We checked out some shops in Mount Barker.

I had hoped to buy a Starlink mini from JB Hi-Fi, but they only sell the dish and not the 12V car adapter, so not really useful. Next door, BCF has a few Starlink accessories, but they don’t stock the 12V cable either. Oh well. Fortunately, Ayers Rock Resort Campground is supposed to have good cellular coverage. Charging: This was our first use of an RAA charger. We just used the Chargefox app, like we would for The NRMA chargers. Pretty simple. The charge speed advertised as 200kW, but we didn’t get over 80kW. Our car’s max is 175kW.

This morning we left Hahndorf, heading north west towards Port Pirie, on our way to Uluru.

The shortest distance between two points is… often boring. So, we turned on “Avoid Highways” in the Tesla navigation. We were treated to a couple of scenic routes through the Adelaide Hills. Charging: We charged up yesterday at an RAA fast charger in Mount Barker. We left this morning with about 89% battery. We’ll charge next when we reach Port Pirie, next to our accommodation.

July 25-27 We stayed two nights in Hahndorf, SA.

As you might have guessed, it’s an historic German town, with lots of character. We grabbed one of the last rooms at The Stables Boutique Motel which, unsurprisingly, is a converted stables that used to provide transport for the adjacent bakery. Charging: No fast chargers in Hahndorf, or destination charger at our accommodation. We used a fast charger in nearby Mount Barker when shopping.

Breakfast on the road. Living the dream 😉.

The keen eyed among you might have noticed that we can’t agree on Weet-Bix vs Vita Brits, so we have both. Heading north through South Australia, towards Uluru. Staying in Port Pirie tonight.

Cruising along the Dukes Highway, from The Grampians, Victoria, towards Adelaide, the…

…rain rolled in. Each passing semi trailer sent up a wall of water to blind us for a couple of seconds. We drove most of the way on Autopilot, which handled the spray with ease. There were a couple of times where it slowed and messaged “due to reduced visibility”. Such a great asset to have on a long trip.

We crossed into South Australia, and realised we had forgotten about quarantine when we…

…packed the fruit. We quickly devoured two mandarins and half an Apple before ditching the rest in the bins near the border. Stopped for lunch in nearby Bordertown. Subway was an unexpectedly good option. Can I just take a minute with a “one job” rant: Whoever designs electronic menus in takeaway restaurants (not limited to Subway): Your job is to show a list of the food buying options so customers can read them. If you make the lists cycle and disappear every few seconds, then we can’t read them! Don’t do that. You had one job! I saw at least one other couple photographing the menu so they had long enough to read it. After three years of EV road tripping, Tom finally convinced Francis that having a thermos is a good idea. The staff at the servo were kind enough to fill it up with hot water for us. Charging: Tesla superchargers just outside Subway, topped the car’s tank up to full again, while we had lunch. Took less time for us to plug in and walk away, than all the people queuing to…

The silo art is spectacular.

This one in Kaniva. Unfortunately, difficult to get a photo with the “No Entry” fence. There is an Evie Networks charger just around the corner, but we didn’t stay long enough to use it. Our first dirt road so far this trip, just north of The Grampians, thanks to the Tesla Navigation’s inability to specify tar only. But we’re no stranger to dirt roads. Charging: We fully charged last night at our accommodation. Along the 473km trip today, will just charge up if/when we stop for a toilet or lunch. First, a brief stop for coffee (and therefore charging) in Horsham. We only have range anxiety for toilets and cafes 😉.

This morning, we said goodbye to The Grampians and Halls Gap, after staying a couple of…

…nights. The cockatoos came to say goodbye. The laundry bag has started to fill the frunk, along with our shoes, charging cables, water and windscreen squeegee. We repacked the car with the Snuuzu mattress in the subtrunk, replacing the fridge, which we moved to the boot. Much easier to access it now, and we can pack the whole boot. Next leg today, to Hahndorf in South Australia. Charging: We charged up last night from the power point in the cabin. All set to go with a full battery ☺️.

Brief stop in Bridgewater, on our way (sort of) to Hahndorf for a couple of nights.

At one point, I think the car started heating, and it warned us thate might see steam eminating from the bonnet. I recall reading a year or so ago that a few people thought they saw smoke coming out of Teslas while charging, so I goes this is just to prevent worry. Charging: When we asked for charging options, the Tesla navigation included Evie Networks chargers, like this one, in the list. That’s good. We saw “Mount Barker” in the description, realised that’s just before Hahndorf, so chose it as “on our way”. Unfortunately, it turned out to be on “Mount Barker Rd, Bridgewater” but the listing truncated that to just show “Mount Barker”. So, we drove past Hanhndorf, charged for a few minutes, then drove back. That’s bad. No big deal, but we’ll have to check the full listing more carefully next time, somehow. We plugged into the charger. That’s it. No app, no card. It just started charging. That’s because we’ve already set up the Evie app to auto charge our car whenever we plug in.…

We’re staying at Halls Gap Lakeside Tourist Park for a couple of days, on our way to…

…Uluru. Regular visits from a range of bird life, along with kangaroos across the property. Kangaroos and emus appear all along the roadside into town, which is both beautiful and scary when driving a car. Charging: No EV fast charger in Halls Gap. A few accommodation and tourist sites have destination chargers. We asked our hosts before arriving, and they kindly suggested we run a lead from the cabin to the car, which is exactly what we did. Charged up from 9pm (to avoid peak grid demand and pricing), which gave us about 45% overnight, filling us up for the next day’s adventure. Thank you ☺️

The highest place we could find for a late lunch.

Hummus, veggie sticks and crackers. Some slice and a sneaky shared coffee. BYO seats meant we had to assemble our chairs from KILOS GEAR, which always reminds me of bagpipes. They fold up into small bags, which is great for road tripping. So cold here. The slightest breeze cut through the layers to the bone. Thankful for puffer jackets. The Tesla regained 3% charge on our way back down the mountain. We’re staying at the bottom of that reservoir wall in the distance, at Halls Gap Lakeside Tourist Park.

So many cute animals at Halls Gap Zoo. Many them free roam and are happy for a pat 🥺.

There’s a path that winds its way through the whole zoo. Should be simple, but we managed to do it in reverse after walking straight past the “Entry” sign 🤦.

We didn’t get far into our road trip (from Emerald to Uluru), when we were distracted by…

…The Greatest Doughman 🍩.

Heading off today on our next road trip, to Uluru, in the center of Australia.

Tesla navigation says “no route found”. This could be interesting 🤔. Same result when trying to head to the campground nearby. And this is without Trip Planner enabled, to find charging stops.

Body bag mode, engaged!

We bought a Kings camp fridge for about $208 from 4WDSupacentre.com.au.

They seem to have a different sale on every 24 hours. The staff kindly brought a display model to the car so I could check the size. It just fits in the subtrunk. We opted for the 30L model. We already had the 50L version on previous trips, but it’s a bit too big to manage in the car. After trying the sub trunk and back seat, we eventually settled on the boot, since it’s easier to access, keeps the noise away from the passengers, and allows more packing space in boot, without worrying accessing the fridge in the sub trunk. We’ll probably move it to the subtrunk when we sleep in the car. The boot cover leaves ample opening in either side for ventilation, as long as we don’t block the side wells. And the 12V power supply is conveniently located in the boot.

We installed a Teraglide Pro in our Tesla Model Y Juniper.

It provides a flat elevated floor that expands when you lower the rear seats, a retractable drawer and table. Gas struts make it simple to access the sub trunk. Brilliant design. Stay tuned to see the assembly process, and how well it does or doesn’t work with the Snuuzu mattress.

$10 + car wash mode = clean 👏

In life you need goals. Today’s goal was to find a cafe we hadn’t yet tried 😉, in our…

…home of the Dandenong Ranges. Ripe Cafe in Sassafras was a great find. Guacamole (avo toast) topped with thin sliced potato crisps, and zucchini slice. Lots of cyclists out today, including this giant Saint Bernard. The local park has interesting seating, or perhaps a one turn swing set 😳. I checked in on our parked car from the Tesla app, after some dodgy parking in front of us. We love driving through the fern trees and tall timbers of the Dandenong Ranges. Beautiful all year ‘round. Charging: While we were away from home, the sun had fully charged our home battery. We returned, plugged in, and filled up the car with the remaining free energy of the day.

We finally fitted some rubberised mats in our Tesla Model Y Juniper.

We waited a few weeks for Tessories Australia to have stock, but eventually just ordered through x-car.com.au. They were actually cheaper. The day after we ordered, Tessories emailed to say they have stock. The standard Tesla supplied carpet mats were actually pretty good, clean up okay and are comfortable. But we expect that the rubberised mats will be a bit more hard wearing, and easier to clean. We didn’t bother with a frunk liner, since it already has a hard lining (not carpeted), and a drain hole for washing it out.

We chatted to one of the guys at @Charge Next Door about their app to connect EV drivers…

…with people that have an EV charger. He described it as like AirBnB for EV chargers. Make some cash from your home charger. Great idea. At Melbourne International EV AutoShow. Future Drive AutoShows.

We chatted a bit with Daniel about their business Mobile EV Charging.

At Melbourne International EV AutoShow. They come to you to charge up your EV at 60kW DC. It can be just enough to get you home, or a fully charged battery. Customers include those who found themselves stranded, but also “wealthy” customers who use them regularly rather than driving to an EV charger. I think it’s $240 for a call out.

A couple of “space saver” spare wheel/tyre options at Melbourne International EV…

…AutoShow. Pricing ranging from $395 to about $900. We haven’t had a flat tyre during 100,000km of EV driving. If we do, we can contact Tesla via the Service option in the Tesla app. Or we can try out the pump and tyre goo we have in the car. But we’re planning to soon drive to Uluru, where a flat tyre could take quite a while for Tesla or The NRMA to sort out. So, we’re considering taking a spare.

Some of the many EVs, other than cars, at Melbourne International EV AutoShow.

Such a huge range of EV cars (battery electric and hybrid) at Melbourne International EV…

…AutoShow. We were impressed with the newish MG S5 EV, at about $40k. Interior seemed improved over the previous model MG4. More posts from the show on our Tesla Tripping blog.

Travel bed research at the Melbourne EV show.

TOCA (Tesla Owners Club Australia) had a Tesla mattress on display in a Tesla Model Y Juniper (like ours). It looks fairly flat, but when we lay on it we realised that it was just hiding the dip at the base of the folded seat, by floating above it. It would be good to test it with a Teraglide flat base. But we think the Snuuzu is going to provide a noticeably more comfortable bed.

Stretching my shirt to match The Electric Viking (Sam Evans) was a losing battle.

Great to listen to a few panel discussions, led by Sam and others, on EVs and V2G. Hopeful, based on some hints, that car companies like Tesla will soon allow us to use the massive battery in the cars to help power the grid (and our homes) during peak demand times.

We took a slight detour off the Hume Highway at Glenrowan, to stop next to the huge solar…

…farm at Winton. We have previously passed huge open cut coal mines, such as the one at Yallourn. Here are the differences we noticed: 1. The solar farm isn’t a big hole. It’s just a bunch of of posts that can be removed. 2. There’s no particles filling the air, causing respiratory issues. 3. At the coal mine, dozens of huge sprinklers kept pouring litres of water onto the coal face to suppress the dust. 4. There is no ongoing large machinery here, required to dig coal, and haul it. 5. Nothing gets burnt here. There’s no ongoing pollution or greenhouse effect. 6. The solar panels can work in harmony with agriculture. If you look closely at my photos, you can see sheep grazing in the grass around the panels. The panels provide shade that enhances vegetation growth. We didn’t see any sheep on the coal mine, or any living thing, actually 😞. Of course, there is an environmental impact of the solar farm. It took energy to produce the panels, deliver them, and so on. If we had original bush…

On our way home from Wagga Wagga: coffee stop in Holbrook.

When we were leaving the motel, the car’s auto gear selector put the car in reverse. I opted to not plough through our hotel room, by selecting drive, forward. But, most of the time, it gets it right. Beautiful drive through rural NSW. Looking quite green at the moment. A slight pause for livestock clearing grass from the road edges. Back at the car with the coffee, we discovered, after nearly three years with a Tesla, that the car image on the screen updates to show the window positions. We sat there like a couple of nerds paying “window goes up, window goes down”. Charging: We didn’t need to stop here to charge. We still had over 50%. But we aim to charge whenever we’re stopped anyway. Super easy. Plug in, walk away. No app or credit card needed.

Late lunch and lazy afternoon at Lake Albert, in Wagga Wagga.

I’m starting to make use of the new front bumper camera to judge the distance to the gutter. Very handy. We clipped the portable tray onto the steering wheel for a lunch table, then as a laptop desk. We would have sat outside, but it was a bit cold. After a short stroll by the lake, we watched an episode of The Gold on Stan. on the Tesla’s screen, while watching the sunset through the windscreen and glass roof. And later, a very appropriate “road trip” themed game of Strands on the The New York Times games app. Charging: We charged earlier while parked near the levee bank, for a walk. But this car park also has a destination charger that we could have used.

2:20pm can be too late to find lunch in a regional town.

A salad and cheese sandwich from Mawsons Bakery Cafe was a delicious and guilt free option. We ate by the river, down the road at the Euroa Rotary Park, serenaded by the magpies. Charging: We plugged into the Tesla Superchargers right next to the park. Plug in, walk away. Nothing else to do. So easy. All ready to go after our quick lunch stop.

Out for a walk along the levee bank along the Murrumbidgee River in Wagga Wagga.

Beautiful day, warmer now with the sunshine. Lots of people camping by the river, I presume as their homes. Must be so cold at night. Charging: The simplest and fastest place to charge in Wagga is at the Tesla Superchargers, which is open to all EVs. But, we aim to charge wherever we happen to be. And here, The NRMA has a fast charger, so we chose to use that. A few minor problems with it, though: 1. It has two CCS2 cables, which is great. But only one parking spot is marked for EV parking. When we arrived, we were the second car after the BYD Dolphin that was already plugged in. We initially parked on the other side of the charger, but soon realised that we were jutting further out into the car park, because the charging station takes a quarter of that parking spot. I think the shorter spot is meant for motorbikes, which explains the extra painted line, but there’s no sign. So, we moved to the spot next to the first car, which is not marked for EVs, but fortunately was empty, and…

We had an “ICE” car this morning. Wel

l, our EV was covered with ice. Cold morning near Wagga Wagga. We warmed up for dinner and breakfast at the on-site Rivergum Restaurant. We warmed up the car using the Tesla app. That melted the ice, and left it nice and toasty when we hopped in. And no fumes filling the motel.

Our first time charging at the rooftop in Wangaratta.

We stopped here to grab some shopping. Up a few ramps, the T signs pointed the way. The signs to find the chargers were good, but the signs to exit the roof by foot were hard to find. We walked towards the lone Tardis looking box, which turned out to be a lift. Other signs said that it’s all paid parking now. So, we paid 60c through the Easypark app, for 30 minutes. It seemed odd for a short stop at a shopping centre. Charging: Both the EasyPark app and Tesla app offered to show “Live Activity” widgets on my iPhone, which made it easy to check on progress. We were only stopping long enough for the toilet and shops. We returned to the car, which had charged to 96%. We unplugged and drove off. Easy.

Off to Wagga Wagga for a couple of days.

First stop Over the Road Cafe, (which is over the road, and about two minutes from our house). Egg muffin is a great meal to hold in one hand while driving, until the egg yolk spurted down my T-shirt. Sigh. Next stop for a stretch and snack at Lake Nillahcootie. Which has become an unintentional frequent visit for us. The red leaves have all dropped from the trees, since we last photographed here a few weeks back. Charging: All charged up and ready to go, from a combination of rooftop solar, house battery, and mostly renewables in the grid.

Shiny again! First car wash for the new car.

After 4000km in 4 weeks, it was looking a bit dirty. At Magic Hands Car Wash Ferntree Gully. While we waited, brunch at nearby lorna cafe. Charging: Drove home, plugged in. The big nuclear reactor in the sky sent solar rays to our roof, which converted it to electricity, to power our car.

This is probably the busiest we’ve seen our town of Emerald, Victoria. T

he Lost Woods Market draws a huge crowd. It’s a beautiful stroll through the tall trees, past numerous stalls and food outlets, with Puffing Billy Railway choo-chooing past every now and then. It’s a magical place. We parked up the other end of town, starting off with brunch at Over the Road Cafe, then walked through the jammed main road to the markets. The generators of many stalls lined the back path, filling the air with slight fumes and noise. It’s a shame they don’t have grid power. We hoped to see some stalls powered by V2L EVs, as we’ve noticed at some other markets, but none here. Charging: While we were away from home, the sun charged up our home battery. When we returned, it switched over to start solar charging our car. Win win.

Grid electricity is super expensive tonight.

Why? Ironically, it’s because it’s mainly powered by gas and coal power stations. Gas and coal supplied electricity is very expensive compared to when supplied by renewables. The second factor is that it’s a cold night, so power demand is high for heating. Our entity retailer, Amber Electric, just passes on the wholesale price, which updates every 30 minutes. When renewable supply in the grid is high, we typically pay around 10c per kWh, sometimes less. When there is low renewable supply in the grid, we typically pay 60c per kWh. But tonight: over $10 per kWh! Fortunately, we have a house battery, often referred to as a “solar battery”. This allows us to “fill” up from free solar during the day, or cheap grid (high renewables) at other times. So, we charged up during the day, ready for tonight. We actually had more energy stored than we needed, so the system exported the excess to the grid. This helps the grid, and pays us a whopping $70 for one night. It’s times like this that I wish…

Transporting a carpet roll, 2.9m long, made good use of the powered collapsible rear…

…seats and powered front seat. A bit squeezey, but it fit. A rug company quoted us to overlock our carpet offcut to make it into a rug for our living room. Unfortunately, after having it for many weeks, they admitted defeat. The job was so bad that they didn’t charge us. But at least it fit in the car 😉.

Sizing up the rear tray of our Tesla Model Y Juniper, to see how practical it would be to…

…install a bed, and sleep in it, for some of the stops on our next road trip. The folded down seats at the front are about 15cm higher off the ground than the tray at the rear. This makes it slope down, which makes a sleeper slide down during the night, and puts pressure on your hips. We know, because we had that very problem when we tried car camping in our Model 3, a couple of years ago. Terrible night’s sleep. https://www.facebook.com/share/1AUZJN8N7k/ My second attempt worked a bit better: https://www.facebook.com/share/1Am62mtfe5/ It seems to me that all we need to do is raise the floor boards at the rear, as shown by the ad hoc blocks of wood I added. But, I think I’ll save myself the carpentry, and just buy a Teraglide platform, which is designed for this job. https://teraglide.com?sca_ref=8962510.vFhGsmKvrx8 In case you’re wondering, part of the attraction of car camping in the Tesla is that it has “Camp Mode” to keep the cabin at a comfy temperature all night. Cheaper than a…

Visitors stayed last night.

We plugged their BYD Atto 3 into our Tesla wall charger. Charged up the car battery from 18% to 100%. Grid electricity was cheap at about 16c per kWh, because there’s over 60% renewable supply. Using Amber Electric. 82% x 60kWh x 11c = $5.41 If you’re interested in switching to Amber, you can use our referral link to get a discount: https://www.amber.com.au/referral/refer-a-friend-discount?couponcode=PGUXRHBG Refuelling a car at home is so cheap, even without solar. We used a dedicated wall charger. But we could have charged the car with just a standard power point and mobile connector. It’s just three times slower

A walk around Emerald. Temperature: 12°C, feels like 6°C. T

hankful for puffer jackets and the ability to preheat the car and seats before we return. The new front bumper camera gives a great view while parking. But the Tesla Vision system seems to not yet integrate that camera, so the parking line in front of the car doesn’t appear, while the rear one does.

We captured a few Autumn backdrops during the three weeks and 3684km so far of owning our…

…“Ultra Red” Tesla Model Y Juniper.

Lazy couple of days at home (except for home office working).

The mountain weather can’t decide if it will rain or shine, so I hedged my bets by putting the car outside for a rain rinse, and plugged in so it can refuel from the sun.

Past the halfway point of our trip home, we stayed last night at the Woomargama Hotel…

…Motel, 15 minutes south of Holbrook. Great find. Good value room ($120 per night), hotel next door serves dinner. Added bonus: destination EV chargers out the front of each room. The room’s (de)odorisers were quite potent, so we tracked them down ina cupboard and moved them outside and opened up the windows while we had dinner. Charging: Destination chargers are a convenient way to have an EV fully charged while you sleep, fully fueled by the time you leave in the morning. Just like plugging in your phone. They don’t have to be fast, and are usually cheaper than fast chargers, or often free. This one was a bit of a pain to get going. It requires your own CCS2 cable (which we have), and using the Wallbox app to set up an account and start charging. The app needs to be simpler. But we got it charging in the end. 3 phase x 6A x 240V = 4kW. Odd combination, but does the job just fine.

The things you discover while cruising along the endless Hume Highway

1. Our new Model Y Juniper seems to have a bug, where turning off AutoPilot also turns off Auto Wipers, so they immediately start going. Might need to lodge a fault. 2. The navigation shows the weather at our “Final Destination”. Nice! 3. Logging trucks make me nervous, having seen the “Final Destination” movies.

We arrived back home, in Emerald Victoria. Autumn is still in full swing. 🍂

Charging: We charged up for just a few minutes in Yea earlier, since we could fill up cheaper at home. But when we arrived home, our area had a grid outage. Our house PowerWall battery kept our appliances going until the grid was restored. In an alignment of failures, our solar system also stopped producing electricity 😩. So, we can’t charge up the house or car battery from the available sun. We’ve raised a fault with our installer, Lightning Energy, who can hopefully find out what’s going on with our Enphase system. It’s not the first failure. In the mean time, the grid has reconnected, and we’ve charged up during the cheap power times in the day, when renewables are mostly powering the grid.

Lunch stop at Mint and Jam in Yea, on the way home.

Marmalades is closed until June 5, so we had to venture out 😉. A bag of avocados selling for $6 – good value. Charging: We arrived with 11% charge, as predicted by the navigation. We only charged up for a few minutes, before we even started lunch, since it’s cheaper to fully charge at home, at the end of our journey today.

Quick stop for a fluid change (hot chocolate in, wee out) at Oliver's Real Food Gundagai.

Charging: Three of the six Tesla Supercharger stalls were occupied when we arrived. They were parked in alternate slots, which maximises the power to each car, since each adjacent pair of chargers share power. We had to park next to someone, which lowered their charge rate. A few minutes later, they disconnected and left, which increased our charge rate from 65kW to 130kW.