Day 166 21/5/14 – Dunham River Rest Area – Sullivans Creek Camp Ground (Gregory Nat’l Park) WA

We had been in the Kimberly’s for three weeks now and as much it is one of the best parts of Australia we felt we needed to make a break from it and get back on the path heading eastward. We were up and going pretty early, by our standards, but we were about one of the last out of the rest area.

As we were packing up I started chatting to the old bloke next to me. He had an Isuzu and I was going to change the fuel filter today and he looked like the kind of bloke who would work on his own vehicle. After about 3 or 4 minutes of chatting his wife came over with a somewhat desperate look on her face, I paused the conversation ready to hear a news flash like the poodle had just died chocking on a vita wheat. But he line was “Honey we had better get moving straight away as inside the van will be starting to heat up”. It took me a good couple of seconds to digest what I had just heard, here we were in the middle of some of the most beautiful country in the world and this old duck was concerned about the temperature inside their caravan! To his credit the old bloke hung around for at least another 40 seconds before heading back with his tail between his legs.

We headed off and continued to enjoy the amazing red rock escarpments peeling up from the plains around us. I really didn’t want to move on but we knew we had to, there was still Wyndham and the Lake Argyle etc to see but we were feeling stale. 150kms later we pulled into Kununurra and for the third time in two weeks we stocked up on the essentials as well as two new assets. 1. A 12v fan – yep, it is really warming up and the nights are staying warm and still........I was thinking of buying one and giving it to the cheery old duck in the paragraph above to relieve her stresses. 2. A camp oven. Whist we have one at home we really wanted to give one a try while we are on the road.

Before we rolled out I changed the fuel and air filter on Izzy. She has been working so hard I thought she deserved a bit of a reward for all of her efforts. The air filter was pretty grotty but the fuel filter had to be seen to be believed! If I had seen that much metal in the bottom of my pan at Sovereign Hill I could have retired on the spot! It was amazing the difference in driving Izzy after her freshen up, and the economy returned back to 7km/l....where it had slowly dwindled down to around the 6 mark or below.

Satisfied with our rations we headed east towards Katherine, the next major town a measly 500+kms away. It wasn’t long before we reached the border with the NT. We had been in WA since the 22/2, a day short of 3 months, and while we have loved our time here our wallets needed a break! We stopped for the traditional photo of the boys and De pushing the Izzy Gator all the way from WA to the NT and then drove on. Just up the road the boys were pretty excited to see the speed limit sign. Upon crossing an imaginary line it had changed from 100 to 130 km/hr! The boys began to badger me to get Izzy up to it but my ‘prudent’ self continued at the most efficient speed of around 95km/hr!

De and I have now been to all states and Territories in Australia with the boys just needing to ad Tassie to their list

 

We drove through some wonderful scenery eventually pulling up late in the afternoon in a small national park camp. The best part was that it was only $7 per night rather than the $25-$30/night we had been shelling out in WA. We got the camp fire burning and ‘conditioned’ our new camp oven ready for use.

Having a wife from NSW and living in QLD we regularly make the trip to Lennox Heads on the weekend to visit my favourite Mother in Law. The problem is the good folk in NSW haven’t figured out how to get out of bed early enough to enjoy ‘an extra hour’ of sunlight so we go through the torture of changing time zones a number of times each summer. At some point during the day I must have let out the laugh usually restricted to mad scientists as I decided to use my children as Guinea Pigs in a jet lag (or truck lag in this case) experiment. That afternoon we set up camp and had dinner on WA time and once the children were sound asleep we commenced the task of secretly changing all of their clocks. It seemed like a good idea until I realised how many time keeping items we have in our lives....watches x 4, tablets x 4, I things x 2, clocks x 2 , phones x 2, computers, radios...etc etc; a while later I was well and truly ready for bed!