I was scared that our car might not make it across the ocean.. But that ship has sailed.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the continent, after two months of floating around on a ship, our little baby Hulamin finally made it to the harbour in Darwin - a relatively small city in Northern Australia named in honour of the naturalist, Charles Darwin. The city of Darwin is where the start line of the World Solar Challenge is situated and has been since its inauguration in 1987. The climate in Darwin is tropi... Facts are more boring than I thought, lets talk about cars and things!

Kirsty, the sixth member of our current Australian contingency, arrived in Darwin earlier this week and took on the challenge of convincing the Australian authorities that our container full of tools and our solar car was clean and free of any plants, dust and biltong - silly them, we brought our biltong with us in our hand luggage. If you are a member of Australian customs, please be aware that, THAT WAS JUST A JOKE! Seriously though, we have all watched Border Security and know not to mess with you. Anyway, the process that is normally followed - after the mountains of paperwork I am certain no one really understands - is that any container entering Australia has to be completely unpacked and analysed for any spec of dirt or plant material before being allowed to enter the country. As you can imagine, after all the Border Security we watch, the team was fairly pedantic to say the least. Let's see what Kirsty had to say about her experience... 

The unpacking of Hulamin was scheduled for 7:30 am, meaning an early morning for me. We had no idea what the car was going to look like after almost 2 months at sea, swaying back and forth. We were just hoping that everything was still in the same position we had left it, and were dreading the possibility of boxes tumbling on the car. This was made worse by the horror stories of smashed solar cars the shipping agents decided to share with me the day before.

Karma was not on our side unfortunately, and the day did not start off well.  While driving to the wharf, I heard a strange grumbling noise. I though perhaps after I had transported equipment yesterday, I simply hadn’t secured the seats back properly. After about 10km, a friendly Aussie started waving at me…I had a flat tyre. The decision was simple, to either drive on a flat tyre for the last few km, or to pull over and miss the unpacking…decision made. Needless to say the trip (albeit very short) was very stressful, especially with the added annoyance of the GPS continuously falling off the windscreen and resetting!

Finally I arrived (mostly on time). The moment that the team had been waiting for, for 2 months. Opening the container was a truly terrifying moment. As the lock was cut, and the doors swung open, I am relieved to say that I could see the car sitting exactly how we left it and all the boxes in place. What a fantastic moment, and the best Birthday present for Peter.

Next step was to unpack the entire container into a warehouse floor for the customs officials. The 2 port officials and I started the process. Each fragile box carefully handled, the car gently placed outside the container on foam blocks. Some boxes so heavy that only Saien can pick them up, we used a fork lift. It seemed to be over very quickly. The customs inspection was even quicker. Opened a few boxes, inspected the camping gear, and that was it! Done. Our over cautious attitude paid off!
Sadly, the whole process had to be started again. To pack everything up and deliver it to our workshop. Thanks to the assistance from my new mate Glen the delivery man, we packed everything up onto pallets, wrapped it all up in cling film, and took it to the workshop. I had to take Hulamin on the back of a trailer.

Hulamin is now asleep safe and sound in the workshop, waiting for the rest of the team to finish their trek from Adelaide to put her back together.