LPG

besides buying a new vehicle

Best thing is to do a weekend trial run loaded with the van on and drive it hard, calculate you fuel usage and add 4Lt's per 100..... if your getting 14Lt's per 100 add the 4 for a total of 18Lt's per 100.

By calculation it that way your guaranteed to have enough fuel for most conditions.

Figures can vary from vehicle to vehicle.... our Landcruiser loaded up towing gets around 19Lt's per 100 and others with the same model as our doing the same thing are getting 15 to 16Lt's per 100..... that's another 300 to 400 kilometres to a tank, by the way the Landcruiser carries 270Lt's.

the above answers are good, I dont imagine you will have a problem, as long as the prado can run on petrol too, everywhere I have been around oz, most had gas highly inflated though!
At least worst case run it on petrol when gas is unavailable.. I think you need to be able to get a min of 350 to 400 km between servo's worst case
If your in a remote area maybe concider filling both petrol and gas as a safe guard?? If you know there isn't gas for a long time then use you petrol and keep the gas as a reserve as such..
I realise gas is cheaper but that may give you a safe guard when a long way from servo's

Across the Long Paddock you will run out of LPG between fill ups. I brought my ute back to W.A. from Victoria and its on dual fuel.
I was getting about 400kms out of a 75L LPG tank, and about 600L out of the 72L petrol tank - and I wasn't towing anything.
I ended up carrying two 20L jerrycans to get me past all the fuel bandits.

You have to find out before you leave, who the fuel bandits are. Across the Long paddock, Nullarbor, Border Village, Madura, and Balladonia, are the places you never fill up. If you do, be prepared with a large jar of Vaseline.

Penong is the last cheap fuel going West. Yalata, what used to be the next stop, is now closed. Nullarbor Roadhouse is next, you drive past them.
So, from Penong, you are best to drive 424kms straight through to Eucla, on petrol, without refuelling. Only fill up with LPG in Ceduna and Norseman, where the LPG price is back to a modest rip-off.

From Balladonia to Ceduna, you will be looking at way over $1.00 a litre for LPG, and up to $1.20 at the rip-off places.

Border Village are a rip-off, drive into Eucla, 14kms on, to fill up. If you have enough to go another 62kms West from Eucla, Mundrabilla is the cheapest fuel out there.

Drive past Madura, they are a bigger rip-off than Nullarbor, and have been for years.
Balladonia is the same style of rip-off. Try and get from Eucla or Mundrabilla to Norseman. Eucla to Norseman is 670 kms. You usually have to stop at Cocklebiddy or Caiguna, between these Eucla & Norseman.

LPG prices absolutely skyrocket once you leave the city behind. LPG will be more than 2/3rds, and even 3/4 the price of petrol in some of the remote places, such as across the Long Paddock, up North, and well inland.

Once in Norseman, drive into town and check out the Caltex and Shell servos. Quite often they are a few cents cheaper than the BP.

You will be lucky to get 300kms out of your LPG tank when towing, so keep the LPG in reserve. Premium ULP is probably a more economic buy, because it has more energy and will improve towing performance.
Headwinds will be what kills your fuel economy when towing. Always try to pick a time to travel when you have tailwinds or little wind.
Watch the weather patterns and try to move according to the winds that are favourable.
In Summer, strong Easterlies prevail across the Long Paddock - in Winter, the prevailing winds are Westerlies/South Westerlies.

In 2006, my wife and I did a trip around the block with our gassed NL Pajero and 16.5 ft Jayco poptop caravan. We used a total of 2 tankfuls (about 90L) of petrol for the entire 18000 km trip.

I have rewired the controls so that when gas is selected, the petrol pump stops. This way, I can keep the LPG as a reserve, and use petrol until I can get into range again. That way, I can run the petrol tank to empty and not burn out the petrol pump.

From memory, Fitzroy crossing to Broome was a long stretch with no LPG available. Tom Price to Pardoo (LPG there) & then to the Nanutarra roadhouse (ripoff!) on the way south was another long trek, where you would run out of gas. Timber Creek had no gas when we were there, and we limped into Kunanurra on petrol (from Victoria River Downs). The best thing is to fill up whenever possible, and to hell with the cost - which will be heavy. Anywhere in WA outside the major cities is expensive for LPG. Some places, we filled up 3 or 4 times at teh same servo because we were seeing so much of the country around there.

I was in Carnarvon earleir this year and there is only one servo which sells gas, and they didn't have any. Fortunately, we were only going that far north, and filled up at the Billabong roadhouse on the way back south (Price reasonable and good service as well).

I carry a 20L jerry can of petrol, and fill it only when I am likely to need it. As soon as I am clear of a dry area, I use the petrol and then go back onto gas.

Agree with the reply above - LPG is dear anywhere away from the cities, especially across the Nullarbor, yet petrol is even worse price. From memory, last February is was $1.25 at Nullarbor roadhouse and that was the dearest we paid anywhere. Petrol there was nearly $2.oo per litre, so we were still in front, although only marginally.

Typically, we go to an area ands set up our van there. we then spread out and explore the area as best we can, then head on to another locale and repeat the explore.Because we don't have an off-road caravan, we didn't go on the Gibb Rover road, although the bits of it we went on wpuld have been fine at the time. River crossings would have been a bit more of a problem and we wouldn't have attempted them unless we had no choice. We went back to our van in Derby/Broome/Kunanurra.

We get good economy from our rig - about 350 km from a 70 L fill of gas. We only have about 45L useable of petrol, but this gave us enough fuel overall to see us around without any panic. Do your research and you will find that you can go most places around OZ on LPG and enjoy yourselves. PM me if you want to know where I got gas - I kept a log of the trip.

Don't panic - just et out there and enjoy. We will hopefully be out there soon ourselves.

To all thank you for the replies they where all help full and hope to see many on the Rds and free camping areas soon.

Great summary,s.....
Has any one travelled through QL on LPG? eg Longreach ect.ect.