As a matter of fact, we managed to break one of our rear coil springs and not notice it for over 1500kms. We had originally purchased aftermarket heavy duty suspensions to master exactly this part of our journey – the Gibb River Road with its famous “deadly” corrugations. Well, we did, and even drove all the way back to Broome including some extreme 4WD tracks in El Questro (Bronco’s Lookout), and some bumpy dirt tracks to the Bungle Bungles. All we wanted, when the car started to make some uneasy noises, was to get back in time to Windjana Gorge and attend the Jandamarra theatre play for which we had purchased tickets weeks before, and which was intended to terminate our Kimberley aboriginal culture tour in style.
The start of a rattling noise on the fuel tank at El Questro instantly reminded me of a previous incident way back at the beginning of the Kimberley trip where we almost lost the bash plate of one of our fuel tanks. Looking under the car, it was clear that the bash plates once again had lost their strength. I fixed the plates with some cable ties and tape, after squeezing in some neoprene and hoped this would do the job over the next 1200kms, if we kept driving gently over the dirt tracks. They did and we also did make it to the dearly sought after Jandamarra play in style.
The day after the play, we finally went to see a mechanic in Derby and arrange another welding job on the bash plates. That evening when the bash plates remained in the workshop, we drove off to a nearby campsite and noticed that the clonky sound onto the fuel tank hadn’t backed off. This was the alarm that something else wasn’t in order. It turned out to be the noise of a coil spring broken into two halves and rubbing against some other parts that made the fuel tank sing in concert. Definitely no good sound for us to mindlessly continue our journey. We had to see a good 4WD mechanic in Broome. In this marvellous spot at the end of the world, which for many people is paradise on Earth, we ended up waiting 2 weeks until we were set free to continue our journey with a safe car again.
Lucky the parts were still under 12 months warranty and our provider in Sydney kindly shipped replacement parts immediately after receiving the official diagnosis from our mechanic in Broome, which also included a full new set of tyres (the old ones had overly suffered an out-of whack suspension) and replacement of a leaking CV boot. Obviously, the 10,000kms of dirt tracks since Sydney have taken their toll on the car…
We ended up facing that fact that we had to wait in Broome for our working horse to get fit again… Not so hard actually – first of all because Broome finally had that kind of weather we missed throughout the previous three months (31 degrees C max and 15 degrees C min), second because Broome was a dream destination in itself with its beautiful swim beaches, awesome coloured skies, great pubs and original restaurants, and third because we had the chance to catch up several times with our dear friend Oskar who had been in charge of being our local emergency contact while we were travelling through the Northern Territory and Western Australia. Besides him being a great adventure endurance athlete, he has also become a great fisherman - one evening he gave us an aweseome treat of self-caught fish on the barbeque (not to leave out the yummie pizzas a few days later...).
Before definitely leaving Broome, we did a test of the new kit on our car by driving some beautiful sand tracks on the Dampier Peninsula all the way to Cape Leveque. Half way up we passed a road block which was initiated by activists trying to stop the development of one of world’s largest on-shore gas processing facilities to be built near James Price Point. This is where we learnt why so many Broome locals had banners hanging in front of their homes asking the multinationals and the WA government to back off from this environmentally and socially non-sensitive project. Latest news updates of this urgent action to save the Kimberley coast and one of the world’s last untouched wilderness areas can be read on the Save The Kimberley Website. We were so fortunate to experience the beauty of the region in a nearly pristine condition. However, we also do understand that there will be a huge demand for natural gas in the future. The question is whether there could be other ways to tap into these resources, such as by creating a self-contained offshore facility by which the risk of destroying coastal habitats could be reduced?
Thanks to the extended stay around Broome, we had the opportunity to observe the monthly re-occuring phenomenon of the Stairway to the Moon. Nothing spectacular in itself, wasn’t it for the thousands of tourists all gathering on the once spot near Town Beach and disturbing each-others photographic exercises with their automatic flash… We managed to escape the crowd by walking out to the mud-flats where we discovered some strange microorganisms that released fluorescent light as we were walking over them. Imagine what the kids felt more excited about… For a moment, we even forgot about the sand flies. Oh, and there was also the famous sunrise project by a kind neighbour in our campsite. He invited me to ride out to Cable Beach on the back of his hired tandem. After 12 kms one way over rather hard sand (it was low tide and the ocean had moved out hundreds of meters to release a huge beach just for us alone), we caught a flat tyre, but found out that we had no pump. As my companion had to rush back to catch his plane back to Melbourne, the only solution I found, was to push the bike and jog back. The other guy was more clever than me - or perhaps he really didn’t feel like running for more than an hour. So what we ended up doing, was taking off a rusty back wheel of another mountainbike which was hanging off the end of a frenchman’s 4WD that was parked just next to where our little incident happened. We found one gear that worked, didn’t care about the brakes that didn’t fit any more, and comfortably continued our journey into a new day on Cable Beach… There are some pics of this and our other adventures in Broome – click on this link to the flickr photo set of Broome and the Dampier Peninsula.
Coming back to our car, the mechanics seem to be all fine again, except for the front shock absorbers which accourding to the mechanics also have reached their end of life. As they are still under warranty, they will need to carry us to the next Opposite Lock shop in Perth for inspection and hopefully a decent replacement by the original provider. This, unless the urgently required vehicle safety inspection will let the car fail because of the shockies… Now this is another story which yet awaits resolution: the NSW registration of our car number plates needs to be renewed by the end of this month. Unfortunately, a simple online registration renewal is not possible this particular time: a vehicle safety inspection has been required due to the age of the vehicle. I first thought I could get around this by arranging an early transfer of registration to WA. However, there is a complication due to a clause in the regulation that says I have to do a full vehicle inspection to get WA number plates because I haven’t been the owner of the car for more than 12 months… Now all this wouldn’t really be a problem, unless those very few mechanical workshops in the area that are licenced by the government to do these inspections hadn’t already had fully overbooked schedules and can’t meet the urgent needs of a leisurely travelling family… On this note, I am a bit concerned that the car might fail anyway – not only due to the front shock absorbers, but perhaps also due to the fact, that the car seats are not currently in factory order… we’d ripped out the left seat of the middle row to fit the fridge and other stuff, just to have some more storage space for nappies, kitesurfing gear, the books I never have time to read… Bugger! We might be stuck for a longer period of time once again, hopefully we will at least have made it to Exmouth by the end of the month. I would not want to be stuck in Port Hedland or another of those mining ghettos…
Should I say NO WORRIES? Well, probably yes - even if this spooky month of August appears to be overshadowed by car issues… Anyway, all I can finally do, is wait and bet the whole family for patience… after having checked all possible options and made phone calls to all imaginable numbers that might be of help. At least we did have a little budget aside for unexpected car incidents. As for the time budget, it may be obvious to you, that we won’t reach Perth by the end of the month to pick up work in September again. We felt we needed some holidays, and hope to be able to start spending some really relaxing time once we get to Exmouth. We’ll probably need 6 weeks from there to get to Perth…
Anyway, hope next month will be better, wind will be there, and happy kitesurfing will be the key subject, besides the constant call to raise (Anh-Dao said it was rather educate - as the growing seems to happen automatically) the kids and make them happy, too ;-)
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