Hi All
Just arrived in
Perth after 2 weeks on the road travelling from
Broome, via
Derby, Mt Barnett on the GRR and many other
places including Karijini,
Tom Price,
Exmouth,
Coral Bay,
Kalbarri, many adventures in the two vehicles (My '88 Maverick and my partners brothers 4runner). My normally reliable Maverick named Gus decided to give a cough stutter and stall 60kms out of
Derby on the first day of the trip, there goes the fuel pump me thinks to myself so a quick about face and limp back to
Derby and into the BP Colac servo where I met a great bunch of blokes who we got to know quite
well over the next 3 days of being stuck in
Derby as it's so hard to get parts there but the guys at the BP are great and really looked after me and Gus, even after they put the fuel pump in only to find I now had the opposite effect to before and had too much fuel going into the Carby, turns out my carby is shot and need a replacement or rebuild either way I'm looking at a lot of money so the guys got me going again but didn't want to chance the GRR in Gus so we repacked the one vehicle with everything for a quick trip up to Mt Barnett and one night instead of three. After a wonderful night spent up at Mt Barnett we headed back to
Derby to pick up Gus and continue south now 4 days behind schedule. We made it to just outside Karijini and camped for the night in a
free camping spot before an early start (and a quick stop at
Auski Roadhouse where I saw an Explor Oz Cap being worn by a guy driving a patrol towing a caravan with a couple of Kayaks on the roof) to
Dales Gorge campground for only 1 night instead of 2 to try and catch up on the time we lost, by now the boys were beginning to complain about the heat and lack of sleep in the hot tent so we did a quick drive to
Exmouth including one flat on the 4runner at as we pulled into a
rest area for a break which really peeved Ash) where we rented a cabin for the night only to find it was cool enough to
camp that night but thats life! We spent our second night at Yardie
creek and after throwing a line in at the marina in town and catching nothing we headed back out to
camp. Now anyone who's been to
Exmouth and tried driving out to
Cape Range NP in the evening will know how hard this is for all the 'roos! (We counted 218 in 35klms, and thats just the ones we saw!!!!!) got back to
camp to find a lovely cool breeze blowing and we all had a good nights sleep. We were due to do the yardie
creek run down to
Coral Bay but with Gus still playing up on Petrol and not running on Gas we had to miss out on that as
well (Boy were we all unhappy at that as this was the highlight of our trip) so we ended up on the blacktop all the way to
Coral Bay for a spot of snorkelling before heading down to Qoubba for another night
camping near
the blowholes, we found a great little spot to pitch the tent, unfortunatly it was blowing a gale and the tent spent the entire night trying to flat pack itself with the four of us inside it!!!!! I don't think I got more than about 2 hrs sleep due to the wind. Next morning we were up early and packed up and on the road to
Kalbarri! We arrived mid afternoon did a spot of fishing and got nothing but 1 blowie (GRRRR!!!!!) and another flat on Gus this time! we arrived back in
Perth Yesterday! So after 2 weeks on the road 2 flats, a fuel pump and a secondhand carby (Yet to be fitted) I have decided to look at removing the Gas system off my maverick and replacing it with a longrange fuel
tank but that will have to wait till next year when we get back from the UK. I also need a new power steering pump, a transmission fluid change, Diff fluid change and a lot of TLC for Gus over the next couple of weeks before we leave for 8 months travelling the UK and Ireland, so if anyone is in the Baldivis area and happens to be passing by and sees a pair of legs hanging out from under a rather sorry looking Maverick stop by and say Hi. Ah yes and am planning a day trip down to Margaret River with a couple of mates to do some of the tracks down there in the next couple of weeks so will post a report on that if we make it back!!
Matt