New Roofrack

For a while now, we've had our eyes (OK - I've had my eyes - I don't think Jess really could care less!) on getting a roof rack for the Pathfinder. It's got the factory rails and cross-bars, but with only the two cross-bars you couldn't really put any camping gear up there. It was good for bringing timber, etc, home from Bunnings, but not much else.

Our two options were either a wire-mesh cage from SuperCheap for around the $180-$190, or to step up to a tube-style basket from Repco. The next step up is a proper vehicle-specific rack system from ARB/TJM/etc. No doubt these are very good, but the price of admission starts at around $1200 and goes rapidly up from there. Repco were advertising the Rola Vortex basket about 6 months ago for $300-ish, but it had since come down to $260RRP. We had a 20% off voucher for Repco, so decided that with the voucher, the better quality rack would be roughly the same price as the SuperCheap (ugly) one.

We ended up going down to Repco yesterday to have a look. They had one of the baskets on display, but it was obviously a returned unit that had been opened - the basket itself was not in it's box, and the mounting kit was opened and sitting in the basket, with the instructions taped to the outside of it. The salesman didn't really know anything about it, and tried to tell us that it was $370, since that's what the price ticket on the shelf said (despite the description being nothing like it).

Eventually we spoke to a more senior girl, who worked out that it WAS a returned item, which is why it wasn't showing up on the computer. Since it was also a discontinued line, they couldn't add it back in. She eventually told the bloke that we could have it for $200 if we'd like. We tried to use our 20% off voucher on that, but he wouldn't let us - it was worth a shot at any rate! So we paid the man, and carted it back home with us. Feeling very lucky that we went down when we did, instead of leaving it for another couple of weeks, which could have resulted in us not being able to get one at all.

I fitted it to the car yesterday afternoon. It necessitated moving the position of the cross-bars on the rack, which meant I also had to modify the awning mounting points to suit the new bar positions. My concern now is that the aluminium channel that the awning bolts to is supported on one end, and in the middle, leaving half of it's weight to hang forward from the front cross-bar. In normal driving this is probably going to be OK, but any offroading or corrugations will no doubt put a lot more strain on things, and may result in the aluminium cracking. I'm thinking that I'll probably need to reinforce the forward spar of the awning with another piece of aluminium square-section bolted on top of the existing length. But that's another project alltogether!

All in all I'm very happy with the new rack. It's built very solidly, and should be able to stand up to everything we'll throw at it. It will also make a very solid mounting point for a couple of spotties up on the roof.

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Tent fits up there nicely! This was one of the main things we were after, so that if it rains whilst we're camping, we don't need to pack up a wet tent and load it into the back of the wagon.


On the passenger side of the car, we made the cross-bars stick out a little further compared to the drivers side. This gives us heaps of room to mount the awning to this side of the car, and it nicely supports the rolled up tarp.


Whereas on the other side of the car, the cross-bars tuck nicely in underneath the rack.

All in all, very happy with how it's turned out!

Camping at Kauri Ck, Tinaroo Dam

Friday the 18th was a public holiday here for the Cairns show. We had already been to the show earlier in the week, since Jess had to help set up and then man the Cath-Ed stall. So having already had our fill of expensive dagwood dogs, we had made plans to head up to Kauri Creek campground at Tinaroo dam. We were going with some popele we'd met through the myswag camper trailer forum (www.myswag.org) - Lance (Crazy Dog) and his wife Marg, and Paul (Teabag) and his wife Bec and their little girl Kira.

Tinaroo has a reputation for being a bit of a party spot on long weekends, but the campground we were at (there's 6 different ones sited around the edge of the lake), Kauri Ck, had a limited number of spots available, and you had to be pre-booked in. As a result, we shared the large area with about 8-10 other groups, and had plenty of space to ourselves. It was a lovely weekend away, despite the weather being a bit overcast, drizzley (rain overnight) and cool.

Even though it wasn't terribly hard rain, our tent didn't leak at all, so I'm reasonably happy with the waterproofing spray that we used on it. You may remember a couple of months back when we stayed at Lions Den, we were plagued by it leaking around the top frame. We had called into a local camping store and explained the problem, and they had sold us some spray-on canvas waterproofing agent, which seems to have done the trick nicely. Even still have half the can left, so I'll re-apply it in a year, and that should keep us nicely dry.

Anyway, we set out for Tinaroo early on the Friday morning, and had our pick of campsites when we arrived. Jess & I ended up with a spot up on top of the hill, looking down over the lake. The other's spots didn't have quite the view that we did, but they had bigger sections of leveled ground, which came in handy for setting up the campers. The view from our kitchen:

In case you're wondering about the Pathfinder's bonnet being up - it's not what you think! Tinaroo is home to native White Tailed Rats, and if you leave your bonnet down, then they get into the engine bay overnight, and chew through your electrical wires and rubber hoses & belts. The "cure" is to leave the bonnet up overnight. We all made sure that we'd done this, and had no problems, but we were probably the only group who had bothered - everyone else had left their bonnets down, and didn't seem to have any problems.

Paul & Bec's campsite:



Lance & Marg's setup:



In case you're wondering, yes - we are the odd ones out with our poor little tent compared to the trailers with their integrated water tanks + 12v pumps, hot showers, battery systems with LED lighting, etc. I was really expecting to be embarassed when we arrived to set up, thinking that we'd still be working away to set ourselves up whilst these guys were already sitting back with a beer. However we actually "won" the setup race, as it took both Lance and Paul a while to get their trailers level. Of course, packing up was a different story all together!

Lance bought a couple of crab pots along, and on Friday afternoon he went out in his canoe and put them in, using Black&Gold cat food as bait. Saturday morning, Paul & I took the canoe out to check the pots:







The result? After throwing back some of the little ones, we ended up with 5 good sized RedClaw:








We had reset the pots, and put them back down, moving one of the pots to a different spot, since it hadn't caught anything overnight. That pot was the unlucky one all weekend, and we couldn't catch a thing with it.

The rest of the day was spent just generally sitting around and wasting time, whilst enjoying the outdoors and the company. Lance had knocked up a batch of breadrolls in his camp oven which we had for lunch.








Saturday night we had a communal cookup, with Lance cooking up a pork roast in his camp oven. We used out oven to help do some of the veggies, and we ended up with a veritable feast. Many drinks were had, as we chatted our way to a reasonably late night.












After a late sleep-in on Sunday (no idea why...), we were greeted by some locals:






After retrieving the last couple of RedClaw from the pots, it was time for them to meet their destiny.
















Lunch time came around, which we shared (whether we wanted to or not) with a bunch of Kookaburras. Any food was OBVIOUSLY for them, despite whether it was on your plate, or, in my case, in my hand and half in my mouth.










Following lunch, we all started to pack up and break camp. We got stuck in and packed the mighty Pathfinder back to the gills and headed off early, as we wanted to spend a bit of time with Selena, Damo and Kayla on our way home.

All in all it was a very enjoyable and relaxing weekend, with heaps of good food and great company. I really enjoyed the location, and will definitely be heading back to Kauri Ck at some stage. It's only a bit over an hour away, and there's a couple of good bushwalks that we didn't get around to doing.

Many thanks go our to Lance & Marg, and Paul, Bec & Kira for a good weeekend away!

2008-07-20, Camping at Kauri Ck campsite @ Tinaroo Dam