Saturday, 20 July 2013 354.7kms
We rose with the sun and started to clean and pack up. We were ready first for once. On the road at 9:45am, with our first stop at a truck rest area for a cuppa and a bite to eat. Jo, Showy, Nath and I were standing near Al’s car when all of a sudden out of nowhere a whirly wind started on us. I realised that Al’s car door was open and ran around the other side of his car to shut it and try to hide away from the swirling red dust, to no avail. The 4 of us ducked and ran for cover, but couldn’t escape. We got hammered by the dirt. I was smart enough to put my face in my shirt and close my eyes in a bid to prevent the dust getting in them. It worked. And as quickly as it came, it was gone again. We burst out laughing realising that we had survived the most freakish thing to happen so far. There were people standing near their car at the other end of the rest area who watched the whole thing unfold and avoided the wind altogether. I looked back at our car to see that all of our doors were open, so whilst trying to save Al’s car, got my own full of dust. Bugger! Nathan took Elokin and Hendrix to a rusty old car left in the paddock. They had fun pretending to drive it.
We left our dusty stop and continued on the road at 12:15pm. We had another stop up the road and emptied our diesel jerry into the tank. Holly, Lochi and Ryleigh armed with a head light, cb and GoPro climbed into Trish and Al’s van to check out how badly or how well the mighty Jayco was handling the corrugations. They left ahead of us as we knew they would need to stop up the road to set the kids free. They survived saying that the ride was fun but really noisy. Nath fixed our cb aerial and we brought up the rear at 2:25pm.
We arrived at the Western Australia border at 3:30pm – now 2pm! After a photo with the sign, we continued up the road. We found a nice spot to camp about ½ hr later which is a long way off the road. On Al’s map it is marked as a quarry.
The kids played Nerf Gun wars including the big kid Nathan. We made a damper in the camp oven cooked over the fire we have lit. It turned out okay, a little bit black on the top, but tasted good all the same, especially drowned in butter. We will try less heat on the top next time.
Nachos were for dinner under the grill. Yum! I did manage to burn my hand making them. Doh! After dinner the kids played spotlight and had lots of fun running around in the dark. We then toasted marshmallows over the fire for dessert.
It has chilled down again this evening, but nowhere near as cold as last night. This morning there was a freezing wind blowing again. The sun was warm, but I still stayed in jeans, all day. The road was ok, although there were some terrible bits that saw us doing about 50km/hr, but most of the time we were sitting at 85kms/hr. The Carters and Hewitt-Williams saw a camel and emus, but were gone by the time we got to them. Next time…
Until next time…. Happy and Safe Travels.
