Wednesday 20th August 2014

The bunting of stubby holders from all over the place - $10 per stubby all money goes to the Royal Flying Doctors.
 A Rutherglen Hash House Harriers one is up there now - I hope. Mount Dare Pub 2014

Steve the wheel fixing legend with Greg who managed to teach him something too.

Mel and Dave with their Mount Dare sign

Lola and Tubby, Dave's parents here for a holiday from Melbourne

Wednesday 20^th of August

Woke up to another brilliant day and a cold start. Decided to take the camera and photograph the broken windmill and other things around the pub as the sun rose. Don’t think any of those photos are going to set the world on fire.

 

The display outside the amenities block

We had to have a shower before we left as we hadn’t had one yesterday so again it was the trek to the amenities block with all the washing kit. The block was a tin shed with a cement floor. Clean and basic but with lots of hooks and a bench to put things so they didn’t get wet. Greg had a hot shower and I had an almost hot shower so hurried up.

Every day Greg checks the oil and water in the car and all the wheels on car and van. One on the van was wobbly so we decided to investigate. Little did we know that our bearing was loose and to continue on our journey we would have locked up and lost the wheel. After putting the wheel off and on – which is a feat when it’s a 16 inch wheel, I kept suggesting that we go to the pub which has a workshop and see if they could make sure it was ok. This fell on deaf ears until we went for fuel and in passing I mentioned that we had a wobbly wheel to Steve, who was one of the working people there so after fuelling up he suggested we take it around to the workshop to have another look.

 

Diesel tanks and generator shed

2 generators- what makes it all tick. If they break down you're stuffed

Relief for me. I went inside to pay and got chatting to the people inside. Mel and Dave had long departed to Alice Springs and Lola was schooling the children. They do school of the air but since they only recently moved up here and were in a normal school they kind of think they are on an extended holiday. Mel was discussing last night the possibility of a governess to come out as she just didn’t have time to run things and school the kids.

 

Tranquil waterhole early in the morning

Greg looking the seasoned 4WD traveller outside Mount Dare Pub.

Bloody wheel  bearings!

Caz outside the Mount Dare pub. Yay its hot.
I can wear a Tshirt - finally!!

Anyway, the people sitting around the table explained that they were 2 couples, one from Canberra and the other from Tasmania. They are travelling around getting work on stations and remote pubs and there seems to be a bit of work around. One lady, Monica, Steve’s wife said that she had had no experience at kitchen hand or anything and she just picked it up as she went along. A lot of it was cleaning and she said that it wasn’t hard work but the hours were long when they were busy and it was 7 days per week with hardly a day off. She also said that the pay wasn’t the best but it includes meals and because there isn’t anything to spend it on and you don’t go anywhere, you save up a bit ready for the next trip and if you line up a job to go to then you can claim the travel between the 2 jobs as a tax deduction. They are doing a stint in the Kimberleys after this.

The couple from Canberra had a different story, they had a trial run over to the west and were offered several jobs on the way. They came back and she took a package from the public service. He was a coach driver and was sick of it – so with both of them fed up with their current lifestyles they embarked on a short term contract in the outback and were going now back to Canberra to collect their motor home (a converted bus) and they were going to be on the road from now on.

They both said that it was a wonderful way of life but short contract of a maximum of 3 months were the best as 6 months becomes a bit long.

Unbeknown to me, Greg and wheel fixing Steve were having a similar conversation. They took the wheel and bearing off to reveal that it was indeed dangerously loose – so they fixed it up. Greg showed Steve our Trailer Mate jack which he was thrilled about as he didn’t know that the jack could double as a jockey wheel and it was the only thing high enough to jack Gibson up without getting out heavy duty truck stuff. Also Greg showed Steve an easy way of getting the wheel back on the caravan, instead of using a screwdriver to lever it on, we used our shovel which gave easier leverage. So Steve showed Greg what to do if the bearings come loose again and Greg showed Steve a handy trick or two.

We all parted friends and wished each other luck in the future. It was already late and the day had warmed up a bit.

We drove out of Mount Dare and back into the sand and rough roads. We had been advised there were 2 ways of going to our next destination – which was Dalhousie springs. One road was so bad nobody even the locals went on it, the other was bad but doable.

 

our selfie

First we went past the Blood’s Creek Ruins. This little place sprung up to service the telegraph line workers and had a house and a pub. It got its name from a Mr Blood rather than something gruesome. There were graves there but not marked and the ruin was reduced to some metal relics – broken fragments of glass and iron, a slab of broken cement, the odd sprung mattress lying around rusting away and not much. It was in such a remote place. When the railway came through and went nowhere near there, the place went out of business and went to ruin.

sand and more sand made for tricky driving

We took a few photos and hopped back in the car. The road had been a little bad but nothing compared to what was coming up.

 

Rock and roll Mister Gibson - and this is with stability bars on!

rocky and flat for a minute

fancy a bit of riverbed driving?

The road was windy, rocky and then sand. At one part where there was a huge sand washout. It looked so deep that I got out to investigate first. Greg had suggested that he would go to the right – but when I walked over there it was 2 feet of sand and Gibson would have got rightly stuck. Ever conscious that we were on our own towing a big heavy van I started to find a better route by kicking the sand away to reveal a solid rock base underneath. Talking Greg through on the 2 way, he engaged low range 2^nd gear and started steadily going through. It was real heart in mouth stuff. Lady cruiser chewed her way through the sand, wheels spinning slightly but not enough to get stuck, it felt like forever until Greg steered our rig, up out of the washout and on to firm road  - where I hopped back in the car – I had taken my 35mm camera with me so I could photograph it all. Photos will never show how deep the sand was though.

Congratulating my husband enthusiastically and praising the fact we had done a 4WD course earlier in the year, we trundled off down the road – but that wasn’t the first and last sand washout. The road was abound with challenging sand areas – we were on the edge of the Simpson Desert which is why. Luckily we didn’t get bogged in the sand once here but there were several other moments when we held our breath and hoped that the cruiser would low range crawl out of thick sand. The caravan didn’t help matters as he slips all over the place (like a kid wearing socks on a polished floor doing slides) making your steering jurkey and pulley.

It took us 5 hours to get to Dalhousie Springs. It was only 70 kilometers away! We had both taken our one hour off and one hour on driving. The road had parts so bad we were down to 5 and 10 km per hour. The bumps so bad I was glad to be wearing an underwire sports bra or things would never be the same again!

We arrived finally at the spring which is run by National parks and found lots of room to park so we backed up Gibson and stayed hitched in a section where nobody else was. I wandered off to find the ranger’s office to pay for camping fees. We both felt in need of a stiff drink after a grueling day.

 

camp Dalhousie Springs. Greg could not resist putting the awning out on the van.

There were eco toilets here and cold showers. The spring is one of the artesian basin so the water was 37 or so degrees and clean and fresh and once we got in – after meeting some people that had been in that day and encouraged us to be quick as it was so good – it was lovely. Lots of people had been in the waterhole that day. There were a group of volunteers from Adelaide who come up and plant new trees to conserve the area, there were several people obviously in a 4WD adventure tour and bobbing around in the spring was a lovely couple from Melbourne about our age or a little older who recognized our van from Arkaringa. We ended up having a chat for ages and all eventually emerged from the spring - relaxed and prune like and a bit sad that we weren’t all travelling in the same direction tomorrow as we could have become great mates. They were on their way north, and us south.

We had a quick BBQ snags dinner – the only thing that defrosts quickly and I par boiled some spuds inside the van on the stove so Greg could do them on the Barbie too. The spuds were sensational. I had some peas, cauliflour and carrots as well.

There were some snags left over so I though I would do a sausage curry tomorrow in the Shuttle Chef.

Because of the lack of fresh bread, I have been making casserole lunches in the morning and putting them in the shuttle chef to continue slow cooking until lunch time. Its good as there isn’t a lot to do to get lunch on the table and we can usually eat in the van which saves sharing your lunch with all the flies – although one or two usually sneak in. You can also have lunch whenever you like and there is minimum washing up only two spoons, bowls and the shuttle chef. Its usually a vegetable based casserole with some sort of carbs mixed in like one day soup mix, the next Quinoa and tomorrow would be rice. Depending on whats about to go off in the fridge next it makes for variety. However after 7 days of these hot lunches, even though they are nutritionally based I would love a fresh bread salad sandwich!!

Anyway menu aside – I hoped to photograph the sun rise over the spring in the morning. Tomorrow would be a big day risking a short cut road back to Oodnadatta. We would need to get a powered site as our computer and camera batteries needed a good charge.