An Eventful Trip

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Terry
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Joined: Mon Nov 01, 2010 6:53 pm

An Eventful Trip

Post by Terry » Mon Oct 03, 2011 10:21 pm

Here are a few hastily written notes about our last trip - Terry

An Eventful Trip

You might say this trip had a bit of everything about it, The Good, The Bad and the downright Ugly.
You’d think that a bloke like me who has been has been going bush for 35 years, would have things pretty well under control by now, that I would have gone past making careless stupid mistakes, but you’d be wrong.
This was a special trip as my wife was coming as well for the first time in some years, Val had prospected fulltime with me for about 10 years and those were the most enjoyable years of my prospecting life, so I was really looking forward to the three weeks or so we’d be away.
By now I was used to just packing for myself but this time had to re-access what I would pack which resulted in me leaving certain important items behind, more about that later.
On the way up to Kal I noticed that the caravan hubs were getting a little hot so instead of camping out bush a bit further on we spent the first night at a caravan park so I could check the bearings in comfort - turned out that the brake lining had gathered a bit of dust and were catching a little. Somehow in replacing the wheels one of them missed out on getting the final tightening of its wheel nuts.
80 klms. from Kal while doing about 90 we lost that wheel, for some reason the van didn’t roll and I managed to get it off the road with it running on the drum.
Then came the agonizing job of trying to jack the van up to put the spare on (the drum was still ok).
Fortunately I had two jacks but where we had got off the road, there was quite a steep slope so the van was parked at a fairly severe angle.
As the hub was resting on the ground the only way to get a jack under a spring was to dig it in, and the earth was like concrete.
I won’t give a ball by ball description of my struggles, but can tell you by the time (hours later) I got the axle up high enough to put the spare on, my hands and arms looked like they’d been stuck into a fish tank full of hungry Piranha’s, this the result of trying to work in the confined space. Meanwhile Val had located our wheel about a 100 meters from where it came off.
It was then that I discovered that the spare wheel nuts I carried were the wrong size, I had put a new axle on the van a couple of years before, so this meant a quick trip back to Kal.
We eventually made our first camp well after dark, and gladly collapsed into bed, next morning Val looked over the end of the bed as noticed she could see the ground through a split caused by the wheel crashing into to it when it came off.
That morning we did a little detecting and started to notice a lot of Budgies, far more than you usually see in this area. The reason being that it had been an exceptionably wet summer and winter so the country was very lush. We were a bit late for the main wild flowers but the Sturt Pea was in full bloom everywhere, which was perfect as one of the things we wanted to do this trip was take a few photos’.
Our next camp was at a lovely spot called Eucalyptus which is like an oasis in the middle of quite drab country. A couple of days there then off to a remote spot out from Murphies Well.
As we travelled towards this spot we saw vast areas of short Mulla Mulla’s (purple flowers)
and mile after mile of native grasses that resembled a ripening wheat crop, as well as flocks of thousands upon thousands of budgies. In all my years in this country I had never seen anything like it before, this area is usually fairly lifeless and barren with the odd blue bush the only thing growing.
We found a campsite and were soon set-up but noticed the wind was starting to really blow, fortunately we had the van parked almost end on to the wind. About then I noticed we had a puncture in the same Van wheel we’d had trouble with before, but by now the wind was screaming and a giant dust storm could be seen bearing down on us so we dived inside to ride it out.
It turned out to be the most severe wind storm up that way in living memory with winds in excess of 100 ks an hour a lot of damage was done throughout the general area, we felt that the van would tip and considered transferring to the cruiser but ended up riding it out where we were, the storm raged for hours but blew its self out that night.
Where we camped was in the middle of these vast areas of native grasses and we were being continually surrounded by these unbelievable flocks of Budgies.
I fixed the tyre and after a few days we moved on to Tin Dog Flats to finish our trip, it’s mulga country there and lot of the land is quite bare so the budgies flocks had shrunk to a mere trickle but we were entertained by several big Goanna’s, got some good snaps of them as well.
We continued to pick up a little gold everyday but nothing to get really excited about.
But the excitement wasn’t quite over yet, as we were leaving we ran into the Australasian Rally, we couldn’t believe it, as this is a really remote area on rough bush tracks. After nearly getting cleaned up a couple of times we managed to get off the track up near Mt Celia Well and had to cool our heals for three hours until they had all passed.
It was all downhill from then on, and so ended an eventful but enjoyable trip.
Oh I didn’t mention did I that I forgot the electric shower and also the backup solar one meaning it was bucket baths for the whole trip.

mummsie
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Joined: Thu Apr 14, 2011 11:33 am
Location: Tumut, NSW

Re: An Eventful Trip

Post by mummsie » Tue Oct 04, 2011 8:01 am

Hi Terry
Thank you for sharing your trip with us. Sounds like it was eventful in more ways than one. It seems no matter how prepared we are for these trips, we always manage to forget something [showers are up there with essentials for me] but we always make do. Looking forward to seeing lots of photos.

:D :D Happy prospecting.

Sue
the door is always open, the kettles always on, my shoulders here to cry on, i'll not judge who's right or wrong.

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Bob Pacey
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Re: An Eventful Trip

Post by Bob Pacey » Tue Oct 04, 2011 12:28 pm

So where was the trouble Terry? Sounds like a pretty normal trip to me !!!


Good one Mate. Yeah some pic would be great .

Bob
The purpose in life is to have fun.
After you grasp that everything else seems insignificant !!!

Neville Briggs
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Location: Here

Re: An Eventful Trip

Post by Neville Briggs » Tue Oct 04, 2011 1:20 pm

It's all a learning experience Terry, isn't it ?? ;) Good story.
Neville
" Prose is description, poetry is presence " Les Murray.

Heather

Re: An Eventful Trip

Post by Heather » Tue Oct 04, 2011 2:29 pm

Well you can't say life is boring Terry! :) Glad to see you are back safe and sound.

Heather :)

Terry
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Joined: Mon Nov 01, 2010 6:53 pm

Re: An Eventful Trip

Post by Terry » Wed Oct 05, 2011 10:21 am

Hi All,

Sue,
I don't know how to post photo's.
I checked up on the internet regarding that rally we got caught in the middle of, it's called the Australian (or Australasian) Safari. It started with 93 contestants and 67 made it to the finishing line including Craig Lownes who rolled his ute but managed to get going again.
If anyone's interested there quite a lot of footage on the net and you will get a bit of an idea of the country we were in, although you only really see the tracks they were on, rather than the best of that country.

Bob,
Yeah just a stroll in the park mate, and my wounds should be all healed before long.

Neville,
I could have written a book about the trip, it had a bit of everything.

Heather,
Never boring just a bit painful at times.

Cheers Terry

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