Day 15 - Onto the Gary Junction Road. 4-5-16 554.4km

We are finally off.  We left Alice Springs at 7:00 AM.  We head to a Free Public Weighbridge to determine the weight of the vehicles and the vans.  Unfortunately we are only able to get the weight for the vehicles, but not the vans weight.

The car part arrive yesterday afternoon and Toyota fitted it then.  The part is not warrantied due to lift we had done.  SIGH. Michael will have a chat to  Durashock when we get back – apparently this is a very rare problem.

We are very worried, we have heard quite a few reports of a ‘rain event’ in the area (ie very heavy rain), coming Thursday, Friday and Saturday.  Unfortunately we are unable to determine exactly where.  There is talk of Uluru and the South West of The Northern Territory.  We have decided to take a chance and will either weather it out  - hehe, or come back if our road is unpassable.

Since we have had the fuse in the van replaced, the pressure fan no longer turns off when the engine of the car is turned off (it did before).  Tony had work done on his vehicle to ensure that his fan turns off – but it doesn’t.  this is quite an inconvenience and a very silly system.

This is beautiful wide open country.  Red soil, blue skies and the desert is covered in greenery. The West MacDonnell Ranges were impressive in the early morning light…….very little traffic in either direction.  The guys let the tyres down for the first time as soon as we turned off the bitumen onto the Papunya Road.  The red dirt of the road and surrounds ran across plains and then out of nowhere an impressive  mountain range would appear to the left or right, in some cases quite close to the roadside.

Stopped at Papunya for fuel – the store there is excellent…….he fuel cost starts to increase $1.10 in Alice Springs now $1/85 per litre.

Stopped at 2:00 for a break, there was a horrible grass like plant with dreadful thorns, they even stuck into thongs, quite painful to remove since they then stuck into fingers.

The Sturt’s Desert Rose is blooming along the roadway.

Arrived at Kintore for fuel, just prior to closing time, but we got stuck  behind a very large truck that was dumping rock down the middle of the road.  There is a lot of road construction going on. Tony and Jen were already there so arranged for the fuel pump to remain open till we arrived.

We passed the football ground which is bare red earth and the children were playing footy in bare feet. No wonder they make good footballers, they don’t have it easy.

Drove several kms down the road and found a campsite near a repeater tower.  Tony got bogged in the sand, it is now raining quite heavily.  He and Michael managed to get the car and van out and we settled down for the night.

 

 

Bummer, we open our caravan door to find that the top of the tap has fallen off, the TV swivel mounting bracket has banged against the wall and put small grooves in it and one of the cupboard/drawer locks has fallen out, a glass is broken in the drawer.  We are not happy with this van so far (they aren’t to blame for the glass), but this is supposed to be an off road van.  The chassis maybe strong, but the internal stuff isn’t.  Tony fixes the tap, after Michael had got out the required tools to complete the task.

The joys of off roading.

   It has been a big day covering a large distance 554 klm,   so its early to bed…..listening to the rain