Off again

I had a few requests to start up the blog again seeing as I was on the road and not doing anything! So here it is. I’ll begin (fittingly) with a tropical cyclone story. We had set a date a long time before to leave Perth on 15 March and suddenly on 12 March TC Olwyn looms up on the scene with the chance of delaying our start as it moved down over the south of the state. As it was Olwyn moved past and weakened on the Saturday (14^th) and we happily set sail on the Sunday (not much of a story really but there you go, it’s early yet). However it did produce some dust-settling rain and cooler weather for our travel.

Roadside lunch stop.

Kinda quiet at the Carabin Pub

We made for the little town of Southern Cross which is 380 km from Perth on the road to Kalgoorlie and the Goldfields. Maureen’s sister Noeline had lived in various towns in the area when husband Mike was a teacher so it was a bit of a nostalgia tour, remembering different places – and we just had to stop at the Carabin Pub, which was the scene of a few crimes from those days – it was a pretty quiet Sunday as we passed through – very different to what we remember.

Kinda quiet at Southern Cross as well

Southern Cross itself was quite a pleasant town. It looked very innocent but it’s a mining town, a truck stop for the big rigs, and a grain town – there has to be a wild side to it somewhere! Probably luckily, we didn’t find it.

There was an early casualty. I lost the tow-ball cover when I left it loose on the camper and it simply blew away as we drove east. Consequently there is an exposed grease-covered tow-ball at the end of the X-Trail so Maurs has all these black stripes on her legs (she never learns). Don’t worry though – she keeps letting me know every time she brushes against it. And every servo I stop at doesn’t seem to have a replacement.

That loss paled into insignificance the next day. The highway had been converted into a fifth rate country track courtesy of the Main Roads Department’s efforts to improve it. While bouncing around at 40 km/h my Anderson Plug (electrical connection to the trailer) popped out of its socket and ran along the dirt, then bitumen, until we hit Coolgardie and discovered the damage of which there was plenty. We drove on to Norseman, found an auto-electrician who replaced it for us. “Second one today!” he said.

One dead Anderson Plug

All better!!

We had only stopped at Coolgardie to buy me some deodorant (might have forgotten to pack it). When I went to use it that night, the top of it snapped apart and what I thought was plastic packing turned out to be – sticky tape. The bums at the store had obviously busted it and bodgied up a repair job, selling it at full price – and I didn’t have enough principles to travel backwards 200 km at night to get my 5 bucks back. I’ve now re-repaired it and sucked it up.

My ripped off deodorant - this stinks!

We stopped at a place called Widgiemooltha for lunch, partly because it was our 41^st wedding anniversary and I wanted to treat my wife to a chicken and salad sandwich, and partly because it’s a place from my past. As a forecaster in the 80’s I used to get calls from weird sounding guys wanting the winds below 1000 feet and the weather between Widgiemooltha and Perth. Why? For pigeon racing! Widgie (as they called it) was a mecca for the pigeon fancier back then but according to the young guy who served us, not any more. The chicken sandwiches were very good by the way (at least I thought it was chicken! It couldn’t have been pigeon, surely!)

Widgiemooltha - and not a pigeon in sight!

Fraser Range - not all fences are this old

We made camp at Fraser Range that night. We do like the station stay there but they have charge showers - $1 for 5 minutes – feed the meter. Do you know how hard it is to count “one Mississippi, two Mississippi…up to 300 Mississippi” so that you get your money’s worth from the shower (and not be left covered in suds when the water stops)? It’s not all beer and skittles on the road, let me tell you. Onwards to the Nullarbor!