THE BIG DASH: Now or never

Like many great ideas the decision my wife Jane and I made to abandon the grind and take some ‘me time’ was born out of a cathartic moment.

In 2025 I appeared on the ABC program Media Watch and not for any good reason. It was traumatic and shattering after 45 years in journalism operating as honestly as I knew how.

So that combined with a significant upcoming birthday prompted our decision to escape. A reset was definitely required.

The plan was simple and remains so in its broad strokes. Melbourne to Adelaide to Darwin to the entire west coast, to South Australia including both the Eyre and Yorke Peninsulas and then home.

Six months roughly. Our first big road trip towing a caravan - a freshly-purchased and brand new MDC caravan.

Perhaps appropriately, the official starting date is April 1.

My plan is to provide regular updates about our experiences on the road.

First off, let’s talk about our tow vehicle.

Yep, our tow tug for this trip is a Kia Tasman X-Pro and there will be plenty of focus on it. That’s because our Tasman is being supplied by Kia Australia.

It’s backing its product to do the job of not only hauling me and Jane and our two Dachshunds Lulu and Eddie, but also the MDC Forte SR 19 as well (read more about the 'van and why we chose it here.)

The big budget launch of the Tasman was maybe the automotive story of 2025 as a slew of sportspersons joined the fun. After the first round of teasers appeared it’s said several high-profile people rang Kia boss Damien Meredith begging to take part.

The vehicle itself has engendered controversy from its first reveal because of its divisive looks. Personally, I struggle with it.

The other big debating point is whether the 2.2-litre turbo-diesel engine is up to it. I’ve less problems with it on that score so far. But there’s much tough testing to come.

Highlights include Tasman’s terrific cabin quality, design, practicality and space, big load box and undoubted driving smoothness, especially when carrying moderate to medium loads (there’s a reason for the proviso on that, which I’ll get to in a later instalment).

The X-Pro is the flagship and it comes with more off-road gizmos and aids than any other model. Hopefully in the course of the trip we’ll do some exploring where they can be tested.

It also comes with a standard integrated trailer brake controller and a driving mode specifically tailored for towing (more on that later too).

Our example has a few extras including tow bar, burly side steps, a smoked bonnet protector, front-end protection film and rubber mats.

A canopy will be added before we depart.

We’ve also yet to make the call on a roo bar. That will depend on how weights end up when everything’s fitted. We’ll cover all the set-up of the Tasman as a tow vehicle in a later instalment with the aid of Richard Jarvie at ‘Pull Your Weight’.

While Kia Australia has been generous in supplying a vehicle and offering added equipment for it, one thing those good folks weren’t across was the fitting of an Anderson plug.

Basically, when you’re towing a caravan the essentials such as brake lights and indicators are covered by your seven or 12-pin plug (seven standard in the Tasman’s case) that is likely already fitted.

The Anderson plug is an added connector sitting next to that plug that draws power from the car’s battery system to charge the caravan’s battery, run the refrigerator and potentially other 12 volt devices in the 'van while the engine is running and generating electricity.

Now this whole thing of caravan electrics is a byzantine world of watts, amps, 12v, 240v, batteries, inverters and management systems. The Anderson plug is just a small bit of a much larger puzzle that can absorb caravanning blokes for hours in conversation over a beer around the campfire.

In Australia, a grey Anderson plug usually performs the battery recharging function, while a red one communicates between the car and the van’s electronic stability control system.

But red can also be for solar blankets, or maybe the blue one is. If you want to get some sleep go on a caravan forum and read the debate about what different colour Anderson plugs mean...

Anyway, the good news is our MDC only came with the pre-fitted grey plug so that’s all we were interested in fitting. But you never know, those forum posters make some good points about what you can add. Help, I’m being sucked into the vortex!

To do the job we tracked down James at Prolectric in Hastings (Victoria) who executed it all for us neatly and efficiently, including the starting point of swapping from the seven- to 12-pin plug.

Once past that he got onto the Anderson plug itself.

“In terms of running cables, there's a fair bit of room in the engine bay and a decent chassis rail to run our cables and secure them to to get it down to the back here,” James told me.

“We always follow as much factory wiring as we can and on this one, we're able to run our wiring along this [right-hand] chassis rail … which works well because our battery's on the same side.”

James does a lot of work plugging up various dual-cab utes and he said another key win for the Tasman was the amount of room under the bonnet.

“[Isuzu] D-Max, [Nissan] Navara, [Ford] Ranger, we don’t have as much accessibility down the sides of the engine,” he explained.

And he’s right, the Tasman is that rare modern car you can see the ground under the engine.

Lots of room for a V6 … or a plug-in hybrid, hey Kia.

Anyway, the complicating factor for James and what needed that room turned out to be an isolator switch that wasn’t part of the original plan … or budget!

“Because of the ignition supply that they (MDC) requested to turn the fridge on I dug a little bit deeper,” he explained. “They run a couple of other accessories in those vans off the Anderson plug before it gets to the fridge.

“And that’s why I decided to put the isolator on it, because they would potentially draw from this [Tasman 12v] battery when it’s just hooked up, potentially flattening this battery.

“So anything connected to that Anderson plug now will not draw any power off this battery until the engine starts.”

“This module will sense the voltage and it will turn on and join it all together and send power down to the back.”

James also appreciated the easy access to the fuse box in the cabin via a factory grommet in the firewall so a fused ignition supply could be fitted to tell the 12-pin plug (not the Anderson plug) when to turn the fridge on (yes, confusing I know, well for me anyway).

That fused ignition supply has other benefits as well.

“What we’ve done is set ourselves up for a whole bunch of other stuff if we want to do it,” says James. “UHF, reversing cameras, you could put dash cams, hard-wired reversing cameras, that kind of thing if required.

“We’ve got easy access. Some cars don’t have access that easy to your fuse box. We didn’t get to the point where we had to remove any plastics.

“But from looking at this I can tell that will just pop straight up. Which would be pretty similar to most other utes. And you can get your kick panels and that out pretty easily.

“Doesn’t look like they’ve overly complicated too much with it.”

The whole system looks very tidy using Prolectric’s own Anderson plug kit, mounts and RedArc isolator.

And the cost? Well, the original rough estimate quote was $450, but that blew out to $1100 with the additional work and gear required.

Now to plug it all into the 'van and see if it works!