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 16: Canberra
Returning back to the town city that I stayed in for my studies, I arrived in Canberra from the south and opted to stop over at the Royal Australian Mint. Not only did they have a bank of EV chargers, but I’m embarrased to say that I had not once visited it in the four years I was in the capital city. Lucky that I did so then – my visit was just before the visitor centre was about to undergo an extended closure for renovations.
I also took the opportunity to visit a few people I knew from back then, go up Mt Ainslie, and stroll through the National Arboretum that was barely a field of saplings when I left Canberra a decade earlier.
Day 17: Dubbo via Young, Orange
Left Canberra to the north, with brief stops in Murrumbateman, Young and Cowra; I did give the EV charger at Cowra another go – still didn’t work. I did expect that fault though, so it wasn’t a big deal and I was able to continue on my way to the next stop in Orange.
Getting to the well-hidden charger at Orange, there was already a Tesla occupying it – they were kind enough to relinquish the charger saying that they were done with it, so I didn’t end up needing to wait too long. Plugged in and did my usual thing of a walk around the local shops for the hour I thought I needed.
Came back and found that the charge was short of what I had anticipated – most likely because my battery was already quite warm before I even started charging, so the Leaf must have throttled the charging rate really low. There was already someone else there waiting, and there was no point in making people wait behind a slow charging car (the sole charger there supported only one car at a time), so I gave the next person in line a go at charging while I let the car cool down.
Half an hour later they finished up and I resumed charging. During this whole episode another Tesla drove up – they had actually driven up and seen the charger occupied (by me!), left to presumably visit some other places and returned. I ended up chatting with them for nearly an hour, about where they were from (well-known part of Sydney) and how they found the Tesla (good, but lacking suspension.)
Pulling into Dubbo two hours later than I had anticipated, the sun was still up while checked in. An ALDI was located opposite so I opted to find something quick that I could microwave before I dropped the car off at the nearby charger to do a late night full charge ahead of the next day’s travels.
One thing did trip me up at the Dubbo charger – the charger plug didn’t seat properly into the car… Turns out someone who used CHAdeMO previously somehow had the charger head pull a rubber seal from their car’s charging port(!) which I needed fish out with a small hook in the dark! It was really jammed hard in there, so my guess is that there might have been a couple of forceful goes at using the plug before I discovered it…
Day 18: Tamworth via Coonabarabran, Gunnedah
I stumbled upon another Japanese garden in Dubbo, so of course I had to pay a quick visit:
Next stop: Siding Spring Observatory. And getting there was easy too – there were massive signs plotting the distance to the “sun” (where the observatory was) to 1:38 millionth scale dotted along the way. The view outside was just as amazing as the telescope inside – as the observatory sits high on a mountain, you get a 360 degree view of the mainland from up high.
I had to stop for a bit in Gunnedah to charge before arriving in Tamworth for the night, but as it was getting late, I pushed forward with that final leg even with a “red” hot battery. Bad idea in hindsight – not 30 minutes later, as I was climbing uphill, the dreaded “turtle mode” activated with a warning:
⚠ 警告
ＥＶシステム高温
走行制限中
ゆっくり運転してください
⚠ Warning
EV system overheating
Operation restricted
Drive carefully
As turtle mode had kicked in, power output was limited so I had no choice but to pull over for 20 minutes and wait for the battery to cool down before continuing on. Lesson learnt – the Leaf isn’t forgiving.
Day 19: Tenterfield via Armidale, Glen Innes
After staying overnight in Tamworth, I thought it would be good to check out what the country music capital of Australia had to offer while I caught up on some much needed charging which I couldn’t get around to the night before.
I was to pass through Armidale and Glen Innes before ending the day in Tenterfield. On the way to Glen Innes, there was a sign pointing me to a “Stonehenge Recreational Reserve” which was amusing enough for me to detour for a quarter hour. Sadly not anywhere as mystical as the one in the UK.
Day 20: Brisbane via Warwick
With nice weather and the car topped up to a good level from the evening before, it was time to time travel an hour back as I crossed the border back into Queensland. This last day was left completely unplanned – I had no schedule to adhere to now since I was close to Brisbane and had nothing booked. Maybe I go through Warwick, and then north to Toowoomba before making my way back?
I visited the Big Thermometer in Stanthorpe, because… why not? It’s not exactly the most exciting of the “big things” in Australia, and it probably wasn’t at the right time to see the thermometer1 but whatever.
Moving onto Warwick, I parked at the back of the town hall where the tourist information centre was to try and find out I might be able to see around the area, before doing a hop and a skip to the nearby charger to find the DC fast charger closed off for repairs and only AC charging was available. Oh well – I had plenty of time left so I decided to wander about while I waited.
When I came back, I struck up a conversation with the technician (Owen) as he started opening up the Tritium charger, while I got a front row seat to the whole process!
After a good half hour, everything was done and Owen said I could give the charger a go, so I jumped over to disconnect my Leaf from the AC charger and swapped over to the DC one. A few clicks and some whirring, then the sound of the charger winding down. Hmm? An error code appeared on the charger’s display. Code 3442. Huh. Never seen that before. Unplugged and tried again. Same thing.
Owen was packing up after the repair job and looks up his reference for the Tritium charger error codes, and mentions that it’s to do with my car having an issue rather than the charger itself. That’s strange – it literally was working a minute ago on the other charger… Maybe I could try plugging back into the AC charger. Nada – the slow charger stayed there waiting for the car to initiate the connection.
Hopping back into the car, I turned it on to see if the car had anything to say for its misbehaving self. A warning appeared that looked something like this:
I wasn’t sure if there were profanities that could aptly express the mix of confusion, shock and panic that hit me all at once, right at that very moment.
Continues in Part VII.
| Charger | Cost |
|---|---|
| Canberra (Royal Australian Mint) | 7.80 |
| Murrumbateman | 10.75 |
| Young | 12.49 |
| NRMA discount | -1.25 |
| Orange | Free |
| Dubbo | 13.20 |
| NRMA discount | -1.32 |
| Gilgandra | 4.72 |
| NRMA discount | -0.47 |
| Coonabarabran | Free |
| Gunnedah | Free |
| Tamworth | 10.90 |
| NRMA discount | -1.09 |
| Armidale | 8.02 |
| NRMA discount | -0.80 |
| Glen Innes | 9.92 |
| NRMA discount | -0.99 |
| Tenterfield | Free |
| Warwick | Free |
| Subtotal (excluding discounts) | 77.80 / 1669km |
| Trip total (excluding discounts) | 387.55 / 6379km |
- The thermometer tends to get shown in the news in all its below-zero glory when Stanthorpe becomes one of Queensland’s coldest places in winter. ↩︎
- I didn’t record this, so my memory might be wrong. But in essence: strange error code = bad. ↩︎