DAY 8 – PORT LINCOLN – COFFIN BAY NATIONAL PARK

What a great day as the picture shows.

I went to see my friendly Land Rover dealer first thing this morning who agreed that the problem is the right front air bag, not the compressor which has been replaced twice and has ordered the parts which will arrive on Monday so the schedule is being rearranged slightly but this is a great place to have to spend a few days.

He was very entertaining in that he was asking me whether, when I spoke to my local Land Rover dealer about the maintenance of the car, whether I got to speak to the mechanic or only spoke to “a man in a suit”. He was not very complementary about dealership service advisers.

We then went to the local seafood processing centre where we obtained some very appetising looking prawns and snapper for tea. It was a supermarket of fresh seafood and we will be back there tomorrow. They had small fish which looked remarkably like pilchards but which were labelled sardines. We later saw them being “vacuumed” off the boat as the picture shows.

For lunch, we went to Coffin Bay where we enjoyed fresh local oysters in the very extensive Coffin Bay National Park. It is spectacular but unfortunately we couldn’t enjoy what I expect would be a highlight in that some of the tracks head out over substantial sand dunes but I doubt very much that the dodgy suspension could handle it and extracting a Range Rover with collapsed suspension from a sand dune would not be pretty.

I have succumbed to temptation and have booked a dive with the Great Whites on Sunday. Hopefully they will turn up. If they do, I expect to get some pretty spectacular photos. The weather forecast is looking good.

Tomorrow we will be checking out another nearby National Park. It also has spectacular sand dune driving. Will I be tempted? We’ll see.

Day 7 – PORT LINCOLN - END OF WEEK ONE

There is some very substantial machinery in use around here.

And what an eventful week it has been. After I sent last night’s blog, a kind person passing by mentioned that one of our car tyres was completely flat, and it was. The spare that I had put on after I had destroyed the tyre (and the jack) was no longer inflated. That was a complete mystery given that the spare was a new tyre that had not received any of the punishment the other tyres received so I had two jobs for the tyre man this morning. Fortunately I was able to pump it up and it remained inflated for the short drive to his workshop.

It turned out that it had a crack in it which he was able to fix and the new tyre arrived on schedule so we are now retyred and good to go in that respect. I learnt a lot about life in Port Augusta waiting for tyres to be fixed.

This afternoon, we drove to Port Lincoln where we now are. The suspension collapsed twice en route but restored itself each time and we made it to the local Land Rover dealer just before closing time. Needless to say, he asked that we come back tomorrow. If you can imagine your normal land Rover dealer with an opulent showroom and prestige cars on display, the Port Lincoln dealership is nothing like that. It is basically a big shed with cars everywhere, a couple of them new, a very untidy office off to one side, manned by one person who appears to be the dealer principal, salesman and mechanic and who seemed completely uninterested in what Southport Land Rover had tried to tell him about the service history of the car. Tomorrow will be interesting but, if we have to spend a few days here, it appears that there will be plenty to see and do.

How did they get this so far from the water?

I suspect that they are not the same pelicans I photographed at Macquarie Marshes.

We preferred our camp site in the bush but we need to be in town to access Land Rover.

Fortunately the neighbours, mainly Queenslanders, are quite nice.





It needs to be mentioned that Port Lincoln describes itself as the seafood capital of Australia but, by the time we set up camp and went looking for some seafood for tea, everything was closed so we had sausages instead. We intend to make up for it tomorrow night.

DAY 6 (I THINK) - PORT AUGUSTA

Fortunately, today didn’t bring any fresh excitement. We are comfortably set up in a row of caravans on the Big 4 Caravan Park at Port Augusta having spent the day doing domestic chores like shopping and washing.

We received some disappointing news when we got back into phone range in that Tricia’s father has been admitted to hospital and may need to be relocated into a facility which can provide him with a higher level of care.

When we arrived at Port Augusta, I set about the process of finding someone who knew something about air suspension but, of course, nobody here knows anything about it but I did discover that there is a Land Rover dealer in Port Lincoln, 300 kms south of here. It’s a slight detour on our intended route but will enable us to see some country we would not have otherwise seen. That’s where one can dive in a cage with the great whites but I’ll give that a miss. I prefer to dive with sharks without a cage.

I have spoken to Land Rover Southport and Land Rover Port Lincoln who have in turn spoken to each other so hopefully, by the time we get there tomorrow, they will have worked out how to fix it (not). The good news is that the car behaves perfectly on the highway. It’s only in challenging situations (which it is supposedly designed to deal with) that it fails.

I scoured the tyre outlets here before finally finding one who could supply a tyre of the unique size that the Range Rover needs. It will be available tomorrow so that is at least under control.

I haven’t taken a single photo today so I have added a few of the previous days shots to add some interest.

Time for that medicinal glass of wine one has to have after yet another stressful day.

DAY 5 – FLINDERS RANGES

What an exciting day. It started really well when after a lazy start, we headed up the main track on the property to Mt. Arden, the highest point in this locality at 750 metres from which the lakes to the west and Wilpena Pound to the north can be seen. The track up was interesting and challenging but not too difficult and, as you know, I was able to post yesterday’s blog from there and ring John to confirm that he was back in Australia and that his health issues were under control.

But the day went downhill from there in every respect. The “difficult” track down was even more exciting than the track up and very rough. It was one of those tracks where you feel as if you were driving down steps which was fine until a red light and warning appeared on the dashboard telling me I had a suspension problem and the car went into limp home mode which means that the suspension lowers itself to the lowest setting. That’s fine on a bitumen road but doesn’t work on a steep rocky trail needing every bit of ground clearance. Fortunately it seemed to work at least partially after a bit of a rest and, by putting some well placed rocks in some of the bigger holes, we made it back to camp.

The suspension has been playing up and Land Rover have had two attempts to fix it under warranty but I suspect they haven’t found the problem yet. It works fine around town but, put it under a bit of pressure and, whatever the fault is, it manifests itself again.

After lunch we went exploring the nearby attractions and guess what, the red light came on again as we were driving along the road. What I didn’t immediately realize was that I had a flat tyre which I suspect was the cause of the red light this time but, because I was focussed on the faulty suspension, I didn’t realize that the tyre was flat until I had destroyed it. I suspect I probably pinched or punctured the tyre on the steep rocky track and didn’t notice that it was slowly deflating.

You would think that was enough adventures for one day but the worst was yet to come. The car was on a flat dirt road. The transmission was in park. The parking brake was on and guess what, just as I was about to put the spare tyre on, the car moved. Fortunately it didn’t come off the jack but it twisted the jack enough that I couldn’t wind it up or down and the car was not high enough to get the spare tyre on Next time I will chock the wheels. Time to get out the satellite phone and call for help. Fortunately a passing good samaritan used his jack to raise the car so I could get the tyre on and get the twisted jack out.

What a fun day but a good day to have those hassles because we are in no hurry to go anywhere.

So, tomorrow’s activity is to go to Port Augusta which is fortunately not far from here, get the suspension looked at and, hopefully this time fixed, and buy a new tyre and jack. Perhaps we will be spending more time in Port Augusta than planned. I expect that’s where I will be sending this blog from, hopefully with photos.

But as I sit here typing this, watching one of the local wallabies grazing just below our camp, enjoying a glass of wine, life couldn’t be better.

What excitement will tomorrow bring?

FLINDERS RANGES

There is only one photo with this blog because, although I am typing it as we sit in our deeply secluded camp site in the foothills of the Flinders ranges at Argadells Bush retreat in South Australia, there is no phone reception so I can’t get internet.

I am hoping to upload this blog tomorrow when we attack the bush tracks on the property to get to the top of Mt. Arden where the views are apparently spectacular and phone reception is available but I won’t want to hang around there while I download multiple photos.

We intend to stay here two or three nights and check out the southern Flinders Ranges. We have explored the northern Flinders ranges on two previous occasions but have not previously been this far south.

Our poor caravan faced a few challenges on the internal tracks to get to our camp site but it made it in so I am fairly confident it will make it out. As I said to the lady at the homestead, it has some off road capacity but I didn’t appreciate that the tracks to the camp sites would be as exciting as they are.

We spent a leisurely morning exploring more of the Menindee lakes. There is an incredible amount of water trapped by the lakes and all of it comes down the Darling. Hopefully enough is being released from the lakes to keep the river healthy downstream.

Obviously we spent the rest of the day in the car to get here. The cruise control got a serious work out and again, we successfully managed to avoid the goats, emus and, to a lesser extent, kangaroos, which like to frequent the roadside.

Our only disappointment of the day was the necessity to throw out some fruit. There is a fruit fly exclusion zone that we are now in and the trip planner and the providor didn’t quite compare notes but we have done our bit for the exclusion of fruit fly from south western NSW and SA.

I’m not sure when I will get to post the next blog but watch this space.

Michael

P.S. Given that you are reading this, we obviously got to the top of Mt. Arden - very steep tracks but spectacular views as anticipated.

MENINDEE LAKES

Another travelling day today. We covered approximately 700 kms and are now at Menindee Caravan Park on the bank of Lake Menindee approximately 100kms south east of Broken Hill. Unfortunately, it’s not as peaceful as the last two nights in that we have swapped the very peaceful Birding Club for hordes of running noisy kids enjoying their Easter break but the sunset aspect over the lake was spectacular. How many places are there in inland Australia where you can watch the sun set over endless water? Not many.

To further detract from the tranquility, somebody has set off some lakeside fireworks and the dogs are going off.

When we were last here, the lake was completely dry. It now stretches further than the eye can see and the Darling is running strongly as the photo shows.

One side effect of all the water is the prolific birdlife. Apart from the pelicans and cormorants ambushing fish as they came through the weir in the fast flowing water, there were a substantial number sitting in the dead trees on the edge of the lake. It is an unusual sight seeing pelicans sitting in trees but they can obviously do it.

The intrepid bird watcher.

Tomorrow we expect to be in the southern Flinders Ranges in South Australia. Our plan is to spend a few days there and, from now on,  to maintain a more leisurely pace. 

I don't know whether we will have internet access there so, if things go quiet for a few days, you will know we didn't.

EN ROUTE TO WESTERN AUSTRALIA

The blog is back. It has been inactive since Easter 2012 when we were in Cambodia for the Moro wedding. It was going to be reactivated for Canada/Alaska last August but tragically, we lost Nicholas and that trip didn’t happen.

We are celebrating my birthday very quietly at Willie’s Retreat in the Macquarie Marshes south east of Bourke, a quaint camp ground on a former sheep station which is now the camping area from which one can access the nature reserve protecting the wetlands. The main group here are the Hunter Valley Bird Watching Club. We now know that the area is well known for its bird life.

Yesterday was a very productive driving day, getting as much distance behind us as we could, most of it through familiar country. After tomorrow night which we plan to spend at Menindee Lakes, we will be in territory we have never visited before. After Menindee, our plan is to go via Broken Hill to the southern Flinders ranges for a few nights, then on to the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia, before heading west across the Nullabor.

The locals are very friendly.

The mighty Macquarie River. Obviously it has to start somewhere.

Our next appointment is late May on the Gold Coast.