-15degrees 46 minutes 40 seconds by 17 degrees 38 minutes 54 seconds

This is our actual location on the planet. I know this because the United States Government allows me to access their satellites and use GPS.

This may be my final entry in this blog at -15degrees 46 minutes 40 seconds by 17 degrees 38 minutes 54 seconds as God only knows what will befall us tonight.

Having successfully rediscovered Mitchell Falls we left the Mitchell Plateau heading along the infamous Gibb River Road for base camp Kunanurra.

Since my last Journal entry you can add to the list of damage a broken, supposedly indestructible, Bilstien shock absorber and a rear sway bar that has slipped loose from it’s mooring.

Despite this we pressed on, fighting the odds all the way pounding endless rocks and corrugations, avoiding low flying tourist trucks and road trains. Then at exactly -15degrees 46 minutes 40 seconds by 17 degrees 38 minutes 54 seconds on this great globe we have chosen to colonize and I might add in the country that I have recently adopted, it happened…. the front wheel fell off. As simple as that, one minute it was on the next minute it was off. Not rolling down the road kind of off, because the wheel nuts came loose and fell of or something similarly simple, but hanging by a thread of suspension bit kind of fell off. In fact, hanging by a tenuous thread of mangled steel. Hanging, much like a baby tooth that seems to wiggle back and forth swinging in the breeze endlessly till it eventually gives up and drops off. And drop off it did at -15degrees 46 minutes 40 seconds by 17 degrees 38 minutes 54 seconds.

Now for those of you with little or no navigational skills, which I suspect is most of you (those with navigational skills are no doubt reading the rather dry “Navigator’s Monthly” or “GPS Weekly”) the position -15degrees 46 minutes 40 seconds by 17 degrees 38 minutes 54 seconds equates with twenty four kilometers west of Home Valley Station on The Gibb River Road in Western Australia. For those of you with no map reading skills we are exactly in the middle of no-expletive-where.

But, not to worry we have sufficient supplies to last two or three days and I for one am confident a car will drive by in the next little while and perhaps even stop and ask if we need anything.

I have a simple plan, mostly because I am by nature simple. If a car stops, we can accept their generosity, offer them our last two zooper-doopers (frozen flavoured ice in plastic saved for just such an event) and while they are distracted by this excellent flavour treat we will bludgeon them about the head “pirate style” and commandeer their superior (read mobile) conveyance thus effecting our escape from -15degrees 46 minutes 40 seconds by 17 degrees 38 minutes 54 seconds.

By the way and on a culinary note the fridge has also had enough. Having tired of its boring day-to-day existence as a keeping things cold device, decided to become creative. Fridge (I call it “Fridge” not “the fridge” because it has a mind of it’s own now and therefore has achieved the status of a free thinking life form) has found that with the help of endless vibration it is able to loosen the lids on selected containers and with the aid of our constant motion blend them together in the butter container into a sort of milky, tomatoey, olivey compote with a red wine sauce.

So its milk, tomato, olive compote in a red wine sauce served in a butter container for tea tonight courtesy of “Chef Fridge” yum. I for one can’t wait. Pass the rum would you Jen!