Good Morning Bungle
Bungles!
Low 15°c (59°F) – High 33°c
(91°F)
Not up to catch the very first light this morning, but early
enough for a half decent sunrise. Both
still a little disillusioned about our day yesterday we hadn’t packed anything
away last night and so faced a full workout this morning including the awning,
dog pens, chairs and floor. Despite a
rough plan to get away around 8.30am we were hooked up, lights checked and ready
to go just before 8.30am. The park has a
couple of really excessively high speed bumps at the entrance to the park and
on one of them we bottomed out dragging the draw bar over the rise which
thankfully although high was only compacted soil and not cement.
After turning onto the highway and expressing our
disappointment yet again as we passed by a nice looking freecamp across the
road, I happened to glance in the rear view mirror to see that the lights on
the caravan were no longer illuminated.
With quite steep sides to the road and nowhere to pull over it was a
little way before I could get the van off the road to make sure the light plug
was still connected. It was and there
seemed no obvious fault but the lights were not working which also meant no
power to the fridge. Remembering the
incident with the van lights at Katherine which seemed to be instigated by
bottoming out over the gutter at the caravan park we also checked the fuse but
it seemed fine. So now what!
We had no choice but to continue on to Halls Creek in the
hope of finding someone who could take a look at it – all the while being
conscious (read here paranoid) about the fact that I had no indicators and no
brake lights. Not a problem if you have
no traffic behind you but get to a town and want to turn a corner – well that’s
a different story.
It’s amazing how stress can affect you and both of us,
feeling the stress of yet another issue we couldn’t resolve ourselves, found it
difficult find the beauty in the landscape despite it being there right in
front of us without having to make a conscious effort to see it. But there was definitely beauty and the
landscape changed from the East Kimberley ranges to more gently sloping hills
and rocky outcrops not dissimilar (but not quite as round) to the Karlu Karlu (Devils
Marbles). The colours were rich and
mingled with green grass. A lot of cloud
around today with some really unusual and diverse cloud cover but still warm.
To add to the worry of the lights I think we were both
thinking “of all places to have to stop – Halls Creek!” which has unfortunately
developed a fairly tarnished reputation particularly over the last few years
for youth vandalism and violence. It’s
not what you know but who you know though – right? And given we knew someone who used to live
there we put in a call for a recommendation of where to go.
On arrival, around 9.30am we located said Auto Electrician’s
business only to find there was no-one there.
We waited a while and as a young Aboriginal man was walking down the
footpath I asked him if he knew when the business might be open. He said they were usually there by 9.30 or
sometimes by 10.00 or sometimes they didn’t turn up at all. Awesome!
Fast forward about 2 hours after we’ve visited the only other place that
does car repairs (sorry I can’t help you at all), refueled, phoned the police,
visited the local Council office (which ironically I almost applied for a job
there quite a few years ago) and tried in vain to fix the issue ourselves – we were
left with our only option – to continue on and hope that somewhere along the
road we could find someone who could help.
Our original plan was to freecamp tonight at one of the
really lovely camps along the highway.
As we passed them (and some of them looked super) we continued on 396km
later ending at Fitzroy Crossing which we had planned to reach the night after –
yet again a day ahead of schedule but not really in a good way. During the drive we had made contact with a
repairer who would be able to take a look at the issue tomorrow. It’s the best we could do for now. Somewhere along the road we stopped to make
lunch, have a coffee and a bit of a break.
We pulled in to Fitzroy River Lodge well after 3.00pm – not just
a little exhausted. The park is enormous
and by comparison with the available sites it would be barely 20% full. Thankfully it was a gorgeous spot and we
could take our pick where we set up. The
weather was perfect, warm but not too hot, a gorgeous sunset on show, and we
spent hours sitting outside talking, listening to the enormous amount of birds
in the trees, and relaxing (and me catching up on photos to include here). As I write this – it’s 9.15pm – 22.5°c and we
are still sitting outside, it’s warm, there are thankfully no mosquitoes and it
is so peaceful. We’ve even seen a few
kangaroos hopping through the park. Just
what we needed to unwind from a very stressful day.
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