Thread: Coming to Oz

I have an Iridium Motorola 9505a and have used the sim from my Telstra mobile in the past and it works. Its expensive for calls but I could recieve send and recieve SMS to other telstra mobiles. This SIM was on a cheap Telstra plan that I think was only $10 a month + calls at the time, the only thing was you had to get global roaming enabled before the SIM would work in the Iridium Sat phone.

I have heard from several sources now that you can make emergency calls with the Iridium Sat phone WITHOUT a SIM while in Australia when using the 112 emergency number. However I have not been game enough to try this out so would not depend on it working.

When we went across Africa we used a mob called TR Telecom in Oz for an International Iridium SIM that allows family etc to send messages for free to the phone via a website. Its was $30 a month for a minimum 4 months contract at the time and included some airtime for calls.
Satellite Phone Blog - All about satellite phones
Cheers
Mark

Originally Posted by Discomark

I have an Iridium Motorola 9505a and have used the sim from my Telstra mobile in the past and it works. Its expensive for calls but I could recieve send and recieve SMS to other telstra mobiles. This SIM was on a cheap Telstra plan that I think was only $10 a month + calls at the time, the only thing was you had to get global roaming enabled before the SIM would work in the Iridium Sat phone.

I have heard from several sources now that you can make emergency calls with the Iridium Sat phone WITHOUT a SIM while in Australia when using the 112 emergency number. However I have not been game enough to try this out so would not depend on it working.

When we went across Africa we used a mob called TR Telecom in Oz for an International Iridium SIM that allows family etc to send messages for free to the phone via a website. Its was $30 a month for a minimum 4 months contract at the time and included some airtime for calls.
Satellite Phone Blog - All about satellite phones
Cheers
Mark

Sounds similar (although no limited time) to the 'travelsim' I used during a recent African trip. that was with an ordinary smart phone as mobile networks are brilliant throughout Africa. Max cost of call back to Oz was about 70 cents/minute

I'm not sure how they'd work in a sat phone which you would need for phone comms in outback Australia due to the pretty hopeless networks here.
Travelsim may be worth checking as their service and help desk is brilliant.

Hey Julian, good to hear you're finally about to arrive. I'm around next week, after that it begins to get mental for Xmas as all the inlaws start arriving. Be good to try and meet up, if you need help getting Tango out of the port give me a shout, I have a bit of experience with that !!

Cheers
Mike

Julian arrived yesterday, his car is sat in the port waiting for the steam cleaner mafia to sort it out for him and hopefully allow him to collect it this week.

After that I believe he'll be approaching the good members of this forum for some advice on which direction to start his "big lap" of Oz, which may well turn into the "big figure of 8" if others experience suggests that's the way to go.

So, starting in Melbourne in say mid December, which way would you go & where would you stop ? Free camping preferred to keep the costs down to fuel & food !!

is there any states or territories he is not wanting to go too. by the way for those who have not already, like his fb page he puts up good stories with amazing photos

Originally Posted by Mike_S

Julian arrived yesterday, his car is sat in the port waiting for the steam cleaner mafia to sort it out for him and hopefully allow him to collect it this week.

After that I believe he'll be approaching the good members of this forum for some advice on which direction to start his "big lap" of Oz, which may well turn into the "big figure of 8" if others experience suggests that's the way to go.

So, starting in Melbourne in say mid December, which way would you go & where would you stop ? Free camping preferred to keep the costs down to fuel & food !!

Starting in December, I'd be jumping over to Tassie for a month or so first then slowly work your way north to around the top end during the winter months. June/July are the best two months up there IMHO but you'd probably need one or two either side of that to see everything across the top.

Seeing as your here just at the right time, maybe you should join a few of us at the Vic Xmas event this weekend.
Some of us are camping overnight on Saturday and then going to the do on Sunday.

Originally Posted by Xtreme

Starting in December, I'd be jumping over to Tassie for a month or so first then slowly work your way north to around the top end during the winter months. June/July are the best two months up there IMHO but you'd probably need one or two either side of that to see everything across the top.

We spoke about that last night actually ! As he's here and the ferry to Tassie's just up the road there is some logic to going there first. The flip side to that is Julian's desire to be in Sydney to experience Christmas & New Year, so perhaps setting off in a week or so on a slowish run to Sydney, rather than rush Tassie & then rush to Sydney.

An initial idea we talked about was to 'figure of 8' the country, heading up the east coast first as far as he can get, head across into the NT then down the middle to Alice. We threw about the idea of us perhaps meeting him at that big orange rock on the way, as it's one of my bucket list items to have a photo of my Tango in front of the rock, just to see if it blends in As that's also one of Julian's aims, it could be a nice idea. From there, down to Adelaide maybe, then across to WA and head north, going all the way up then back down the middle to then come back across along the GOR to Melbourne. Obviously, there are *loads* of possible permutations and deviations that could / need to be made on that routing to make sure he's seen as much as possible. There are no states to be untouched as far as I'm aware, just the best experience possible on limited funds & time, catching up with as many people as want to offer a paddock to catch a few Z's in or fancy travelling along for a bit of the trip. It'll be the good folk of Aus & forums like this that will make the trip all the better for Julian & Tango. From Aus, his plan is to then ship the car to South America and continue with his drive round the globe, unless of course the piggybank runs dry in which case it'll be back to old Blighty.

Having looked at the blog & the photos / stories already on there, I for one can't wait to see some of the photos he's going to take in the next 12 months.

Internet access is a bit of an issue for him at the moment and having had his iPhone nicked a few weeks back, he's currently surviving on a housebrick phone with a Telstra PAYG simcard! I'll be meeting up with him again hopefully on Friday night, for us to try and get some photos of his car & my car together for the blog & facebook page, so all & any ideas posted on here will be passed on then, unless he manages to get his internet sorted.

I've suggested he has a UHF installed in the car as well as having his satphone & EPIRB, the UHF is likely to be more useful in general. He already has a bed in it, but perhaps obtaining a swag would be advisable for here. Other than that it seems to be fully sorted now after the Land Rover dealership in Ulaan Bataar gave it a few days of TLC. Brilliant that they were prepared to just help him out and not charge a fortune, seeing it as more of a PR thing than anything else. Not bad in this day and age !