Days 95 – 103

After six long days of full trailer and car services, collecting and filtering oil in the freezing conditions in Alice Springs (tops of 18 during the day but zero at night) and attending our first outback rodeo, we chug, chug, chugged out of Alice Springs heading North West, back to the Tropics of Australia for some much needed heat and flies!

The reason for the “chug” is still unknown and still ongoing (you would think after spending over $1000 on a full car service that everything would be working fine but you would be wrong!). We initially thought it may have been our own fault as we forgot the night before to switch from oil back to diesel. When it would not start in the morning, we thought it was due to the cold conditions and our lovely camping neighbours, Jan and Rus from Western Port, Victoria, offered to lend us their electric blanket that they had been using in Alice to warm up the Battered Fish!!

You would not believe the crowd the sight of an open bonnet with a man peering underneath it in a camping ground can form. It truly is incredible. As soon as they heard the sound of a car not starting, the meerkat impressions started of men hoping up off their chairs and seeing where the noise was coming from. Then, very slowly edging their way forward towards the car, the first man arrived and the conversation started:
“That doesn’t sound good”
“No”, I replied
Then after several minutes of just standing there and me trying to start it, “Know what’s wrong?”
Through gritted teeth, I replied “no”.
Then the next man approached – “That doesn’t sound good – know what’s wrong”. AARRGGGGHHHHH!!

After six others crowded around the car and joined in the helpful conversation, eventually Bruce from the campground came to our rescue and got it started.

On the positive side, the rodeo that we attended in Alice was great fun. We saw Bronc riding (that is unbroken horses to the virgin rodeo goer!), steer roping, barrel riding (for the “cowgirls”) and my favourite, bull riding. The announcer introduced the “cowboys”, who came into the ring dressed in chaps and akubras, before we all stood to sing the national anthem. After this, the announcer did not stop speaking for the whole night, repeating over and over about the main sponsor, “Billy Buck” (seriously!) and coming up with some classic sayings, my favourite being the one to a slightly large “cowboy” - “he jumped on that steer like he was jumping on a hamburger”.

The transition from cold to hot came after driving for two days through the Tanami Desert. The road was “rough as guts”, as some Aussies we met described it, with corrugations for over 500 kms. We saw two cars pulled onto the side of the road changing their tyres after a puncture and a lot more tyres on the side of the road evidenced of punctures to previous travellers.

Crossing from the Northern Territory into Western Australia, we stopped one night in Wolfe Creek. For those of you who have seen the movie, we are very proud to say that we have stayed there in a flimsy camper trailer with just canvas separating us from all evil! The crater itself is impressive and the view it gives of the deserted outlook is quite eerie. We really did get the feeling there that we were in the middle of nowhere. The sky at night was fantastic – we were lucky enough to see a full moon rising from the crater, followed by a sky lit with thousands and thousands of bright stars.

After crossing the desert, our first stop in the Kimberleys was Bungle Bungle National Park. We arrived at the visitor centre to register that we were bush camping in the park. Gerard was on his way to the visitor centre when the lady behind the counter came out telling Gerard that she could smell burning. Gerard sniffed the air and replied that he could not smell anything unusual. She then commented that it smells more like someone cooking than burning. Gerard looked around and noticed that I still had the engine running on the Battered Fish. He told the lady that it may be our car which was causing the smell and not someone cooking. Her look was of total astonishment when we said that we were running the car on waste cooking oil – she had never heard of this before or realised that it was possible to do! She did seem slightly relieved that it was the car causing the smell and not burning as the park had an extreme fire danger rating and as she was new to the job, she would not have a clue what to do if something was burning! The road into the Park was extremely rough and took over 2.5 hours to travel 50 kms. It was well worth it though just to see the beehive domes with tiger stripes on – the colours up close are a fantastic burnt orange with black stripes. We went for sunset at a lookout which offered a fantastic 360 degree view of the Park. However, our attention was diverted away from the sunset by two young children who went away from their parents for a few moments with a camera to take some pictures of the sunset but came back, (much to our amusement but their parents disapproval), with pictures on of something much more interesting than a sunset, their bottoms!

We are now staying in Kununurra, which is the start of the Gibb River Road. We are restocking on oil as well as fruit and veg as we came across a quarantine section on the Western Australia/Northern Territory Border. It was not like the one we came across in Queensland on the weekend (which was closed as obviously fruit fly only works during the week days!), but it was more of an honesty bin. We, being very lawful citizens, tried as hard as we could to eat most of the fruit (Gerard won the prize as he ate 4 oranges and 2 grapefruits which resulted in some rather unpleasant consequences for Sarah and I in the car with him!!) and chucked the remaining fruit, veg, nuts and honey into the bin.

We are slightly confused with the time at the moment. Western Australia is 2 hours behind Sydney (NSW) time and 1.5 hours behind South Australia / Northern Territory time. However, when we turn on our mobile phone, it tells us we are on Hong Kong time! If we go by WA time, it means the sun sets at 5pm and rises at 3.30 am so we have not, as yet, put our clocks back to WA time but are wondering when we should. Any advice anyone?!

I have included some pictures of the Rodeo at Alice Springs (one of which is a photo of the "cowboys", none of whom met our expectations as a potential boyfriend for Sarah!), Gerard and I crossing into WA, Sarah and I at the Bungle Bungles, the domes of the Bungle Bungles and the deserted expanse at Wolfe Creek.

Thanks to all those who have blogged and emailed – as always, it is great hearing from you. If “Sweet Relief” are reading this, please write another post with an email address so we can answer your question about engine conversion.

Hope you are all well,

Rach and Ged (and Sarah, who is doing very well with the dirt and the flies that have appeared now it is hotter!!) x