Back on the road … at last!

Well folks, those of you who have been readers of our blog for a while may well have wondered if we would ever ‘get back up & running’…or not. If so you were not alone, there were times we wondered too.  But here we are back on the road.  

First however – a little background to our absence. 

Back in May 2023 we wrenched ourselves away from the clutches of the Iron Range rainforest & Lockhart River & left  Cape York after two years up there.  We left with one goal in mind – to check out a vehicle we had ‘found’ in November ’22 with the hope of buying it. The excitement of this prospect helped the parting from a place we had come to love. 

The vehicle, an OKA based expedition truck, which I am currently sitting in typing this post, was located approximately halfway between Cape York & our home base in Victoria. It’s owners were a lovely & very hospitable  couple, we loved the vehicle & decided to buy it, and so we made an agreement & shook hands, driving away wth the owners planning to take it across the country to the OKA factory in Perth for a few repairs, & to have the automatic transmission that we wanted fitted. No money had changed hands at this point. It was  to be a transaction based upon trust, involving 3 payments at different times over several months & before we actually had the vehicle in our hands. A complicated arrangement which we would normally be very wary of, but made possible because the sellers & ourselves had mutual (OKA owning) friends. A couple we all had 100% trust in. Not that they were involved in the transaction, simply that sharing friends helped.

A month or so later the first payment instalment  became due & our world had been turned upside down. I had developed a mystery illness which was debilitating to the extent that I became physically incapable of even the most mundane of daily activities. I was in a great deal of pain & often needed aid in dressing & on occasion eating!  At the time we had to make a commitment to buying the OKA I would have been completely incapable of climbing up into it’s cab, let alone driving it or managing any routine maintenance tasks. I recall being unable to pick up & lift a single A4 sheet of paper!

We made what was a huge decision …….to buy.  It was a gamble which if it didn’t come off we could be the owners of a very expensive ‘white elephant’.  The  trajectory  of the mystery illness could not be predicted. The medical merry go round considered the possibilities of either ‘some weird tropical virus’ or an auto immune rheumatoid- like condition related to my Crohns disease. An ‘EIM’ they called it (Extra Intestinal Manifestation).  Googling, as one does in such situations showed that it was indeed a ‘thing’.  The ray of hope were the comments from my GP, a gastroenterologist & a rheumatologist was that there was a reasonable chance that what I was experiencing could be ‘self-limiting’. ie, that there was a chance I could get through it & come good. 

A significant part of our thinking was balancing the possibility of having this ‘white elephant ‘ if I didn’t come good against the awfulness of coming good with no vehicle to travel in. The latter felt worse than the former & so we stuck to our agreement & made the commitment. 

It took around 6 months for me to come good & whilst there are no guarantees that it won’t happen again, we are glad we made the decision that we did, when we did. If the condition returns we’ll deal with it as best we can when it does. 

We collected the OKA from Perth about 11 months ago, expecting to be back on the road by around July ’24, but it turned out that a number of things still required fixing on the truck & although I had come good, I still needed to pace myself or pay the consequences. A few of the issues were things to be expected on an 18 year old vehicle, but most were a result of what we believe to have been lack of supervision of junior staff in the Perth workshop whilst more experienced staff were more focussed upon the higher priority of getting the first new vehicles for many years out the door. It shouldn’t have been so but sometimes there is no option other than to roll with the punches. The positive which came from this was that I learned far more about the new vehicle before leaving home than I had ever expected to, which in turn has given me confidence in my ability to fix things, albeit more slowly. 

And so here we are. OKA owners & back on the road for as long as we are able.  For more detail about the OKA check out the recently added page to the ‘Our Mode of Travel’ in the menu at the top of the page. 

We left home a week ago with some optimism (but still with fingers crossed) that this time out new gremlins would not appear. Currently we are in a pleasant little bush camp a little north of the Coorong in South Australia, around 800-to 900kms from home & (touching wood) everything is working as it should. (Phew). Hopefully the gremlins have been put back in their box & the lid locked shut! 

Our current plan is essentially to follow the SA coastline to the mouth of the Murray River, seeing a part of the country we have not previously visited, & then to follow the Murray northwards to Wentworth, before leaving it behind & continuing north to Broken Hill & west to Silverton where we are looking forward to meeting with other OKA owners at the biannual OKA owners gathering at the end of March. 

After this we intend to continue northwards, leaving sealed roads behind for a while to follow station tracks, dirt roads & 4wd tracks across desert country popping out onto the Stuart Highway at the Devils Marbles a bit south of Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory with the aim of attending the Barunga Festival in southern Arnhem Land in early June. It should be a slow trip as clearly there is no rush with 3 months to get there. The route will take us via a number of places we are happy to revisit as well as those we haven’t. In particular the Davenport Ranges in the NT, & the possibility of mass numbers of Pelicans on Lake Machattie (South of Bedourie) hold our interest. 

Following the Barunga festival we are as yet uncertain where we will go, we have a few ideas, but will wait until later to see how things pan out. However we have made a commitment that we are very much looking forward to. Another remote area wet season caretaking role. From October through until April’ish (depending upon the wet season)  the two of us will be alone at Mt Elizabeth Station half way along the Gibb River Road in the Kimberley.Western Australia.   We will be looking after the homestead & it’s immediate surrounds. During the tourist season they offer accomodation & camping in addition to being a working catle station. Of course the Gibb River Road (GRR) becomes un-navigable due to swollen rivers during the Wet, & the 50 odd kms from the GRR to the station is also cut by 3 or 4 rivers. With the nearest towns being around 600kms away when the roads are driveable – we are very much looking forward to having a ‘back yard’ of half a million acres to ourselves, including our own private gorges/swimming holes. In many respects this could be our most remote stay to date, certainly our first ‘inland wet season’ , but on this occasion we will have air conditioning. https://www.mtelizabethstationstay.com.au/

So where have we been on our first week out from home?

First couple of nights were at what is possible one of the nicest free camps we have ever stayed at, in Dartmoor, Victoria. Lovely spacious riverside surroundings with green grass, lots of trees & lots of koalas.  The place is maintained by a forestry department on the outskirts of the small township.

We then crossed the border into South Australia (which reminds me we still need to change our clocks in the truck) & visited the town of Mt Gambier for the first time. After some necessary shopping (for fruit & veg, which cannot be carried across the border)  we checked what are this town’s forte……… ‘holes in the ground’. It is an area of ancient seabed & volcanos, with many caves & sinkholes in the area. The largest being the Blue Lake on the outskirts of town. A lake fed from the underground aquifer ‘held’ within the very porous ancient limestone rock that the town is built on is indeed very blue, much bluer than the sky. Perhaps the best known of the many sinkholes (collapsed caves) is the Umpherstone sink hole, in which a lush garden setting has been established over many decades. 

The entire coast from the border almost to Adelaide is known as the ‘Limestone Coast’. Craggy & rocky coastlines, often with rivers of ultra clear fresh water rivers running into the sea. We camped alongside one of these at 8 mile Creek half an hour south of Mt Gambier. A new experience for us was the ‘booking’ procedure for what was another free camp. Arrive, check out the numbered sites & then using our phone to check availability by reading a QR code on a campground sign, and subsequently booking it online. A lovely spot spoiled only by incessant gale force winds. We booked for two nights, but the wind drove us away after the first night. It was here we discovered a flaw in the ‘high tech’ booking system. There were no means to cancel the second night, meaning if anyone turned up that day & wanted ‘our’ site, the online booking system would tell them it was not available. 

Having found ourselves a little ‘geographically challenged’, a result of 3 different navigation aids each telling us different things we completed a couple of circuits of the tiny hamlet of Port Macdonnell & still found ourselves on the wrong road. Thankfully I had studied the map the night before & knew that our approximate direction should be taking us toward the Tantanoola Cave despite the protestations & beseeching electronic voice encouraging us to turn back.

The cave is not huge but is quite a stunner. 

On to the seaside holiday town of Beachport where the incessant winds remained … incessant.  Hard to stand!  Wind to blow the hair off a dog! Locals assured us that this sort of wind was not common & that it would subside the following day & the local dogs would be none the worse for it. 🙂 The fish & chip shop afforded us an effective wind break & an extremely tasty & succulent portion of battered Butterfish each. Chips were good but we winced a little at the  $12 charge for ‘minimum chips’. I guess holiday towns need to make their money whilst they can. 

The local conservation park at Lake George held the promise of very sheltered campsites & so we thought the chance to see migratory wading birds in large numbers. One of those things proved correct. Our overnight camp, nestled in & under the dense paperbark teatrees was indeed sheltered. Out in the middle of the dry lake bed the wind remained, & without water there were no birds.  The Beachport locals were correct though, as we left the following morning the wind had all but dissipated. 

The plan was to follow the main road along the northern side of the Coorong.  This long narrow stretch of water between land & a long tall sand dune stretches for many many kilometres & the map shows the road at the very edge of the water. Maps can be deceiving & all we had were very momentary glimpses of the Coorong through trees. When we reached a ‘loop road’ which the map showed joining the main road again after around 20 kilometres we thought it worth ago. Well let me tell you that with 70psi in our tyres this godforsaken potholed & corrugated road was as disappointing in it’s views of the Coorong as it was horrendous to bear. We were relieved to reach bitumen road again & not much further on chose to turn inland away from the coast to a bush camp we had read of. Boothby Rocks. This as it has turned out has proven a good choice. A large area of remnant Mallee Scrub with a small camping area around some large rocks. We have been here a couple of days , tonight will be our third, and we think we’ll stay a couple more. It’s been a good opportunity to manage our domestic chores for the first time in the OKA.  The washing line is strung between a couple of trees & the washing is drying fast in the hot temperatures.  These are forecast to remain for the next couple of days so we think we may stay put until things cool down. The combination of good air flow through the OKA with it’s shutters shading the windows is working well with the temperature inside what had the potential to be an ‘oven’, is in fact averaging 6 degrees below the ambient outside temperature. This is quite impressive we think! 

It’s a quiet spot, easy to be in & made better by providing two new additions to our bird list. Both were unexpected, specially the first, when a Malleefowl, normally a shy, cryptic, secretive bird & difficult to see, came wandering brazenly into our camp. Second a male Splendid Fairy-Wren in eclipse plumage, with his harem of blue tailed females. We think we must be on the very edge of the area they live in according to the distribution maps we have.  Other noticeable inhabitants are the bees, two nests (hives?) not far from our camp. A larger one in a crevice of the rocks, & a tiny nest in the hollow of a tree, up high, but their honeycomb can be seen with binoculars or telephoto camera lens. 

So there we go, our first travel post ‘back on the road’. I have to say I like the sound of that! 

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Best wishes to you,

Cuppa & MrsTea.