ahh Warrnambool, our whole family/ extended family have been caravanning in Warrnambool every year for the last 50 years. Best coffee shop Toto Town cnr Timor and Kepler. If you are staying for the night, eat and Bojanles on Liebig st. Visit Thunder Point and the blowhole. If the waves are up its pretty cool watching the water spray up from the blowhole. Tower Hill Reserve is pretty neat. Port Fairy Cobb bakery for a pie., and the cheese factory in Allansford if you are a cheese lover
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Great Aussie EV Road trips - Live to drive - Drive to Live
- Thread starter jeevas123
- Start date
I did a huge road trip in Jan this year, Canberra to brisbane, Warrnambool via the great ocean road and then back to Canberra. The whole trip was about 5000km from memory.
Apart from charging during the Xmas peak it was fine, didn’t have to wait anywhere. Brisbane to sydney during Xmas required a lot of patience but it was fun talking to other owners and everyone was in good spirits.
Was planning to do a big write up as a lot of interesting stuff happened along the way but I never got around to it.
We do about 25k per year in our 3 RWD so it gets good use
Apart from charging during the Xmas peak it was fine, didn’t have to wait anywhere. Brisbane to sydney during Xmas required a lot of patience but it was fun talking to other owners and everyone was in good spirits.
Was planning to do a big write up as a lot of interesting stuff happened along the way but I never got around to it.
We do about 25k per year in our 3 RWD so it gets good use
I stayed at warnambool last year when I took the long way home. Beautiful town, wish I had more than just the one night there.
So leg 2 of the Barossa Odyssey turned into a bit of a mission and a few lessons learned.
Was always going to be a long trip with the sightseeing we had planned. Should have known it was going to be a bad day when the hotel fire alarms went off at 0300 before we left. Had to evacuate and stand around in the cold then took a couple hours to get back to sleep, so we left a couple hours later than planned slipping my estimated arrival in the Barossa from 2200 to 0000.
Sight seeing along the Great Ocean Road took up a bit more time than expected as well, slipping my timings back even further, but all was well till we left Warrnambool (should really have just planned to stay there the night). I'd originally planned to go Warrnambool to Keith and even though the Tesla said it wanted to charge 7 or 8 minutes more at Warrnambool, I saw it had about 10% predicted at Keith so decided to push on.
Shortly after it wanted to go via Mt Gambier but still looked like we'd have ~10% at Keith, so I forced it towards Keith and kept going. On the country roads, 10% quickly turned to 5%, then 4, then 3 so I was starting to get a little worried. It did creep back to 5% but then back to 4, and at this point we were getting pretty hungry so I asked chief Nav to see if she could find something along the way that maybe had a restaurant and charger (we still had about 55-60% at this point, so had plenty of options).
Unfortunately the town she picked was about 30 mins or so East, so not really on the route but it had destination chargers and an EV charger, destination was connected to a hotel and restaurant, happy days! Turn up at 1834, restaurant is shutting up, turns out it closes at 1830 every night (except Friday when they stay up till 1930 and party like it's 1959!) as does pretty much every restaurant in cooee. Couldn't see the destination charger anywhere so went to the EVEE and got a quick top up while we looked for a planB C.
Found a servo with a Hungry Jacks (seems there were more chargers in the area than servos) about an hour back the way we'd come. Both getting hungry, threw in the towel and went back to get a feed. From there apologised profusely to Sriracha for questioning her judgement and asked her to just get her to our hotel and promising to do whatever she asked. I think to teach me a lesson, she took me on a tour of all the SA superchargers, 10 min top ups at each of Horsham, Keith and Tallem Bend, but she was good to her word and got us here just fine albeit just after 0200.
Lesson learned, trust the car and don't try to outsmart it. We may have made it to Keith, I could have slowed down, turned AC off etc, but I just wasn't prepared to risk it in that location and that time of night. Also a bit spoiled by travel on good highways I didn't properly account for how much range is affected by country roads, constant slowing through country towns, etc. Clearly the car nav did a better job of that than I did.
But seriously who closes a restaurant at 1830???? I mean WTF, if you are closing at 1830 then you are only doing lunch, close at 1400 lol
EDIT - Oh and still zero steering nags for the entire trip even through roadworks, undivided highways. I'm hearing more reports that others have experienced this since 8.9 as well. In the suburbs they are still getting them but any highway is nagless so long as you are paying attention (haven't tested deliberately not paying attention, but I did see someone say they got a nag after a few minutes of pretending to not pay attention)
Was always going to be a long trip with the sightseeing we had planned. Should have known it was going to be a bad day when the hotel fire alarms went off at 0300 before we left. Had to evacuate and stand around in the cold then took a couple hours to get back to sleep, so we left a couple hours later than planned slipping my estimated arrival in the Barossa from 2200 to 0000.
Sight seeing along the Great Ocean Road took up a bit more time than expected as well, slipping my timings back even further, but all was well till we left Warrnambool (should really have just planned to stay there the night). I'd originally planned to go Warrnambool to Keith and even though the Tesla said it wanted to charge 7 or 8 minutes more at Warrnambool, I saw it had about 10% predicted at Keith so decided to push on.
Shortly after it wanted to go via Mt Gambier but still looked like we'd have ~10% at Keith, so I forced it towards Keith and kept going. On the country roads, 10% quickly turned to 5%, then 4, then 3 so I was starting to get a little worried. It did creep back to 5% but then back to 4, and at this point we were getting pretty hungry so I asked chief Nav to see if she could find something along the way that maybe had a restaurant and charger (we still had about 55-60% at this point, so had plenty of options).
Unfortunately the town she picked was about 30 mins or so East, so not really on the route but it had destination chargers and an EV charger, destination was connected to a hotel and restaurant, happy days! Turn up at 1834, restaurant is shutting up, turns out it closes at 1830 every night (except Friday when they stay up till 1930 and party like it's 1959!) as does pretty much every restaurant in cooee. Couldn't see the destination charger anywhere so went to the EVEE and got a quick top up while we looked for a plan
Found a servo with a Hungry Jacks (seems there were more chargers in the area than servos) about an hour back the way we'd come. Both getting hungry, threw in the towel and went back to get a feed. From there apologised profusely to Sriracha for questioning her judgement and asked her to just get her to our hotel and promising to do whatever she asked. I think to teach me a lesson, she took me on a tour of all the SA superchargers, 10 min top ups at each of Horsham, Keith and Tallem Bend, but she was good to her word and got us here just fine albeit just after 0200.
Lesson learned, trust the car and don't try to outsmart it. We may have made it to Keith, I could have slowed down, turned AC off etc, but I just wasn't prepared to risk it in that location and that time of night. Also a bit spoiled by travel on good highways I didn't properly account for how much range is affected by country roads, constant slowing through country towns, etc. Clearly the car nav did a better job of that than I did.
But seriously who closes a restaurant at 1830???? I mean WTF, if you are closing at 1830 then you are only doing lunch, close at 1400 lol
EDIT - Oh and still zero steering nags for the entire trip even through roadworks, undivided highways. I'm hearing more reports that others have experienced this since 8.9 as well. In the suburbs they are still getting them but any highway is nagless so long as you are paying attention (haven't tested deliberately not paying attention, but I did see someone say they got a nag after a few minutes of pretending to not pay attention)
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Welcome to South Australia!
Yes, leave expectations at the door that anything is open outside of core business hours, although it is getting better but my best guess is that the shops use some private lottery system and signal group to decide who is open, and when. Do you remember which town it was?
Good to hear you made it in the end, haha, sometimes the fast food outlets at tailem bend even close, if you can call it food, but there isnt much more out there at night. Servo food can be unkind
The Barossa is very nice, youll find much better facilities out there!
Keith could do with more stalls, its a very popular spot for traffic in both directions with Horsham usually being the the next stop for EVs. There is another charger in Keith but ill leave my thoughts on that one for the Keith thread.
Enjoy!
Ohh and if you wash your car over here make sure you give it a good dry. The water is quite hard and contains heaps of water staining contaminants compared to the Evian spring water that flows thru the Canberra pipes
Evian Spring Sparkling thank you very much and without added pubes!
Yep, SA has plenty of bugs. I am surprised the Navigation didnt steer you to Mt Gambier, then Naracoorte, Penola then Keith.
Yep. Trust the Nav. And a bird in the hand etc… if you are already charging and it says keep going for another 8 minutes then do it. It’s not a long time.
Also most people report that a Tesla can go 10-20 km after reaching 0%, so you would have made it to Keith comfortably. Worst case, you nurse the car by driving slower and turning the AC off if necessary. The car will tell you what you need to do.
I never like planning road trips where I might arrive at a destination after about 8pm (even back in the ICE age). And the more remote, the earlier the planned arrival time. Too many things can go wrong (puncture, mechanical failure, wrong turn) and people who might be able to help you have clocked off the for the day. And no places left open to have a meal.
I find it’s far less stressful to give myself more time, arrive before it’s pitch black, and have a nice sleep overnight somewhere.
That's because it's already flowed through Canberra pipes on its way to you!Ohh and if you wash your car over here make sure you give it a good dry. The water is quite hard and contains heaps of water staining contaminants compared to the Evian spring water that flows thru the Canberra pipes
Id hate to think how many times water has been pumped out of the murray, filtered thru human or livestock bladders/genitals and gone back into the murray before it gets to us.
We do have a Desal plant, but i dont think its ever been switched on.
That would be good to see while on a EV road trip (topic related content, im trying!)
I think there is/was an EV charging station in site Barossa valley which had variable pricing which depended on renewable generation. It had a big servo like sign out the front. I can find it on plug share but would be interesting to see.
Yeah, if I'd been on any decent highway and not in the middle of the night I'd have probably pressed on and agree I'd likely have made it. I think the estimation would have improved as the roads did closer to Keith.
Next time I'll just listen to Sriracha.
Ok, haven't seen that one, I did a charge at the NRMA charger at the visitor center, I got excited as it had a tap n go thingy so I thought I could charge up without downloading another app. Followed all the instructions, main screen said tap or log in, tap and the card reader says 'select charger' but there was absolutely no facility to do so, (tried every button on the unit). In the end gave up and just downloaded the app.
Quite a few of the wineries seem to have destination chargers though, so stole a few % here and there and then gave it back in wine purchases.
Were they chargefox? I think I had to plug in the cable, then swipe, or something to that effect.
Yeah the wineries seem to like 7/22kw destination chargers, great for people visiting etc. I’m guessing you could almost end up usage neutral depending how long you stay. Some wineries down south have them too.
RichardV
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Another round Australia in an EV towing a camper,
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Is Rockford on your itinerary? Check out the basket press. Kies in Lyndoch too. I don’t drink anymore but they are pretty top shelf
Ok, finally made it home. Looks like about 3800km all up.
Will give a bit of a rundown on costs/timings etc tomorrow. For now if anyone is planning on travelling through VIC/SA or southern NSW, my combat sweep has taken out ALL of the bugs in the area (it looks worse in person than it does in the photo!) Will be spending some time giving her a good bath tomorrow!
Will give a bit of a rundown on costs/timings etc tomorrow. For now if anyone is planning on travelling through VIC/SA or southern NSW, my combat sweep has taken out ALL of the bugs in the area (it looks worse in person than it does in the photo!) Will be spending some time giving her a good bath tomorrow!
Good to hear you made it back. Looking forward to the trip debrief!
Plenty more bugs out there, they just did a reorg and are good to go.
My inlet had so many pubes in it after my vic trip…. It all washes out
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