Today I encountered the largest electrical challenge in the “Miranda wants to be an auto-electrician” portion of our journey. If you follow us on Facebook, you know that I have been enjoying learning about various mechanical and electrical elements of our Cruiser and trailers. It’s a whole new world of learning for me and on a practical level makes us much more self-sufficient as various little things go wrong during our journey. 

My electrical pursuits were kicked up a notch a couple of weeks ago when I replaced the fuses for our brake lights on the side of the road. Next I installed a UHF radio into our car, but my biggest challenge occurred when our camper trailer fridge plug snapped off, which caused all of the 12v power in the trailer to fail. 

The first challenge was overcome relatively easily once I realized there were fuses connected to the battery themselves that had blown, but I was still left with a bi problem. The plug was broken and we leave on the Spirit of Tasmania (an 11 hour ferry ride) in the morning. We had no way to get someone to repair it on a Sunday and most of the shops with various supplies were closed any way. All of the potential vendors (Cub and Evacool) were also inaccessible on a Sunday. I love that so much of Australia does a much nicer job offering reasonable hours for employees compared to the US, but it can be inconvenient at times 🙂

I definitely did not want to lose the week’s worth of groceries in the fridge so we needed a DIY solution. 

I turned to my favorite resource for all things camping, 4wd and camper trailer related – MySwag and posted with my crisis. I got several responses of what to do within a few minutes. Most helpfully, one person offered to speak to me by phone. (I would thank him more directly here, but I don’t actually know his name!) 



Over the next 30 minutes by way of 3 calls he patiently took me through the steps to hardwire the fridge until I can get it to the mainland for a proper repair. It was such a wonderful gesture of kindness to a stranger. 

I have found so much willingness to lend a hand, share knowledge and help a fellow camper on this trip. We have benefitted so greatly from it. We do our best to pay it forward as we meet travelers heading in a direction we have already been, but we have far more often been the beneficiary of this kindness. 

So to the wonderful Myswagger who helped get our fridge up and running again (and helped fuel my dreams of getting more capable on this area), thank you!