Team GT ?

The journey has begun. I’m writing this on the flight to Singapore. We caught a train to Sydney and sadly, got the chat from another traveller for making too much noise in the quiet carriage.  Well – I suppose we are excited.

Check-in was a bit unusual.  Apparently not everyone travels with a Dunlop tyre.  All OK once they established it was not inflated.

We had allowed an extra hour for safety to get to the airport, which allowed an extra hour in the Singapore Airlines lounge. 

I sampled the champagne, the chardy and the shiraz at the lounge.  Now I’m retesting on the plane and as I’ve always said:  There is nothing quite as good as chocolate, red wine and black coffee at 30,000 feet. Perhaps I should try the port.

On the subject of alcohol, we are looking at forming a team with cars 103 (Rene Declercq/Eric Claeys)a 240z, and 107 (Joost Van Cauwenberghe/Jacques Castelein) a Mercedes 450SLC. We know these guys from the London to Cape Town (2012) and the Sydney to London (2014) rallies.  They are Belgians, liked minded travellers, and very partial to Gin and tonic.  We though we could form Team GT.

Our next report will be from Beijing.

...from the Newcastle Herald and NBN TV

Some weeks ago, our local TV station NBN ran
this item on Mark and Dave's preparation for the rally
(If the video doesn't load, click here for the YouTube version):



and now, the Newcastle Herald has this story:

Just about all ready to go!

The car has gone, we have all the required visas and vaccinations.  We have a document saying we are allowed to bring the car home.  Now there’s nothing to do really.  There must be something to worry about.  I’m worried there is nothing to worry about. 

Well - A couple of little worries I suppose.

At the Alpine last year, we bought two 195 size tyres as that was all we could get down there. We normally use 205s. Cleaning up after the car has gone, Mark can only fine one 195 tyre.  We think there is a good chance we have sent it off with an odd tyre.  Never mind, we can take a matching tyre with us as luggage on our flight!!

All the countries we travel through on this event drive on the right hand side.  So Mark has installed an arrow (left) at the top of the windscreen in front of the driver to try and enforce which side to go for in an emergency. 

On London to Cape Town we had a very minor head-on with some Belgian boys (now good friends) when on a very narrow road we both should not have been on, they went to the right to get off the road and we went to the left.  The cars just touched gently and no real harm done but we’ll never forget it.

We are still to organise sending some tyres to somewhere in Russia and I can spend endless hours looking at maps of where we are going.

The car isn’t there yet.  It went via Japan and is now on the way to Shanghai.

http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:690117/mmsi:477898700/imo:9329538/vessel:OOCL_YOKOHAMA

Next update, hopefully from Beijing.

We're hoping it's not right up the top of this pile!

The car is on its way!

Wednesday 20 April

On Monday, Mark delivered the car to the shippers in Botany. 
The staff were a bit indifferent until he fired up the Z, then people came from all
directions.

They were already busy loading a large yacht into a container, which blocked access to the compulsory car wash, so the burly Maori fork lift driver said "follow me".

Mark and the car were then led through a warehouse, in between stacks of pallets barely wide enough to fit through, all the while the exhaust note bouncing off the warehouse walls.

Now the staff were all smiles and cheering .



Thursday 21 April

We have now received confirmation that the car is in the container, sealed by Customs and due to sail on Saturday.

In the meantime, we've had a bit of fun/worry with paperwork.

Thanks to fellow competitors, Rob Garnsworthy and Max Stephenson, who alerted us that we don't need a Carnet (the passport for a car).  Both 2014 Sydney to London and 2012 London to Cape Town events did, and I assumed wrongly that all overseas travel needed one.  Wrong.

Onto visas - The Chinese one was done in the promised time (one week), and Mary picked it up as scheduled in Sydney. 

She then scooted over to the Russian Consulate to lodge our application to enter Russia.  They said they would be dispatched in two weeks, and so, two weeks later, we were waiting for delivery in Queensland, where we were visiting.  

We waited for four more days past the due date, worrying all the time because the tracking number didn't appear on the Aust Post website.  Much worrying.  And then, last Saturday morning, we had to leave Mary's father's place Toowoomba, but without the passports, I was a bit stressed, since we didn't know where

they were.

By Monday, we were wandering around the northern rivers district in NSW heading for home and Newcastle, when a phone call came to say the passports had arrived in Toowoomba - but I had to provide ID and take delivery in person!

So, we turned around and drove a few hundred extra kilometres that day, but it was good to actually have the passports back in my hands.

Next morning, we sent them off again, this time with the application for Mongolian visas.  Fingers crossed that all that goes to plan.  

After that, the only visa we actually need ahead of time is Belarus.  After Belarus, crossing into Poland should be OK, as it appears to be a "visa on arrival" place, and then once we're in Europe, it should be all plain sailing crossing the various borders.

The other important bit of paperwork, the Vehicle Importation Approval has also arrived so we will be allowed to bring the car back home after the rally.  

Visa hassles

Mark and I picked up the car from Stewie’s last Thursday and while we didn’t drive it very far, Mark made the comment “I think we've run out of things we could do to the car!”.  The car, apart from a final pack, is ready to go.  We will go for one more drive before we call it ready.

The major work is now applying for visas for some of the countries we are going to visit.  We haven’t been able to do this until now as we had to wait for ‘invitations’ which the ERA have organised for us.  Now we have invites for China, Mongolia and Russia so the paperwork fun has started. 

The Mongolian one looks the simplest so we’ve left that to last and started with the Chinese one. First visit to the consulate, in Sydney, didn’t go well last week. We went to the wrong office – it didn’t deal with visas.  We were re-directed to one in the city, and our 2^nd try involved taking a number and waiting. After about 45 minutes I was called up and a lady took all the paper work. Hopefully Mary will be able to pick them up next Tuesday while Mark and I go for a final test drive.  

If the Chinese visas happen as scheduled, Mary will then high-tail it across to the Russian consulate  at Woollhara and apply for Russian visas. Applying for a Russian visa is done by filling in a form online, submitting it to them, then printing it to send in with your passport.  The online quiz asks a lot of questions not normally asked. Names and contacts for last 2 employers, full itinerary with hotels but best of all, every country you have been to in the last 10 years and for us, that’s a lot.  Besides all the countries we did on London and Cape Town and Sydney to London, both Mark and I have been going lots of places in between times.

This is page 3 of the Russian visa application. There were 45 additional entries on a separate sheet to cover 10 years of travel.

So this week should see the car ready once and for all, visas starting to come in and the carnet submitted.  The Carnet is like a passport for the car.  It’s done via the NRMA in conjunction with the RAA who have reciprocal deals with motoring organisations in the other countries.  At least we don’t have to go to multiple organisations for that one.

Road test

Last Thursday/Friday was to be our big test prior to shipping.  We picked up the car from the workshop and went for a drive with the aim of testing that everything worked as expected and to try camping.  There will be eight days of camping in Mongolia where there just aren't any hotels.

The weather was pretty hot.  We went west from Sydney and after a bit of gravel around Lithgow we found ourselves very dusty, and the engine running hot and having vaporisation problems.

We then headed for Parkes where we found a caravan park!  

Mark (ever cautious) took a cabin as well as a camp site.  He hasn’t camped since he was a boy scout and that’s a long while ago. I suspect our patch of green grass in Parkes is a bit more  friendly than the Gobi desert but the organisers tell us that camp spots there will have showers and food.

We ate at the local Services club and as we walked home it started to rain!!  We did stay in the tent all night and the only thing we used from the cabin was the pillows.  We will need to make some provision for that.  We managed to get the tent back in its bag and it wasn’t that much bigger than when we got it out.
We had been here before in Classic Outback trial and in Sydney to London but this time we had time to look at the wild life.

Highlight of the trip back to Stewie’s workshop was the size of the kangaroos in the forest south of Parkes.  

The pictures are of one who hopped along a fence line beside the car and it wasn’t the biggest we saw.  It could have headed off into open spaces but didn’t bother.  It was doing about 40 KPH and easily cleared 3 fences that were in its path while we were watching.

And there were dozens if not hundreds of these very large 'roos.

So...

Car back to Stewart for:
  1. Dust sealing,
  2. Check why its running hot.
  3. Work on a list of trivia mainly about packing and securing stuff.

I reckon we are ready but we still haven’t been given a shipping date.