Home to Coober Pedy
Well the Tagalong tours trip for 2017 has started. We left
Friday after we cracked the frost of the car and headed to Hahndorf in the
Adelaide Hills for our first overnight stop. We decided on staying in a cabin
for the first night and the van park at Hahndorf was pretty good. There is a
historic truck get together in Hahndorf for the weekend which provided a lot of
interest. Morris, Bedford, International and Kenworth well represented in the
line-up.
It is blood cold tonight and I suspect a frost in the morning.
Morning has broken and yep you guessed it frost -1 deg.
Breakfast in a nice little place called the Hauss which provided a great start
for the day. And what a great day it turned out to be as we headed from
Hahndorf through to Pimba, well that was the plan but we chickened out. 
We stayed at Stuart Range Caravan Park and nothing much has
changed there. Still can’t get a sensible site numbering system as well as
trying to shoe horn 2 vans on one site or that’s how it looked to us. Absolute
confusion. We have decided any future sojourns up way we are staying someplace
else. Gaz, Shaz, Rob and Judy turned up early afternoon so it was a quiet
afternoon setting and talking.
Cold again tonight but we are in the roof top
tent so will see what tomorrow brings.
Not to early a rise this morning and whilst it was really
cold the accommodation was not bad we are pretty happy with the setup, albeit,
the ladder up and down for our early morning sojourns to the dunny are not that
enjoyable. Today was a fairly lazy day. Rob and Judy haven’t been here before
so they are off exploring while for us it was just some housekeeping and bit of
last minute shopping and out to the breakaways for the sunset.
Headed out about 16.15 to the breakaways for the sunset so
we were a little early but gave a chance to have a good look around and be it a
good position for the sunset display, apparent quite a few others had the same
idea and it was pretty busy but none the less spectacular. Pizza for our last
meal at Coober Pedy before a relatively early night. Tomorrow we head for the
Alice.
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| Breakaways |
Coober Pedy to Alice Springs
Well we are now in new territory for Di and I we haven’t
been past Coober Pedy heading north. So we were up early and on the road by
08.30. Pretty quiet on the road considering there are a heap of people heading
for the Finke Desert Rally and so we made good time to Marla for our first
stop. Bit of morning tea and stretch and on the road again heading for the NT
boarder. 20 km down the road our plans came to a screaming halt. The Mazda
engine just stopped, no warning just a tell-tale orange engine light say “got
you now sucker”. We try to maintain the car as best we can and I have
confidence in our mechanic but the technical gremlins of modern cars get you
every time, especial when everything is going so well. I have an EDMS setup in
the car which gives you the error codes from the cars black box. Apparently the
camshaft positioning sensor just packed it in consequently engine stops. After
about 30 min of trouble shooting and trying things it was clear we weren’t
going anyplace under our own steam. Rob towed us back to Marla minus trailer
while Gaz and Shaz stood guard over the trailer on the side of the road (no
mobile service to ring RACV) then returned to pick up trailer and bring it into
Marla.
News is not good car Mazda is going nowhere seems it’s
probably terminal. We loaded Wendy and most of her gear into Gaz and Robs
wheels and they have continued on while we wait for the “mechanic” to give us
some news with the hope of an easy fix and catch up. No luck there though
pretty sure either timing belt has malfunction or something has come loose in
that area either way we are going nowhere in a hurry. Next day was spent
looking for options and solutions. I’m glad we sent the others on so they could
continue with the trip. In the end we arranged transport for the Mazda back to
Bendigo, stored the camper as Rob will bring it back for us and organised
transport back to home. Which is a whole other story but consisted of 14hrs on
a bus from Marla to Adelaide, 2 nights in Adelaide, flight to Melbourne and bus
Melbourne to home. 12 months or more of planning for us anyway down the drain.
So no Gibb river blog and we are home a week after we started our 6 week trip.
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| Glenelg |
