It’s taken me a few days to unpack the Mighty Mazda and get everything back in order, but now life returns to normal :(
Funny how you look forward to a big trip for so long and then suddenly it’s over…
Anyway, we did just under 9000kms all told and had an absolute blast. I lived up to my ExplorOz sticker, and EVERY town we went past, we popped in and had a look-see. The Tanami was great, but the Great Central Highway was as boring as bat poo. I ended up driving 21 hours on the last day getting back to Alice as I just had a strange feeling about camping anywhere from Cosmo Newberry to Uluru. As it was, I had a badly shredded tyre 43kms past
Warburton (which has been suggested that it WASN’T an accident…), so we lost heaps of time sorting it out. Ended up driving until 1am to Uluru and having to stop because the fuel station was closed.
We kipped in the truck (or on top in some cases!) a few times along the road in other areas and all was 100% fine – except that road. Call it my gut instinct I don’t know.
We took the road less traveled from
Southern Cross because of the bush fires and had no idea what lay ahead. But it sure beat the hell out of traveling down to
Esperance to get to Alice! I had water, sat phone and a map so what the heck. We had a blast!
Having just arrived in Aus, we used this trip to investigate life in general on the “outside” and to see where we could live once our “time” was up.
And we found that there could be many other
places “worse” to live in than here!
We now have this long list of
places! What a great country! We met some amazing people, saw fantastic scenery (apart from the
Pilbara which has heaps of…NOTHING!) We miss the African wildlife along the road, but have shifted to lizards (flipping suicidal creatures on the road!), bats, camels (both at night and daytime) and dingos.
As for the diving and snorkeling in
Exmouth and down to
Perth including
Rottnest Island –
well, we didn’t want to come back to Central Australia! It was paradise. Hot. Flipping hot, but
well worth it.
The Mighty Mazda? Of course it performed great; still very impressed with it. Ha ha the aircon exploded AS we hit Alice – good timing! I have solved my pinging/pinking problem. It got so bad in
Perth that I was about to drive it into the sea, so I whacked the vacuum advance unit to half it’s movement distance. It was a case of either not get out the driveway, or no noise. Turns out I have not had a ping in the last 3500kms and it’s pulling like a machine! Petrol consumption improved markedly as
well.
Took a ton of spares and of course didn’t use anything – Murphy’s Law.
I cannot believe how the petrol price fluctuates like it does here – horrible!
I feel I’m over the long distance outback exploration thing now. Lots of nothing out there unless you are going to a specific destination. And yes, summer is not the best time, but I had to experience it. Looking forward to doing lots of weekend stuff now trying to out-do the Landy’s and Cruisers of my mates in the “tricky stuff” (he he he)