Kms so far: 28500 ish
When you travel, things often go wrong. I like to think I’m pretty philosophical at these times, and look for the positives when all your plans have gone out of several windows, down about 12 stories and have subsequently been run over by a garbage truck. For example, last year I was in the Gulf of Carpentaria on my motorbike and rocked up at a road house, out of petrol. That is, the roadhouse was out of petrol... for several days! On the up, I met some interesting people and had a great mixed grill from the diner. However, as I write this it would be fair to say our plans have indeed gone under the garbage truck tyres on the street many floors below the window. And I am sincerely struggling to look on the goddam bright side.
We’ve killed another two tyres, both on the Nathan River Road between Roper Bar and Boorollola. The first was around here:
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The second was a little further south on the same road. Each time, the tyre has been irreparably damaged, the second quite spectacularly so:
After some more tyre off the wheel antics by yours truly, we got under way again only to experience a new and exciting hurdle to our progress... enter stage left Engine-cutting-out-at-random!
We were a little concerned about a reluctance to start that the car had developed in Katherine gorge, but once we got it running after a few seconds of cranking, it ran like it usually does. I had made a mental note to change the fuel filter and give the fuel sedimenter a once over when we got to the east coast. Not to be, unfortunately... less than 600 kms later the engine lost power and cut out when Lauren was driving.
Now, the tyre issues weren’t a big deal as although each flat was a hassle, with time and effort we could sort them out. The engine cutty outy thing was a big deal though as I couldn’t work out what was going on. I drained the sedimenter, checked out the fuel filter and ensured it was flowing fuel, bled air out of the fuel system at the back of the injector pump, and checked the fuel lines for holes from stone damage but could not find any fault. The initial bleeding of the fuel system got us up and going, only to have the engine cut out about 50 kms later on. The next day the thing was hard to start and once going it wouldn’t rev and cut out several times before it ran smoothly. Things were seriously tense- we were still a good 60 kms from the next person, let alone any form of civilisation!
We did manage to make it out to the Cape Crawford roadhouse, where I hoped that a fresh tank of fuel may sort out the issue (my thinking was that we may have had a dodgy tank of fuel from the last service station), but no cigar. The car was hard to start about 200 kms further on, and then cut out at the next Roadhouse.
By this stage it had become clear that we were out of danger- we were back on sealed roads with a reasonable amout of traffic on them. So we headed for Camooweal, just across the border in Queensland. This was the biggest town around, so we figured new tyres and diesel mechanics would be in abundance there. Not so, unfortunately... there was two service stations, two pubs and about 600 people in the town! So we stayed the night, had awful food from the pub, lots of beer, spoke to a looser Qantas captain who wouldn’t stop bragging about how much cash he had (he was travelling alone... and looked as though this was something he did a lot...) and set off for Mount Isa the next day.
The car gave up about 100 metres from the Caravan Park that we are camped in here in Isa. This was on Monday morning when we were headed to the mechanics! I tried bleeding the fuel system again without any luck, so we called the RACV and shed the odd tear as Lauper got loaded on to the back of the tow truck.
The mechanic now knows what is wrong with the car (the fuel sedimenter is completely blocked and needs replacing) and its going to be about $700 bucks once the new one comes in and is fitted! ARGH! This sucks, obviously, but the biggest thing that I am struggling to deal with is sitting on my arse in Mt Isa. It took us a couple of hours to see all the attractions that Isa has to offer and I cannot recommend any of them to you. The beer is cheap in the bars, but that is about it. So we’ve now had two days of doing nothing, and are facing another day and a half of the same- we can’t get tyres till Friday morning.
The other thing that sucks heavily is that we missed out on going to Lawn Hill National Park (near Camooweal) and don’t think that we can afford/have time to backtrack and check it out. Lawn Hill is supposed to be one of the most spectacular places in Queensland. Bummer.
So we’re bored, poor, and stuck in a mining town. We can’t even really justify going to the pub and getting drunk due to the expense and total lack of anything vegetarian anywhere near a menu around here. But still, it beats going to work I guess. Sucks to be you guys.
BTW: I've uploaded a whole lot of pics onto flickr.
I've also removed the (broken) Flickr plugin from this page.
