The next morning things looked a bit better, I found someone with a bit of knowledge of cars who explained to me what it meant. You can still drive it but you have to go slow. Not knowing exactly how must to trust him we decided to do just that and we drove to 99km to the next station in 4.5 hours. We were pretty happy to get there, had a few drinks that night and met a few people. So far the total was:
– One broken Patrol fan belt, had to be towed
– One broken suspension on a Hilux, fate unknown
– One abandoned Hilux (with a note saying they were ok)
– One landcruiser with a broken strut
– One camp trailer (owned by the Hema map people) with a bolt issue

Plus our car made it 6 in 24 hours since we left mitchell falls. I hate to sound like a jerk, but I had a few people comment that ‘smaller cars aren’t suitable for the road’ so it made me feel a tad better that we weren’t the only ones having problems with the shocking state of the road. I called around Kunanurra but no one had the parts I need, not that surprising really given my car.

Apart from the strut having us worried, and parts being unable to find, Claire really smashed her head into the car door. She decided that Suzi was trying to kill her. The corrugations didn’t help her headache much, she said “I didn’t know what a corrugation was, now I do, I don’t like it, boingey boingey boingey boingey”

The next day was about 170km to Ellenbrae station, where we got a great scone. It was the first night we were starting to think we would make it back to Darwin. Plus there was a lot of firewood available, so it was nice to unwind a bit. We had decided that this holiday would later be considered a “team building exercise”.

Nice to relax by the fire

About 30km before the paved road arived, we heard the same noise in the front right strut… so we were now without any shocks at the front, and noise of the car was terrible. But we got to the paved road okay… and were quite relieved to see it.

We then went onto Kunanurra, stopping at Home Valley station for a burger. Claire decided she had had enough of packing and unpacking the tent so we checked into a hotel, had some beers and pizza and watched the footy.

Very happy to see paved road again

The next day was Saturday and we went onto Edith falls, thinking it would be a good stop on the way home. School Holidays turns that place into something else, it was utterly crammed full of people. We were planning on having a swim before heading home but thought it might be too crowded. We got into the water at about 10.30am to find zero people at the lower pool… weird. That was our last bit of fun before heading back to reality.

Edith Falls