What happened after the wheels fell off.... gotta love insurance companies (or not)

Well, I know it's a long time since an update, but we didn't get eaten by dingoes (as one of my readers suggested), however we did do battle with our insurance company - which was almost as bad!

We eventually got back home to Canberra about 10 days after our breakdown in the middle of nowhere (Elliott, NT) and over that period of time we were in (and out of) contact with our insurance company, CIL.  When we got back to Canberra we discovered that our van still had not been seen by an assessor, and was still - you guessed it - sitting in the back yard of Elliott Mechanical Services.  Thanks so much to Bob for looking after our van for us for so long.  But it gets worse....

After 3 weeks, and many anguished and escalating phone calls, CIL Insurance finally decided to get a transport company to bring the van back to.... Adelaide!  This is because, apparently, there were no suitably qualified repairers in places like Katherine, Alice Springs, Mt Isa (need I go on?) to fix our little van, and only Adelaide could do it justice!  A week later the van arrived in Adelaide and was finally seen by an assessor.  We were fully expecting the company to write off the van, as there was considerable damage to the chassis, but no.... they decided they were going to repair it.  We were now 4 weeks down the track from the initial breakdown, and more than a little annoyed by this stage.

To cut a long story short, after 9 weeks of phone calls (each time having to go through an interminable identification process and speak to a different person each time), our caravan was finally 'fixed' and delivered to us in Canberra.

Well - 'fixed' is not really an accurate description of the condition of our van.  We were horrified, both at the quality of work that had supposedly been done to fix our original problem, and at the additional damage that had been done to our van in transit.  We were absolutely disgusted!  We compiled a list of the damage and defects on our caravan and sent an email to CIL Insurance which included this:

• The quality of workmanship on the chassis 'repair' is very poor.  There are huge gaps between the steel, an angle grinder has been used and left gouges in the steel and some of the repairs have been sprayed with galvanised paint, other parts just with a silver paint.  It looks very shoddy and indeed amateurish.  I am most concerned that this repair has not been done to a sufficient standard where I can trust that the van won't come apart while travelling.  We have not received an engineer's certificate of compliance on the chassis from the repairer.
• The water tank vent hose has been wound around the cross-member instead of being properly secured.
• Major problems with the awning - it appears that straps have been used to hold the caravan down onto the truck while in transit.  The straps have worn away the stitching on the awning edges at both ends, broken the front awning arm, rubbed the front arm and twisted the clip and holder roller on the front part of the awning, making it impossible to open.  The caravan door does not open properly due to the damage.  The awning is now totally unusable.
• Stabiliser legs - the front left one is bent, and two of the handles which release the rear legs are totally broken in half.
• Paint has been stripped off at least four places on the poptop roof, where the straps had been holding the van down. There are dents in the roof at the rear, where the strapping has been, and a dent on the side wall.
• The radio aerial has been broken - in fact, it is no longer there, there are only two broken holders where it used to be.  The stereo no longer works at all.  
• There is a vertical strip above and below where the aerial used to be, where paint has rubbed away due to the friction from the strapping.  
• One of the rear roof clips is bent.
• The pole carrier has been replaced with a smaller unit, and this has been very poorly mounted in the original, larger holder.
• The water hose which was replaced has been left dangling and has not been secured anywhere.
• The copper gas pipe has not been secured and is a safety issue.
• The brake wiring has been poorly secured.
• The water tank has not been secured.
• The water hose has not been secured.
• The front water tank now leaks.
• The waste outlet pipe has been secured with only one screw instead of the original two.
• The welding earth lead location has not been treated with cold gal and has already started to rust.

So, our broken van came back to us in significantly worse condition than we had left - unusable and unsellable (is that even a word?)   This email was sent to the person supposedly handling our claim as well as the complaints manager.  

Within 24 hours we had a very sheepish call back from the assessor who had released this vehicle as 'suitably repaired'.  Obviously, he had had some 'feedback' from his manager or complaints department, and suddenly, our caravan was finally going to be written off!  Yayy!  Sense had finally prevailed after more than 32 phone calls (from us), 9 weeks and some very unhappy emails.  

Within a couple of days a cheque had been deposited into our bank, and a few days later a transportation company arrived to take away our formerly lovely little Paramount Duet caravan.  What a long haul this has been, and what an expensive exercise for the insurance company - if they had done their job properly and sent someone to look at it in Elliott it would have saved them a lot of money and us a lot of anxiety and distress.

So we said a sad goodbye to our lovely little van, and look forward to new adventures in our next van. 

Heading North for Boulia Camel Races

This trip will be our first in our new Paramount Duet Expander caravan.  We purchased it a few weeks ago from Canterbury Caravans in Bayswater, Victoria, and we're really happy with it so far.

The plan is to travel up to Birdsville with Carole and John, where we'll meet up with Lorraine and Bill, then on to the Boulia Camel Races where Lai and Garry will join us.  From there, we are heading to Karumba, on the Gulf of Carpentaria, then on to Townsville and back home.  

We left on 1 July and spent our first night in Lake Cargelligo.  We stayed at the caravan park for only $20 per night for a powered site.  They had a good fire going at the camp kitchen area, and we certainly needed the heat.  I'm sure that Lake Cargelligo would be a nice place to stay in good weather, but while we were walking around the town it started to rain, and it felt like needles of ice piercing my face.... bitterly cold.
  
Next morning, we were off to Louth, where Trev has previously spent many hours with his fishing buddies not catching fish.  We had been there before with Bill and Lorraine, and stayed at a free camp on the banks of the Darling River.  We set up camp in the same spot, then went up to Shindy's Inn, the local pub, for a drink and a bit of local knowledge in regards to the road conditions etc.   Apparently all the roads we are planning to travel on are in pretty good condition at the moment, so things are looking good.  It was still very cold in Louth, and my little hot water bottle came in very handy.  Trev threw in his yabby net, and managed to catch a grand total of 3 yabbies - we felt sorry for them, so released them to live another day.

From Louth we travelled up to Hungerford, which is just over the border into Queensland.  On the way, John had a bit of an altercation with a large emu - didn't do any damage to the car, but the emu definitely came off second best.   He had badly broken one of his legs and was unable to get up on his feet - poor John had to put him out of his misery, which wasn't pleasant.

We refuelled in Hungerford, then onto the Currawinya National Park on the Paroo River.  It was a beautiful spot, we found a camp right on the river and decided to stay for 2 nights.  There was plentiful birdlife around the waterhole, and it was very pleasant sitting on the riverbank with a drink, a good meal, and watching the sunset and moonrise.  There are some shearers' quarters and a huge shearing shed (with some machinery) in very good condition, as well as ruins of a couple of homesteads in the park, so there's plenty to look at.  


On the second day we travelled up to the two large lakes in the park, Lake Numalla (freshwater) and Lake Wyara (saltwater).  Both lakes were quite different - Numalla was almost yellow, and Wyara was blue, with a huge pelican colony on banks in the middle of the lake.  Wyara is the breeding ground for the pelicans and other waterbirds, and there must have been thousands of adults and chicks on these banks.  It was a wonderful sight.  In the late afternoon we drove from the lakes to a rocky outcrop called 'The Granites' - gorgeous red rocks which we climbed up for a great view over the national park.   It really is a lovely park, and hasn't been 'over-sanitised' which is what seems to happen to a lot of national parks in New South Wales - they have too many rules and regulations which are really designed to keep travellers out, rather than welcome them in.

From Currawinya we travelled north and stopped at a tiny town called Toompine (population 3) - it's tagline is 'The Pub with no Town'.  It literally is just the pub, but offers free camping to travellers, obviously on the premise that if you are staying there you will probably have a meal or a drink at the pub.  This is something that a lot of little outback pubs are doing to stay alive and works very well.  While having lunch there we were chatting with the publican and another couple mentioned that they were going on to Quilpie - she said that if we wanted to stay at the caravan park we should book ahead as it was filling up fast.  I said we were planning on staying there too, so she phoned the park and booked four sites for us all - pretty good service, but nothing out of the ordinary for country people.  They all work with each other out here, which is a great thing to see.

We arrived at Quilpie caravan park, set up, then booked in for a cooked meal around the camp kitchen - $15 for silverside, veggies, white sauce and damper, together with a singalong around the campfire.  Great fun, and a good way to meet other travellers and have a chat and a drink.

So far on our travels we've learned the following things:

• make sure you close and test all cupboard doors and fridge door before setting off (had a couple of drawers pop open and spill contents onto the floor, but nothing too drastic)
• red dust will find it's way inside, no matter how airtight you think your van is
• watch out for emus - we've decided that the collective noun for emus is:  'a stupidity of emus' - because they have a body the size of motorbike and a brain the size of a gnat, and if they see a car they will actually aim for it instead of running the opposite direction
• double-check all your instruments - especially the one that tells you whether your watertank is full or empty (we ran out of water even though Trev was positive he'd totally filled the tank).  But the meter showed we were out of water and it was correct!

Tomorrow we're heading for just past Windorah then onto Birdsville to meet Lorraine and Bill.