Month: June 2005

We packed up in the morning and drove on the bitumen road the rest of the way into Laverton where we fuelled up and topped up on water for our first big stage. Dad let the tyres down a bit so the rough road wouldn’t seem so rough ­ it still was though. We drove along the Great Central Road and Christopher and Caitlin tried to keep counting the abandoned burnt cars by the road but stopped counting at 281 that they saw. We also saw wild camels and several pairs of wedge tailed eagles hunting beside the road. It was great to see these wonderful wild creatures.

Dad had some coordinates for the GPS to find some rockholes off the road and the first one we tried we found. It was a lovely high spot on flat rock overlooking the country to the north. It was dry and someone had put an animal skeleton into it. We had lunch there and ran around looking for stuff.
The road was rough and corrugated and we couldn’t play the DVD’s.
We tried to find several other waterholes but couldn’t. However searching for the last one for the day we found a great campsite off the road instead, so set up camp and collected the wood for our fire.
Our camp was sheltered from the wind by a hill and there were enough trees and rocks around for Christopher Cassidy and Caitlin to play 44 and spotlight.
We were getting used to the jobs of setting up a camp by now and each of us had our important jobs to do.

 

No one could fix our car, so Don and Dad bought parts from Coventry’s and fitted the water pump at the caravan park, but couldn’t fix the seal. They even broke Dad’s big lever trying!

They found a service station that let them use the air gun to undo the big nut and they changed it themselves whilst the mechanic worked on someone else’s car.
We eventually got going and headed north at lunch time after doing some shopping.
We drove through Menzies and saw the old buildings including an old butchers with a seat at the front of the shop where people could wait to have their meat cut up.

We drove onto a dirt road towards Niagra Dam where we had intended to camp, but still had time in the day so pushed on and found a spot off the road behind some hills and set up camp.
Perhaps we were the first people ever to camp on that spot and we had a great fire.

Don (Dad’s cousin) and Caitlin (his 12 year old daughter) arrived at Carine and we set off. We planned to drive to Southern Cross.
At Kelleberin Dad found an oil leak in the gearbox seal so we stopped and a man checked the oil levels for us. We decided to push on to Kaloorlie so we could fix it in the morning.
We Watched some D.V.D’s during the day as the country side went past.
When we stopped Dad found the water pump was leaking too. 🙁 This wasn’t a good start to our big trip.
We slept in an A frame unit in a caravan park in Boulder, next to Kalgoorlie.

After 12 months of planning our next big trip, our aim was to head to Alice Springs, then across the Simpson Desert, following the green line on the map.

Kerry and Jacob were left at home to finish work and school, as Tim, cousin Don, Christopher Cassidy and Caitlyn set off on the first stage of the big adventure to Uluru. We were going to camp out in the bush in our tent and we were all a little bit excited and a little bit nervous.

This photo gallery gives you a glimpse of the events of the next 23 days.