Hello all. I have just got home to Perth WA after a 6 week drive from home to Cairns in North Queensland via South Australia and outback NSW. The plan was for 2 of us to fly over to catch up with family doing the big lap of Oz , spend a week or two camping with them and then go to Sydney to see a new grandchild then home to Perth.
Recent air travel has been problematic for us as we have found with flights cancelled, and as we were going in school holidays accomodation and hire cars can be in short supply around the country.
So as we had 6 weeks all up driving became a reasonable option, we had done many big drives when younger and had an ISUZU DMAX ute we could use or the 9yr old GD i30 hatch we bought new. We didn’t need 4wd, intending to use sealed roads and basic camping gear if good weather but stay in motels etc if weather was cold or wet.
The Hyundai was the car we chose being very comfortable and quiet on the road, diesel manual so very economical as well.
The clutch in the i30 was never brilliant from new so a new clutch was installed in May and was a brilliant move as the shifting was as it should have been from new.
The only other modification to the standard car was a 300mm light bar on the front just to improve night vision in the rare event night driving was done.
The long and short of the story is we covered 13,500km in total, fuel consumption varied from 4.8 to as low as 4.5 litres per 100km and the quiet achiever i30 performed superbly.
The 1.6 common rail engine is a gem, the only maintenance I did was engine oil and filter in Sydney before driving back.
Camping in a hatchback car is challenging exercise as space is tight but with careful packing and use of the space we used it well.
The rear seat base was removed to give more room and that worked well. The picture shows the basic camp setup at the cliffs of the bight in South Australia
A great spot to camp if not too windy!
Any questions fire away.
Jonesyvt
