Technical details:
– Year: 2003
– Kilometres: 400,000 km when I bought it. Yes yes, you read correctly… Those vans are indestructible! 😀
– Engine : 2.4L (4 cyl.) petrol
– Air conditioning
– Power steering
– Manual transmission
– 1 second battery at the back for the fridge, lights, and charging phones, laptops, etc…
– 1 big solar panel (160W) to charge the batteries!! Really useful! Both batteries are also charged while driving
– Cd-player, Jack-cable for music from a smartphone

Kitchen stuff:
– 1 Gaz kitchen with 2 cooker and one grill (good for pizzas, for example) with a 4 kg gaz bottle.
– 1 toaster (to setup on the gaz cookers)
– 1 electrical fridge (connected on the second battery). Extremely useful! 😉
– 1 sink with a 25l water tank
– 4 other external water tanks
– 2 pots, 1 pan, forks, knifes, spoons, other good knifes (for bread, meat, etc…), cutting board, can opener, Tupper wares and a lot of other useful things! 🙂
– 1 Water boiler

Living:
– 1 comfortable double bed (1.85m x 1.55m). Can be transformed very easily into 2 couches and a table.
– 1 single bed (1.60m x 1.38m). Can be used for storage while not in use
– Lots of cupboard
– 1 big blanket for the double bed
– 4 pillows
– 1 big and 1 small mirror
– 1 portable and chargeable electrical fan
– 3 windows with anti-insects net
– 1 big insects net
– 1 cigarette lighter in the living room (for charging by USB, for example) and 1 cigarette lighter at the front for charging while driving
– 1 240V converter for charging computer, cameras, etc…

Camping gear:
– 1 Lifetime folding table
– 2 camping chairs
– 1 deck chair
– 1 popup tent (for 2 people)
– 3 sleeping bags
– 2 thin mattresses
– 1 chargeable new camping lantern
– Anti-insect products

Other cool things:
– 2 snorkeling sets (goggles, fins and tuba)
– 1 new fishing line with fishing gear
– Lot of tools (Screwdriver, hammer, pliers, clamp, etc…)
– 4 new spark plugs
– Lots of AA and AAA batteries
– 2 hoses with adapters for filling up the water tanks
– 1 long electrical cable
– Cleaning and washing stuff
– 1 beach ball
– Etc… 🙂

 

Here, a few pictures inside Coconut: 🙂

 

 

Inside Coconut – Double bed

 

Inside Coconut

 

 

Before starting my big trip, I did a few small trips around Perth and the south of Western Australia.

 

Near Margaret River – Inside Coconut

Coconut near Margaret River

 

Coconut under a starry sky near Pemberton

 

Coconut with her solar panel