Disaster Day

What a <expletive deleted> day we’ve had, two days really. Yesterday evening we discovered that we couldn’t free camp in the section we  wanted to, so had to pay to stay at Ellenbrae station. It was quite a nice station, but only had one toilet and shower for everyone. This would have been fine except that they were kind of in the same room with only a shower curtain in between them, and one outer door, so if someone was in the shower and had shut the outer door you just had to wait. The downer upon arriving was the discovery that our water tank had emptied AGAIN, the rocks of the <expletive deleted> Gibb River Road had cracked the pipe connecter AGAIN. Luckily Nick now has spares, and we have 2 jerry cans of emergency water in the car – which we filled up in Hamilton and haven’t had to use yet! So we have been drinking Ballyglunin bore water today in the Kimberley.

Today we set off again to get our first (and hopefully only) flat tyre of the trip. We’ve been criticising the Tyre Dog Tyre Pressure Monitors that we bought because the caps on the trailer keep getting cracked, I suppose by rocks, so those ones aren’t working, but luckily the flat came on a tyre that still has a working tyre dog on it (we’re down to 3 now) so we found out straight away by the monitor beeping inside the car. This means that we got it early enough that the tyre isn’t completely trashed and we can now attempt to plug it (maybe tomorrow). It took us a while to change it but it all went pretty smoothly, and we had a nice sandwich by a waterhole, made it to an amazing lookout and luckily I got phone reception and jane called for a chat, which meant that we hung around long enough for some Victorians to drive up and ask if we were missing any tent poles, as they’d seen a whole lot strung out along the road from the way we’d come. It turns out that one of our pole tube caps had come off, probably this morning, and so we had to then slowly drive 40k backwards (on the corrugations, the rocks etc etc), looking out for poles and picking them up as we went. We almost found them all and gave up after that distance, as we had enough to get by with spares. Whether they will actually be usable because some are pretty bent is another story. I couldn’t believe that one of them, probably the hardest to replace being so short, was actually still in the tube! The good news is that we’ve caught up with the Ralhs and have met up tonight, which has helped to cheer me up – they very kindly shared their dinner with us as we arrived so late, even though they’re on their last dregs of their food boxes. Also hearing other people’s stories at this camp ground, Home Valley Station, has put ours in perspective – it seems like pretty much everyone has got a flat on the way here, one family got two, with only one spare tyre, so they had to beg passersby for either their spare or a lift into Home Valley (as it was getting dark) to beg for one from here. I can see why people tend to stay at this station for a few days to recover – it’s got a flash pool, bar area with music playing, nice showers, cheap washing machines etc etc etc. Tomorrow is another day….

Conor’s more forgiving journal entry for today reads:

Today we are going to leave Ellenbrae Station, so off we went, packing up the tent as usual, then we left the campsite (we were the last ones because everyone had left), and drove drove drobve until we stopped on the side of the road! Me and Daniel had no idea what was up until we got out of the car and had a look then we realised we had a flat tyre!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! After we spent a while fixing it, we were off again! Then we went to this place that had a stream near it and had lunch, then we drove off. We ended up on this lookout that let us see for hundreds of miles all around! Then this person walked up to us and said ‘I think you have lost some tent poles’ so we went round to see and so we had! There was our tube with no poles! No lid! Nothing in it!!! We had to drive back metre after metre to get them all!!! Today just is not our day!!!