Shaking like a Leaf (IV): Headin’ Down South

This blog post is part of a series about my road trip around South/East Australia in an electric vehicle. Read other posts using the same tag.

Day 7: Swan Reach via Mildura

I dropped my keys off and checked out at 6:30am to find my car covered in a light frost (!) and double checked the charge on my car (98% – good…) before setting off to continue my westward journey which should get me just across the border into South Australia before the end of the day.

Got to Balranald which was the first pit stop for the day, with this segment consuming about 80% of my battery. Surprisingly someone was charging there, but when I asked how long they had left they replied that they were basically done and started packing up, so I took the opportunity for a quick toilet break at the information centre just a few paces away, before I returned and got to plug in under the shadow of a cell tower.

After a 45 minute charge and another hour on the road, I turned off the highway to arrive at Robinvale just after 10am. This also marks my first entry into Victoria on this road trip – though only momentarily.

The charger here was one of the newer Tritium chargers still with a CHAdeMO plug, but it was telling that this particular plug was completely covered in cobwebs. So few people drive a CHAdeMO car and fewer yet in remote areas – this was to happen a couple times over this trip, with me learning to blow and clean out the plug of cobwebs and random insects before shoving it into my car.

Nearby was a strip mall, but interestingly it had a lot of Chinese and South-East Asian stores. Just goes to show how far people from all over have embedded themselves into Australia! I found myself wandering up and down while I waited for my car to charge, and ended up buying some chilled coconut water to get some hydration in the dry heat.

Mildura was next, but before I completed that leg, I had something else to do: wash my clothes. Unfortunately I couldn’t kill two birds with one stone by charging the car and washing at the same time as I didn’t find any compatible chargers around a laundromat (at least in my brief search in Google Maps) so I chose the scent of detergent over waiting for a car to charge in the heat.

It did take almost 2 hours out of my day, but while waiting through the long wash cycles I had a wonderful discussion with a couple you might call “grey nomads” – they were in their 8th month in a 3 year(!) long trip on the road, staying in Mildura to catch up with family over the Christmas period. We jumped through so many things I couldn’t remember them all – from them experiencing blown and shredded tyres in a remote area and a serendipitous encounter that saved them, to even noticing that we had a matching model of smartwatch (I hadn’t yet seen anyone in person wearing a Withings ScanWatch!)

Once I was again in possession of fluffy clothes I finally made my way into the city centre and pulled into a charger just as another EV got hooked up to it. It was able to split the power across the two cars simultaneously from 50kW to 25kW each, which was okay for me since my car doesn’t charger at high rates for long anyway, but probably not as great for the other car which was carrying a family in a fairly flat BYD Atto 3.

Retreating from the intense heat meant looking for somewhere indoors with air conditioning for lunch, which ended up being a light wrap at a cafe. You could actually feel the heat radiating off the windows – it was that hot and bright.

After completely charging the car, I was off towards South Australia. Passing through the quarantine checkpoint, I arrived in Berri, where I stopped briefly to charge and buy some food at the local Woolworths in preparation for my only ‘camping’ night. Sadly my Leaf was overheating again and so the charge was way slower than I had hoped, so I stopped it after it topped up from 10% to 50% which I thought would be enough to at least get me to the next fast charger to get me back on track later. (Narrator: He was wrong.)

The last major stop for the day was Waikerie. I had planned for my car to charge fully as I needed to have enough charge to not only get to Swan Reach to camp overnight, but also into the Barossa the following day. I would have had more charge coming into town, but the slight delays and my half-hearted charging attempt in Berri meant that I arrived with 18% when I had planned for 50%. I tried the CHAdeMO fast charger in town… but that just refused to connect! Argh! I had no choice but to resort to using a slower charger instead.

I wandered along the river a bit, but there wasn’t much going on in a small town at 6pm, so I mostly sat in my car munching on whatever I had. The hours roll by, 7… 8… 9… 10… At 10:30pm, my car finally ticked over 95%. It was an agonising wait.

You might be wondering why I didn’t just abandon going to Swan Reach. The main reason was I originally wanted to see the Dark Sky Reserve – I didn’t drive all the way out here not to get a good view of the night sky! There was a dedicated lookout (Big Bend Lookout) near where I had intended to stay overnight (Tenbury Hunter Reserve), which is why I chose that route.

The camp was free and didn’t require reservations, so I didn’t really have anything hanging on this, but a clear midnight sky and the only source of light being a full moon was something to behold, and made the wait worth it. (The photos don’t make out the stars that well – it would have been better without the full moon, but it was still breathtaking nonetheless.)

The other stupid reason I looked forward to driving this way was the car ferry – on which I’ve never ridden before. It runs 24 hours, but during quiet times the ferry is docked and the operator rests in a cabin ready to start the ferry when called up. It was fun watching everything roar back to life just to transport my one car over the river in the dead of night.

The camp site was right on the other side of the river, and I arrived around half-past-midnight at 56% charge, which was about comfortably 10% over what I needed to be at ahead of the trip tomorrow. I sure as hell didn’t need anything else on my mind trying to get to sleep after the long day that was…

Day 8-10: Adelaide via Barossa Valley

The next couple of days were spent in Adelaide and surrounds – there were too many small things to really note here in a blog post. Safe to say, I really enjoyed Adelaide, especially the inner city area which interleaved greenery with a CBD probably better than any other Australian capital city.


There were two rapid charges in Adelaide that were completely free – this was the first time I used Jolt charging stations and they provide 7kWh of free fast charging per day, which is enough for small regular top ups. Kinda envious of people living nearby to those chargers – I want one near my place too!


Continues in Part V (to be published.)

ChargerCost
Balranald12.13
NRMA discount-1.21
Robinvale6.92
Mildura7.84
BerriFree
Waikerie8.83
Tanunda15.03
NRMA discount-1.51
Port Adelaide (Visitor Info Centre)2.04
Burnside4.50
Port Road/Sussex St, AdelaideFree
Port Adelaide (Plaza)1.31
Chargefox discount-0.26
Port Road/Webber St, AdelaideFree
Subtotal (excluding discounts)58.60 / 904km
Trip total (excluding discounts)168.90 / 2865km

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *