Day 13

Day 13 Tom Price – 154k Nth of Manilya Road House

Lucky 13, did not realise it but looking back, it explains a lot. It started pretty ordinary but got very interesting and challenging before the day was done. Left Tom Price Caravan Park and headed off to

Dust from the muntain climb

Smoke bush

Parabadoo some 80 Ks South of Tom Price with the plan that we would head towards Exmouth and stop on the way. We left about 10:15 and wandered down the road. This area must have been mapped and named by the “unimaginative” survey group. In Tom Price they named the mount there Tom Price after the guy who wanted to dig it up, they obviously ran out of imagination as they then named a mountain, Mount Nameless, what the?? They could not come up with a name? on the way to Parabadoo we crossed a creek called Substantial Creek, well given it was too small to call a river and it was quite wide I suppose it is “substantial”, thanks captain obvious. You expected to see hills called Big Hill or Smaller Hill, then Bigger Hill, very disappointing.

Green Giant

Anyhow, got to Parabadoo and stopped there for a coffee as the shopping centre was closed, Sunday, Doh! - $16 dollars thank you. Went to the Green Giant outside of town, one of the original 17 Haulers for the local mine and drank our coffees. 

Lunch

We headed on down the road towards Nanutarra Road House and the wild flowers where everywhere and just beautiful. We decided to stop for lunch on the side of the road and got the chairs out. We could hear a tone coming from the van and looked in to turn off the power converter that we were using the other night. Maureen was not really hungry so whilst I sat and had my lunch, she wandered through the bush looking for flowers. We hit the road and continued our journey and this is where it got exciting. Going up a steep rise the car started to judder, I initially thought it was the cruise control but a quick look in the mirrors showed rubber going in all directions, we had a blow on the drivers’ side rear

wheel of the Van. Naturally it could not happen where there is a wide verge to pull off on, oh no, that would be too easy.

Flowers near our flat tyre

We pulled Trude (we decided to call the Pajero Trude as with Girt it made Girtrude!) over into the scrub, well unmowed verge, and stopped. It was time to test the years of subtle suggestions and describing tools and possible events, by the time I had gotten out and walked to the tyre, Maureen already had the wheel brace out and ready to undo nuts! The jack I had bought in Newman was retrieved from the van, Maureen had the spare wheel cover on the back of the van off and was tackling the nuts (the front spare was a better tyre, but is chained on with a padlock and I do not have the key! Another job to be done) so I had look at where we could put the jack. 

flower

Job Done

I sat on the ground (with me, I am either standing or lying on the ground) and with lots of grunting and a few observations about how hard the dirt was to dig a hole to get the jack into, we set it up. Pumping the poor bugger up was diabolical. It was under the axle and I had to reach in with no real purchase managed to lift it to its full height and enough room to get it off. Maureen jumped to it with the wheel brace and the special lug tool we had bought on the way to York as Jayco’s have inny nuts not outies, like belly buttons! Lugs where loosened old tyre was off, new tyre ready, I felt like part of Mark

 

Webber’s F1 team! The old tyre, instead of just losing the tread on the road like any normal elf respecting tyre decided to wrap itself around the hub! So again with a few observation about the wonders of steel belts and how sharp they have to be, we loosened it off. On went the new tyre, well the old spare, the new one is locked down as mentioned earlier, and on went the nuts, I almost expected to hear the whir of the wrench guns as Maureen tightened them up. Down went the jack, second tightening of the nuts and Presto! We were ready to go. Old tyre away, tools packed up Maureen ready with camera, just one tool left on the ground, me! Could not get up. All the effort left me with nothing to get up so with a few more observations about life in general and with my wife performing ladder duty, I was eventually back upright and ready for pictures. I should add that during this time 2 other cars did stop to offer help, but we were at stages where the hard work had been done and to be honest we were happy to work it through ourselves.

Photos done, it was back in Trude and off to Nanutarra Road House which was just 20 Ks further. Got 25 litres of fuel for $50 just to make sure we had enough and headed off to our planned stopover 65 Ks South. Made it with no problems and it is a lovely spot. With all the delays we got here at about 6:00 so it was getting dark. First things first, got out chairs and wine and had a drink! Got in the van, turn on the light, no power, the switch for the Anderson plug ( the one that connects the car battery to the caravan had not been turned on and the power converter we had turned off on the day at lunchtime had flattened the battery. Quick flick of the switch and hey presto, light. Another crisis averted but again only for a short while as we did not want to flatten the car battery, ran the car for 10 minutes and put some charge back into the battery and disconnected the Anderson. We have the lantern out for light and the hot water warming so we will keep the power for the pressure pump for our hot showers! Life is tough at the bottom rung.

As we were setting up Girt, we had made the comment that we had not seen any black cows as in the warning signs but only red ones, and low (no pun intended) and behold, a cow runs past us and through all the vans!

We have had tea, a lovely concoction of chicken and soup and vegies, doing the blog, reading the paper and relaxing before we shower, the only down side is the bugs that arrived before we could shut the door, but hey we are in the wild. YOLO