Days 103 - 115

Days 103 – 115

BEWARE: a lot of mechanical terms are used in this blog which, of course, I understand completely!

We left Kununurra after collecting 80 litres of WVO and headed for an area called Diggers Rest. We arrived at Diggers Rest around 5pm WA time (that is 7pm Sydney time, 6.30pm Adelaide time and who knows what time Hong Kong time!!). We found that instead of it being a bush camp area, it was a working cattle station. Gerard got out of the car and spoke with the owner who told us we could camp in our “own paddock”. We drove around the corner and were greeted by 450 goats, numerous horses, chickens, bulls, heifers, emus and dogs in our “paddock”. It was a little surreal to say the least! For the first time in a while, I can honestly say it was not the birds that woke me up in the morning, but the call of some hungry kid goats “bleating” away quite merrily. We bade farewell to “Old McDonnell’s Farm” after taking a wander around the station and seeing the cars they use to muster and brand the bulls (the “Bull Catchers” as they call them), which had obviously seen a lot of action over their time.

We headed for the first gorges of what we hoped would be many, the beautiful Emma Gorge and El Questro, before we took the track leading up to Mitchell Plateau. Mitchell Plateau is a huge area with its main attractions being the largest waterfall in Australia and its untamed coastline with white beaches and turquoise sea. We stayed at a gorgeous bush camp called King Edward River, which had a series of waterholes and waterfalls that we could swim in that were deemed as “safe” – (“safe” up here means no salties, only fresh water crocs!).

The next day, we left early with our packed lunch and water to go and see the Falls. We had only got 10 kms up the road before the car stalled. Despite numerous efforts of trying to restart the car, the car would not start. Even though it was only 7am, the sun was already up and hot (the highs of the previous few days had been 42 degrees) and so I remembered the advice from Ray Mears survival programmes (!) and unpacked our picnic rug under the very little shade that there was, got hats out for everyone and set up camp to wait for the next car. Three hours past before the first car came up the track. I am not quite sure what we would have looked like to those people as Sarah was reading a book, Gerard was eating and I was plucking my eyebrows! Three aboriginals got out of the car and asked what was wrong. Before they examined under the bonnet, Pauley wanted to know which tribe I was from (apparently, I am the same colour as a local tribe near to them!). Niceties over with, they examined the car, tightening this and that, watching Gerard change the filter, pumping the air out of the fuel injector etc (I told you there were a lot of mechanic terms being used in this blog!). About 30 minutes past before the next car arrived, Les and Carol from Perth, closely followed by Julie and Alan from Townsville. They all asked what was wrong and pulled up in front of us to help out. Every car that past (6 in total) all got out and helped and we were very grateful to all for sparing their time to stop with us. At one stage, there were 10 people looking at the car (well, 4 blokes by the car, 6 women standing in the shade!) and Julie decided to get out her polished tea pot together with tea cosy to make everyone a cuppa on the side of the road! Despite everyone’s efforts, the Battered Fish would not get started and we unrolled our beautiful purple tow rope for the first time for Julie and Alan to tow the Fish back to our camp. Whilst Gerard sweated away in the Fish being towed, Sarah and I sat in Les and Carol’s air conned car – bliss after the heat of the day! Les and Carol were also staying at the same camp and in the afternoon, Les came over and he and Gerard spent the afternoon getting every spanner out of their respective tool boxes trying to fix the car. Eventually, the car started and we were once again extremely grateful to Les for spending so much of his time helping us out.

The next morning, it was a bit like ground hog day as we packed up lunch for the day, filled up water bottles and left early to go to the Falls. Thankfully, the car started first time and sounded healthy. We past “the hill of death” where we had stalled yesterday and got to the Falls no problem at all. First stop was to the scenic helicopter flight pad where we surprised Sarah with an early 30th birthday present of a hour helicopter flight over the coastline and to the Falls (the emissions from this will, of course, be offset!). All I can say is “Wow”! Neither of us had been in a helicopter before and after we got used to the noise and the fact that we had no doors, we sat back in silent amazement of the views. The pilot took us over the coast line where we not only saw white sands and turquoise seas, but also sharks, salties, turtles and stinger rays in the sea. On such sightings, he would take the helicopter down as near to the sea as possible so we got a good view of everything. I was not in a hurry to jump into the sea for a swim after the flight! The Falls were also great to see, although I am sure that in the Wet they are far more impressive with the amount of water that would flow through them.

After four days at King Edward River, we left to rejoin the Gibb River Road. The car had been running perfectly since it had stalled and we had travelled over 300 kms without a problem. We were within 2 kms of our next gorge when we switched the car over from oil to diesel. Suddenly, it stalled and once again, we had a waiting game on the side of the track as we could not get it started. (My eye brows didn’t need plucking this time so I wondered what to do!). Before long, Dave and Bernice from Derby came by and offered to help. Once again, we were overwhelmed by their generosity with their time as not only did they tow us to the nearest camp spot 37 kms away at Manning Gorge but stayed with us that night so that Dave could help Gerard with the car in the morning. This time, they drained out the diesel from the car as we were only having problems with the car when we ran first off on diesel or last thing at night. They (and others who had surrounded the car as the bonnet was up!) came to the conclusion that our so called “diesel” was actually kerosene. They held proper diesel in a clear jug up against our diesel in the car and the colour difference was noticeable even to me. With this new information in hand, we started the car up with some aerostart and drove 7 kms to the nearest roadhouse to use the public phone to phone a mechanic. We got 4 kms before the car stalled and guess what…..it wouldn’t start again, not even with aerostart. For the third time in as many days, we unravelled our beautiful purple tow rope and got a tow from the caretaker at the roadhouse back to our camp!

With the car not starting, we enquired how much a tow would be to Broome, as that is the first major town on this section of the road. To go 450 kms, it would cost us $4500 to be towed!! I told Gerard that I don’t care how he got the car started; we just had to get it going as there was no way we could afford $4500!!! Gerard studied his new bible (the Landcruiser manual) and the next day, he found where the fuel was leaking from and did a patch job on the car to get it started. To celebrate, we eventually took a walk to Manning Gorge, where we had been staying for the last three days. The gorge itself was stunning, with a waterfall cascading down into a deep, clear pool. We spent the day relaxing at the Gorge and doing rock jumps from the fall. Even though the jumps did not look high from across the pool, once you were up there, it felt really high!

With the help of some tape and aerostart, we have arrived safely in Derby, where we are getting all the electronics on the car looked at, before we drive the final 150kms to Broome. We are also restocking on oil and food for our next journey which will hopefully be “breakdown free”!

I have included some photos of our breakdown journey across the Gibb River Road (we are thinking of renaming the blog “Around Oz on a Tow”), the waterfall at Manning Gorge, Emma Gorge, the Bull Catchers, rock jumping at Manning Gorge, a picture of the boab tree that we are encountering now that we are in Western Australia, pictures from our flight of the coastline, crossing Pentecost River and Mitchell Falls.

We hope you are all well and thanks all for your emails and comments,

Rach and Ged x

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

Days 85 - 94

Be warned, if you do not like rocks, gorges and walking, Central Australia may not be the place for you. These last ten days have been jam packed in terms of the sites we have seen (or more precisely, the amount of rocks we have seen), the amount of kms we have walked, the adjustment of life at a temperature below 30 degrees and also the adjustment of life with a third person travelling in the car and sharing the camper trailer.

That third person is my sister Sarah, who we met up with at Uluru (Connelian) Airport. It is fantastic having her with us and we are amazed at how well she has adjusted to life in the “bush”. However, like us at the beginning of our trip, she is struggling with how dirty everything gets, identifying the numerous noises of wildlife during the night, going to the toilet in the bush and wondering whether every spider she sees is poisonous or not (the answer to which we tell her is “definitely no” but in truth it is probably “yes” and “lets get the hell out of here pronto”). We gave her quite a steep learning curve into camping as we bush camped for the first three days in a beautiful but very dusty site with dingo’s howling during the night and a night temperature of 3.5 degrees, it was freezing!

Those that read the last blog will be pleased to hear that we eventually found Uluru (for those that haven’t yet caught up, we mistook Mt Connor for Uluru on first glance). Although it is such an iconic image of Australia and we are pleased that we have seen it, we were all a little disappointed with it and don’t quite understand why. One reason may be that for our liking, you could not get close enough to it. The climb of the rock was closed due to strong winds for both days that we were there (there was a list with at least 12 other reasons for why the climb can be closed) and the base walk that we did had a fenced off area between you and the rock of about 50 – 100 metres the majority of the way around. This is due to certain areas being sacred sites to the Aboriginal people where you cannot photograph or walk. Having said all of this, when we first saw the rock, we could not take our eyes off it due to its colour and size – it really has a presence. I also took over 50 photos of it at different times of day, including at sunset and sunrise, so it could not have been that bad.

On the other hand, we thoroughly enjoyed the Olgas and Kings Canyon. At both of these places, we did long walks taking you all the way through the sites. At Kings Canyon, we did a walk where we climbed to the top of the Canyon and then down into the middle where we found a lush oasis of paperbarks, palms and a swimming hole with glorious reflections of the trees and the Canyon in. Unfortunately for my legs, we then had to climb back out! The colours of Kings Canyon were very impressive and although I took a lot of photos, none of them do it justice.

We gave Sarah the experience of corrugations whilst driving to the MacDonnell Ranges along the Meerenie Loop. The road only gets graded once a year and that was 11 months ago. For 160 kms non-stop, Sarah had to endure being shaken around in the back of the car to a constant noise of d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d (say it as a child pronouncing “D”). The road conditions did not get any better once we left the Meerenie Loop and drove along the 4WD track to Palm Valley. Some of the pot holes we found in the ground would have been a great spot for fishing in. The rough drive was well worth it though for Palm Valley was stunning. The burnt orange colour of the sheer cliffs at sunset with white ghost gum trees set into the cliff and red cabbage palms fringing the waterhole was an incredible sight. We later found out during a ranger talk given around the camp fire at our camp spot that 99% of the Worlds red cabbage palm trees are within 5 kms of Palm Valley (a fascinating fact I am sure for all of you!). I admit that we initially only attended the ranger talk because of the prospect of a warm, blazing fire as we did not have any firewood of our own but found the talk to be extremely interesting, especially when the ranger spoke about the high proportion of mammals that have become extinct in Central Australia due to introduced animals by the Europeans (ok, I may have become a little bit of a geek!).

We left Palm Valley and drove to the MacDonnell Ranges, another stunning area with yet more rocks, gorges and walks to do! Some of our highlights of this area were the walk we did around the Pound at Ormiston Gorge, Ellerey Creek Big Hole for its peacefulness and Standley Chasm, a deep red cleft that rises 80 metres above the floor and glows from reflected sunlight creating a stunning display of rich colours. We also did some great bush camping in this area and had huge fires to keep warm.

On our first night in the MacDonnell Ranges, we did not bush camp but ended up camping at Glen Helen Resort, as the national park camp ground was full. I knew it was going to be an interesting night when I saw three tour buses pull up outside the reception and the guy at reception announcing there was a happy hour and karaoke that night. We went for happy hour to warm up a little and the karaoke started. The guy running the karaoke started singing his first number – it was painstakingly embarrassing how bad he was! As if that wasn’t bad enough, he then proceeded to do yet more numbers whilst two rather large German ladies stood up and started to dance not quite in time with the music!! It felt very surreal to be watching and listening to this after the peace and solitude we had experienced during the last three months!!

I have mentioned a few times about how cold it was during the nights. It really has been quite a shock to our bodies after we had come down so quickly from the Tropics to temperatures of no more than 20 degrees during the day, dropping down to zero at night. I have slept for the first time this trip in two fleeces, a woolly hat, gloves and the sleeping bag under the duvet.

Not only has the weather had an impact on how long we sit around the camp fire at night for, but it has also had an impact on the waste cooking oil. The filtering of the waste cooking oil is taking over twice as long as it normally does and the Battered Fish has taken longer to start in the mornings because the oil in the car has not heated up. This means we are running on diesel for longer in the mornings before we can switch to cooking oil.

We are now back in Alice Springs collecting more WVO for our journey North across the Tanami Desert to the Gibb River Road (we are not predicting there will be many takeaway restaurants in the Tanami Desert so need to stock up as much as possible!). We cannot wait to get out of the cold and back into the Tropics, which will hopefully be in the next week!

I have included some photos of Palm Valley, Kings Canyon, Uluru at sunset, Sarah and I at Uluru, Standley Chasm, Gerard and I at Ellery Creek Big Hole, Gerard and I at the Olgas at sunset and a Major Mitchell Cockatoo (a Pink Cockatoo) that we saw at Palm Valley.

Thank you to all who have emailed and blogged us – as always, it is great hearing your news.

Hope you are all well and enjoying your summer over in the Northern Hemisphere and your winter over in the Southern Hemisphere!

Rach and Ged x