Up at about 6am after a solid eight hours sleep.
Nothing to do while waiting for the road to open at 9 am
except to finish day 2 blog courtesy of their free of charge wireless Internet.
By now there is getting to be quite a queue of
and a few of these as well
The guy with the twin freezer road train in the front was telling me that when it gets bad and he’s heading into a strong wind he gets 900metres to the litre!! He carries 2000litres of fuel on the prime mover and 3000litres in a belly tank under the first freezer trailer.
Still waiting at 10am . . .
Road opens as far as Warburton at 10:15.
That’s as far as the semi’s behind are going. They have a quarter of a transportable schoolroom each on four low loaders. But, as I happened to be eating a pie standing next to the fax when the clearance came in I was first on the road. On bitumen I have been travelling about 80-85 kph in two wheel drive. On the dirt I have been travelling in 4 wheel drive at about 80-85 kph when it is smooth and about 40-90kph when it is rough. It’s really weird . . . the seat is sprung and keeps bouncing up and down which keeps you from subluxating vertebrae but it means you can’t keep your foot in a constant position. In fact you can’t even keep it on the pedal when it gets bad. Just hang on and wait for it all to calm down. It’s 8pm now when I write this and my whole body is still “vibrating”!! I haven’t yet had the courage to start dropping tyre pressures but some of the rigs are running about 60psi down from 100psi in the rough stuff. However they have far more efficient compressors to pump up again when they need to – still takes an hour and a half on average! They also have multiple tyres on each of multiple axles so if one rolls off a rim they still have support in that corner. I only have one tyre on each corner and one spare while they tend to carry 4 spares on each trailer!
Any way, I figure I can get a bit of a start and keep ahead of these guys.
Fat chance. They do this for a living. They have a land cruiser out front and are all in contact on CB radio. They travel just far enough apart to avoid each others dust. The land cruiser is constantly calling road condition and where to position themselves on the road and they are travelling about 100kph. Even the freezer road train travelling solo is doing 90kph. It’s disconcerting when they call you up and say they will pass on the downwind side, ie the wrong side of the road, to keep you out of the dust. Very considerate but frightening as it will happen uphill, downhill, crest or curve regardless as the land cruiser can call oncoming traffic. Then one of them blows a tyre and they all stop and you know it’s going to happen all over again. I chose to pull up behind and have lunch while they fixed the tyre and let them stay ahead.
While doing this I nearly had a disaster; I noticed some water leaking out of the pump compartment. Thank goodness for learning the rule “always switch off the tanks and the pump while travelling”. A joint in the plumbing system had unthreaded itself and dropped off the hot water system
As it was all switched off only a small amount ran out of the pipes so not too bad. That wasn’t the near disaster; I had parked right over on the edge of the road where everything leaned strongly over that way. When I went into the bathroom to check on things I opened the drawer in the kitchen where I keep a few small tools handy and the bathroom door swung shut behind me and the drawer slid open alongside the door, and there I was trapped in the bathroom! Fortunately I heard it happening and swatted the door against the drawer before it went all the way. I just had enough room to get my hand through and work the draw back millimeter by millimeter and the door open by the same amount.
For the rest of the time I was in there I made sure it couldn’t happen again!
I am sure someone would have come along and banged on the side to see who was in there after couple of trips past but it could have been a long wait.
Enough embarrassment!
While I was stopped I noticed this alongside.
Further examination showed it to be a survey marker.
I’ll have to see if there is any information on it next time I get connected.
Otherwise it all looked pretty much like this
That’s the Warburton ranges in the distance coming into the Warburton Indigenous Community . . .
The worst bit of the road was 100metres away from the roadhouse!
I won’t dwell on Warburton but suffice it to say that I stayed about 1 minute after learning the road was now open, with caution warnings, for a further 235 km.
As it was now about 4pm I decided to look for a place to stop along the road for my first true camp out. There was this nice little outcropping with a parking allowed sign about 80km down the track.
The entry was a bit wet but I figured it should be OK. Main road and entry in . . .
You can see the wet entry . . .
Once in there it turns out there was even a nice shelter, seats and a barbeque pit.
and the camp
As you couldn’t drive to the top I decided on a quick walk to the top before dark.
So that’s it for today.
I’m told the road is OK until the Northern Territory border and then it goes all to hell!
Could be an interesting day tomorrow . . .
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