Picked the caravan up and spent the night in Mt Isa – heading out to the ‘Buff’s Club’ for dinner (and a show). Ariel reached a personal milestone in the morning, losing her first tooth (with a little encouragement). Let's see if the tooth fairy does a better job of remembering this time!
Later in the morning Rich received some very sad news that his close work friend Graham had passed away suddenly. As well as being a work colleague and friend, Graham played a special role in our wedding by piloting Kel to the Basin in his boat. We were in shock at this news and were in sombre spirits for the rest of the day, reflecting on Graham’s life. Had an unremarkable lunch at Camooweal before setting off again over another flat, mostly featureless 15 kilometres to the NT border.
After crossing, continued along even flatter and more featureless country to the Barkly Homestead. Truly an oasis in the desert, with extortionate fuel prices to match, we had a decent pub meal and stayed the night.
We were lulled to sleep by the thunderous purr of their diesel generators. Apparently, the reason that the price of fuel and goods at Barkly Homestead was high was because they had to burn 500L of diesel every day in their generator to keep the power on. SOLAR, anyone?!
NT is a little short on big things, but it seems to be well supplied with the big nothing!
Hi Rich, a PS to my last comment. Noted your comment on bumpy road to Boojamalla. We just came out of the Flinders Ranges with the caravan and did 180kms in and 180kms back on dirt road and lots of heavy 4wding with Prado at Arkaroola. Best advice you may or may not know. Buy yourself a good standard air compressor...cost about $175 - $250. Keep it in the car all the time. When 4wding on dirt tracks....drop Prado tyre pressures to 26 - 28PSI cold pressure. When tyres are warm to hot....pressures will read about 4psi higher. If towing the van on dirt...do the same with its tyres. Makes all the difference with comfort and decreased damage due to bumps and vibrations. Also lesser chance of doing sidewall rock damage to tyres as less inflation means less chance of tyre cut. When on sand with Prado....drop pressures to 20psi to avoid bogging. The compressor will be essential if you don't already have one. I had to upgrade my very small $40 one shortly after we left....too slow on the prado tyres. You may already know all this. Thought I would note it just in case. When back on the bitumen make sure you top the tyres up again as soon as practical. cheers
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