Awestralia

Welcome to the outback where anything and everything goes pear shaped.

West of Kununurra everything goes wild. The roads, the animals, everything.

We are north of the Gibb River Road heading for the Mitchell Plateau and after just one day we have destroyed a battery, a caravan door, three tyres and a headlight. All this before lunch.

As usual I exaggerate, the damage is spread between two vehicles. Although given fact that the nearest tyre shop is four hundred kilometres away we do anticipate the loss of at least one kidney to secure the supply of a couple of 285. 75.16 tyres. Whoops, there I go again exaggerating, one kidney equals a whole set of tyres in these parts. You know I must have told myself a million times, “don’t exaggerate”.

Anyway we are still trying to get to Mitchell Falls, probably the most remote waterfall that can be accessed by any sort of a road anywhere in Australia. The aborigines walked there for goodness sake, how hard can it be. I’ll tell you how hard, yesterday we had to drive through a crocodile infested river in the dark to get to our campsite and if that’s not bad enough the local cow population had chosen that particular time to go down and join the crocs for an evening drink. This made the river relatively congested once we turned up.

Damage to vehicles aside Australia is still Awetsralia.

Damage to date (us only):

Back window having been shattered by wayward rock. has now been replaced with a coreflute real estate sign courtesy of L J Hooker Mount Isa.
Headlight being unable to withstand the continuous hammering from countless corrugations gave up it’s position at the head of the car and was discovered dangling rather precariously by it’s electrical unbiblical cord on the bull-bar. Now gaffer taped in and looking relatively normal. The headlight protector no longer protects the headlight. Being fragmentized by accidentally closing hood of car on it after fixing the fallen out headlight (see above) it now forms part of the “Drysdale Landfill Project”.
Left indicator light having decided life is too restrictive being mounted to the front mudguard now spends much of its time away from its normal location. We pop it back in each night but by lunchtime it’s had enough and spends the afternoon swinging tenuously in the breeze by its wiring.
The little plastic dooby that holds caravan door closed and keeps dust out vanished into thin air letting a fair amount of dust inside caravan. By fair amount I mean an even coating over most things. Speaking of dust the amount of dust on the roads is actually decreasing. As we pass by, we collect a shovel full or so each day through little gaps in various car and caravan seals. We (read Jen) sweeps it up at the end of the day and we leave it at the next convenient campground.
The left rear tyre having pounded nearly every rock for the last thousand kilometres in search of one just the right shape and size, finally found its perfect rock. Having run over aforementioned rock the tyre then flew to bits and effectively recycled itself while still attached to car.
The right rear tyre seeing that the left rear had effectively retired decided on a redundancy package and expelled most of its air overnight. This left the tyre and myself a little deflated at sunrise.
Given the distance to the nearest tyre shop the happy go lucky owners of Drysdale Station can now afford that delightful little cottage in Tuscany they have being looking at on the net. But what the heck we’ve got two new tyres, much more useful than a cottage in Tuscanny.
A cupboard drawer is now secured by gaffer tape instead of drawer catch, which has gone the way of “the plastic dooby that holds the caravan door closed and stops the dust getting in”.

Gaffer tape is a much maligned and under rated product. I can confidently recommend gaffer tape to all potential travellers, as it now comprises a significant portion of both the car and caravan. Unfortunately we have run out so Jen had to fix her broken glasses with a Band-Aid. Very stylish but not up to gaffer tape standard.

Diesel fuel is now running (or dribbling) at two dollars and fourteen cents per litre. That’s eight dollars fifty six a gallon for our North American friends, almost as expensive as grain alcohol. This is damage to the bank account if you’re wondering why this information is in the damage to date section.
Rounding out the top ten as they say, is the brake pedal that requires two pushes to get the brakes to begin their designated function of stopping the four and a half plus tonnes of holiday happiness at selected and often critical moments. When we get to three or four pushes we may have to get more gaffer tape.

Ah………….memories.