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Anticlockwise Adventure!

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Great adventure Richard. You will probably beat me to do a circuit. In my LEAF I can only get in 200kms a day. And I am "resting" (unscheduled) in WA now since June and will get on my way again (clockwise) in September. We will definitely catch up somewhere along the way (or here in Perth). See my trip so far here.
Jeff is an amazing guy. He has walked across the country both NS and EW for charities, and his Leaf journey is for charity too.
Only just found out today about Jeff's delay in Perth (he is helping a mate of course).

I feel a bit funny about potentially completing the lap before Jeff (assuming of course that we make it, which is by no means guaranteed), but we're committed now so what happens happens!
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Fabulous idea. Loving the photos and commentary.
How fast could you conceivably drive to cairns from brisbane if you pushed it?

Which i know is not the point of EV driving but i need to let my sister know to end an argument on ice v ev we had last december.
Hope your sister is not reading this KT.

The good news is that there will soon be fully functional 3 phase chargers pretty well all the way from Cairns to Brissie. These have a 75km/h charging rate with the currently-best 16.5kW charger option.

The bad news is that there are no DC Superchargers or Chademo chargers north of Brissie, so (if you push it non stop) you will be driving at an average speed of 85, but with a charging rate of 75, the car must spend over half its time charging and your average speed will be 40km/h once the initial 300-400km range has been exhausted. And that assumes no charging overhead time.

For long journeys, overnight charging is the thing. Then you have the full range available when you get going in the morning, and you can then do a 2 hour stop and pick up another 100-150km. 550km per day is the reasonable max (away from superchargers) for an S90.

However when driving in a Tesla, you can overtake just about anyone!
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Thanks Richard, she won't be but she's as curious about it as me so no worries. This is a trip our family have done more times than i care to remember in ice.

Ok so a 3 day trip rather than the two in ice. Making it a psychological barrier for a lot of people. She wins the argument for now, noone in our family would do that. We would go in our ice or fly.

Hence the power, pardon the pun, of a supercharger/chademo network in assisting the uptake of ev in this country.
 
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Here's some more progress on the adventure ...

(Sorry only 4 but it took close to 2 hours to upload even them. More soon)

THE sign at Rocky
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Evening charge at Bowen Showgrounds
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Charging by the beach at Townsville
This 30A J1772 EV charger accepts a Sydney Chargepoint RFID card just fine.
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Frosty Mango north of Townsville is the frontier. North and west of here there are no Tesla chargers and nothing on Plugshare. Heidi has a lovely all solar mango stopover with 2 3ph Tesla chargers. We were Heidi's first Tesla customer so she was very excited.
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I'm very much looking forward to regular updates of this journey around Australia, without doubt the power supply is in place, without doubt your 90D has the best combination of options for good range, and having the Octopus will be a cut downtime when only 15 amp is available.
Climate wise you've picked the best time of year to travel across the top end, although you may be squeezed in at campsites by Southern Grey Nomads chasing the Sun.
There's going to be times when you walk into a location and ask for 3 phase power to charge your electric car, they'll give you the look like you've just landed from outer space or worse still escaped from the local institution, there's going to be times when your sitting in a roadhouse having a coffee 500 miles from nowhere and some guy walks in and announces " there's a bloody Tesla electric car parked outside, I never thought I'd see the day" and everyone looks at each other saying "what's a Tesla?"
There's going to be times when you meet a kid who's an absolute Tesla junkie, and its now the best day of his life, and his parents are ever grateful to you because even though they have no idea what a Tesla is "that damn kid of ours hasnt smiled for the past two weeks of this holiday"
There also may be the time when you come across that one person, the one who thinks electric cars are evil, he read it online at RWNJ daily, he knows what the car is and it shouldn't be there, "this is a city car boy, it doesn't belong here", no need to say a word, just enjoy the moment.

Awesome post!
 
Fantastic 4G in Georgetown halfway to the Gulf so I'm uploading photos almost just for the sake of it. Let me know if should be culling more ...

I am the third Tesla customer to charge at NQ Solar in Cairns and they are very positive. Solar seems to go along with Tesla-receptive so I'm going to try googling "solar" when I'm looking for a charge in a big town.
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Over the dividing range and downhill from here.
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Road conditions mostly great and very little traffic.
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These are Betty's spoons...
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Charging from the brewery room at Mount Surprise
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Keep the photos coming, this is fantastic to see.
Are you sticking on Highway 1 from Cairns (Mount Surprise?)
Great question, and the subject of much deliberation!

West of Normanton (where we are now), we can either take "Highway" 1 (in grey below) which is unsealed, has river crossings, and an unsupported 525km section between Burketown and Boroloola, or take the 400km longer but 12 hour faster sealed route thru Mt Isa and Tennant Creek. I'll leave that decision to Tessie tomorrow morning, but I think I know which way she is leaning!

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3 PHASE SURVEY OF GEORGETOWN QLD (you don't always get what you want!)
  • Midway caravan park - no 3 phase
  • Ex-Ampol roadhouse - no 3 phase.
  • Ex BP roadhouse - spent quite a while describing 3 phase and yes he says he has it wilh 5 pins too, but won't let us use it for concern about blowing the place up.
  • Op shop (in a former large factory). Has 3 phase but only 4 pin.
  • Mechanic. Has 3 phase but only 4 pin.
  • Rodeo Grounds. Has 3 phase 5 pin according to one of the council maintenance team I met at ex-Ampol roadhouse. However the council is closed till lunchtime for training (by which time we will be just OK on 15A anyway).
  • Finally close observation of Goldfields Caravan Park (following the thick overhead cable from the street) yielded a 20A 3 phase 5 pin outlet that Michael the manager did not know about. I took Michael for a spin in Tessie and then got her charging. Hooray! Hang on - why is she only charging at 4kW? Turns out that only one phase is wired into the outlet. Aaaagh! Michael will make the case to the boss to rewire it, and I promised to put it on Plugshare when done.
 
3 PHASE SURVEY OF GEORGETOWN QLD (you don't always get what you want!)
  • Midway caravan park - no 3 phase
  • Ex-Ampol roadhouse - no 3 phase.
  • Ex BP roadhouse - spent quite a while describing 3 phase and yes he says he has it wilh 5 pins too, but won't let us use it for concern about blowing the place up.
  • Op shop (in a former large factory). Has 3 phase but only 4 pin.
  • Mechanic. Has 3 phase but only 4 pin.
  • Rodeo Grounds. Has 3 phase 5 pin according to one of the council maintenance team I met at ex-Ampol roadhouse. However the council is closed till lunchtime for training (by which time we will be just OK on 15A anyway).
  • Finally close observation of Goldfields Caravan Park (following the thick overhead cable from the street) yielded a 20A 3 phase 5 pin outlet that Michael the manager did not know about. I took Michael for a spin in Tessie and then got her charging. Hooray! Hang on - why is she only charging at 4kW? Turns out that only one phase is wired into the outlet. Aaaagh! Michael will make the case to the boss to rewire it, and I promised to put it on Plugshare when done.

Ex-BP roadhouse-spent quite a while describing 3 phase and yes he says he has it with 5 pins too, but won't let us use it for concern about BLOWING THE PLACE UP!!! Hahahahahahahaha.
 
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Great question, and the subject of much deliberation!

West of Normanton (where we are now), we can either take "Highway" 1 (in grey below) which is unsealed, has river crossings, and an unsupported 525km section between Burketown and Boroloola, or take the 400km longer but 12 hour faster sealed route thru Mt Isa and Tennant Creek. I'll leave that decision to Tessie tomorrow morning, but I think I know which way she is leaning!

View attachment 190385
Next major decision...to Broome or Alice? I guess we know there will be no picking out though...
 
Absolutely loving the updates!

BTW according to their website you counted too many horses in the Gulflander:
RM93, the present Gulflander, is a 102 horsepower Gardner diesel engine railmotor built at Ipswich Railway Workshops in 1950. It arrived in Normanton in 1982; the name Gulflander was painted on the sides by 1987.
(source: The Railmotors)
I expect a few more horses are MIA now too.

Love that photo though - that has to be a first!
 
Great question, and the subject of much deliberation!

West of Normanton (where we are now), we can either take "Highway" 1 (in grey below) which is unsealed, has river crossings, and an unsupported 525km section between Burketown and Boroloola, or take the 400km longer but 12 hour faster sealed route thru Mt Isa and Tennant Creek. I'll leave that decision to Tessie tomorrow morning, but I think I know which way she is leaning!

View attachment 190385

Totally fantastic trip, details & pics Richard!!! So which way did you end up going? Highway 1 through Burketown or Route 83 through Mt Isa & Tennant Creek? Wish I had the ability to do the circumnavigation like you but will have to settle for a whale watching trip to Hervey Bay with the family next week.