Cyaround_oz have been on the road travelling Australia for 12 months and counting, living out of their 2000 HZJ78 Toyota LandCruiser Troopcarrier. Since leaving their home city of Adelaide in January 2018 they have driven all over the country. Taking in some iconic off-road places like the Victorian High Country, Fraser Island, Cape York, The Savannah Way, The Gibb River Road and a lot of dirt and beach tracks in between.
REDARC caught up with the pair to find out more about their Troopy, their trip and their solar setup.
Our travelling home is a tough as nails Troopy that we have fitted out to suit our camping needs, while still fine tuning parts of our set up daily to make our Troopy the perfect touring car for us. If only we took a photo of everything that we left with at the start because we would not have half of it now! We absolutely love not towing anything and having the freedom to just pull up and look like a parked car definitely works in our favour. Being able to do so means we have free camped almost every night this year allowing us to stay on the road longer!
Our home out the back of the Troopy consists of a full size double bed with our fridge and tucker box on a slide out under on one side and our Baby Weber Q, two burner gas stove, food compartments and other storage on the other side. The rest of our gear is stored under the front of the bed that is accessed from the cab or on the roof. We run a 60L Engel Combi Fridge/Freezer along with a bunch of 12volt accessories powered by a AGM Optima blue top battery through a 200A REDARC Dual Battery Isolator with the additon of our REDARC Solar Regulator and REDARC 150watt Solar Blanket we feel we have finally nailed our 12volt and solar set up.
Having a good reliable solar panel is essential to our daily set up to ensure our batteries stay charged maximising the life and usage out of them and to keep the beers cold of course! It also allows us to relax and not have to worry about finding an available power source to charge appliances/batteries or having to pay for a powered camp site.
The REDARC Solar Regulator and REDARC 150watt Solar Blanket are both small, compact and easy to set up which is perfect for us living out of our car as we are tight on space and every bit of extra weight counts. Included with the Solar Blanket is the connection lead that is heavy duty with durable anderson plugs at each end. The size of the 150watt Solar Blanket is ideal for what we need to charge and tucks away easily when it is not in use.
The Solar Regulator and lead comes with simple anderson plug connections meaning you have options on how you choose to connect the solar. For our set up we have chosen to hard wire the Solar Regulator and have mounted it in the cab of the Troopy.
We prefer to camp ‘off the beaten track’ and enjoy the adventure in going off road and away from the typical camping areas. After only staying at a handful of paid camp grounds over the year we rely on efficient solar to never let us down, which it hasn’t! By having this solar set up in our camping arsenal it allows us to stay in the bush or on the beach for longer periods of time.
The REDARC solar gear is an absolute essential to our set up and we could not go without it, recommending it to any travellers that cross our path.
You can see all of cyaround_oz's adventures by following them on Instagram.
