Best laid plans come to waste

After a great nights sleep, we awoke at sunrise to the sound of surf and birdsong. Bursting with joy, I got up to make my morning brew to find a sky filled with clouds. Although I prefer blue skies, sunrise does look better with a few clouds.

Starting the day out right!

As I pottered about with my lovely brew, happy as I could be, I found the next adventure given to us by an old, beaten up car… a fucking slow puncture. I told a sleeping Becky the good news, that a lack of water was no longer our biggest problem.

New day, new adventures

As it was a slow puncture and we were on soft sand, I decided to pump the wheel up with our air compressor and drive to the salt flats, which had a harder surface for the jack, to change the wheel there. I got the compressor out, and one of the crocodile clips fell off… what a piece of shit! I’d bought it from 4wd supacentre, and as with all their stuff it was cheap and nasty. This day was turning out to be a doozy. After fiddling about I managed to get enough contact between the wire and the clip to get the thing working to pump the tyre. Before setting off I wanted to see how bad the puncture was, so we left it while we had breakfast and had a last wander on the beach.

Easy to forget your troubles here

Even with all the issues, it was difficult not to love this place. If fact the worst part was that we’d now miss the chance to have another day exploring the place, as it was quite remote and I didn’t fancy risking getting stranded without a spare.

We're sooo unlucky

Before driving off, I tested the tyre pressure, and it hadn’t lost anything. We headed towards the salt flats, with this section likely being the toughest test, as it was very soft sand. With our hearts in a mouth we powered through the first part, trying to keep the bounce to a minimum. It didn’t take long to get to the salt flats, and when I checked the tyre pressure there I found we had lost no pressure! I started to feel good about making it to town, or perhaps even the homestead, Hamelin Station Stay, where we planned to stay that night. Maybe, just maybe our luck would hold out.

At the end of the salt flats we’d lost no more air. Maybe the leak wasn’t a puncture, and maybe it was the valve, which I sort of tried to tighten when I took the tyre pressure. I decided we’d drive the 20km to the end of the sand tracks and if things were still ok, push on to our intended place of rest. WEH DUN, TOM, YOU DAFT TWAT!

A few kilometres down the single lane sand track we heard the tyre give its final swoosh. After laughing and swearing in equal measure, we started to try and work out a plan of action. Luckily, a few inches below the surface of soft sand was some solid ground. We cleared an area of sand next to a passing point a few meters away and reversed the car, but by doing this shredded the tyre beyond repair. I started to get the spare tyre off the roof, got out the jack and found the jack was missing an important piece used to raise it and had been replaced by a tent peg! This day was going brilliantly. After 5 or 10 minutes had passed a few cars approached, and in true Aussie fashion the offers of help started to come. Their help soon flipped to feeling like I was assisting them, such was their kindness and eagerness to lend a hand.

I think that's known as the "axel"

Realising that our jack was a bit shit, someone got his jack out and we got the car up and swopped with the spare. All the time this was going on, multiple cars went pass, and all asked if we needed extra help. Finally, the spare was on and we thanked those that helped. As I put the punctured tyre away, a bloke stopped and got out to check everything was ok. Aussies really are very big-hearted when it comes to people in trouble, especially in remote areas.

We exited the park without further problems, but once something happens your perception of risk changes. In 25 years of driving I have never had a puncture, but now we suddenly felt very vulnerable without a spare. It was the same with our engine fire, as rare as they are; it now seems like madness to drive without a fire extinguisher. We stopped for lunch by a nice lagoon and discussed what we should do next.

lunchtime views

It wasn’t just the lack of spare that had us shaken. The car had started to make a number of different noises over the last few weeks. There was a nasty rasping noise from around the exhaust manifold, an occasional clunk when turning at slow speeds, the oil leak seemed worse, and it would bunny hop when at slow speeds. Yes, we were feeling very vulnerable and visiting the remote Mt Augustus suddenly didn’t seem like such a good idea.

We arrived at Hamelin Station Stay and were given a small spot in their most secluded area. It was very busy, as it was two days before school holidays, families had started pulling their little angels out early, you know, to avoid the crowds and get the best spots. Despite this, it was a clean, well-maintained place, with good amenities and a large camp kitchen. The showers were fantastic, so we had no problem washing away the stains of a shit day.

Later that evening we took our instant noodles to the camp kitchen to make “dinner”. There were already several people in there cooking, so we took a corner and set up. The kitchen was full of young, trendy mums talking about how they are trying a new technique of decoupling from their little toddler, Foliage, and they’re doing a great job and he is loving the freedom to express himself and really growing into his skin, yeah. This was in stark contrast to the two families of classic Aussie bogans camped next to us, who we’d occasionally hear scream “JAYDON, YA FUCKIN IDIOT, PUT THAT DOWN. YOU’RE SUCH A DUMB FUCK”. Now that’s parenting I can understand.

It’d been a stressful day, so I had no problem falling asleep. That night we were awoken by a sound we hadn’t heard for over two months… the patter of rain against the tent. A perfect end to a perfect day.

The rain continued for most of the night, but luckily it had stopped by the morning. As we packed up slowly, I heard one of our bogan neighbours laughing at how the trendies, congregating around the kitchen again, had asked him about an electric solder iron he’d been using and seemed confused why he’d have one. I saw my chance and ran over to ask if he’d mind soldering the wire on my air compressor. He looked a little confused, said it was fine and asked if I knew how to use one. I said I’d taken a few classes in CDT (craft, design and technology) at school 30 years ago, so he said he’d help me out. I agreed, as I think I’d have probably burnt the kitchen down and killed all the trendies.  I tried to make small talk, but he wasn’t interested in chatting… I didn't care, as he fixed up my shit for free… First win of the day.

After breakfast we started trying to source some new tyres. After all our adventures the tyres had been starting look a little worse for wear, with chunks missing out of the tread. I had been considering changing them for a while, but felt I wanted to wait until Perth before making the call. With my hand forced we found a 4 for 3 deal on the interweb from a company in Gerladton. After calling them they told us they could have them ready for us tomorrow am. We found a potential place to stay, just outside of Geraldton, and headed off. 

As we drove towards Gerladton the weather really started to turn, with dark rain clouds filling the sky. We reached a place called Northampton and decided to stop for lunch. Getting out of the car in shorts and t-shirt we found that we’d somehow been transported to Northampton in the UK, ‘cause this weather was SHIIIT. It was probably 15 degrees, but it might as well have been snowing for how we were prepared. We decided to skip lunch and got straight back in the car. As we continued to Geraldton, Becky booked us into a Best Western… There is no way we were camping with the trifecta of shit weather, cold, wind and rain…. THIS AIN’T NORTHERN EUROPE.