After suffering terrible rashes all over my body from an allergic reaction brought on by servicing and repairing one of Wayne’s Toyota’s! we just had to leave or he might have even made me drive one of the infernal works of the devil LOL.

Now that the flooded Finke river had fallen we were able to get across to Mt Dare to say our

goodbyes to our now good friends Dave & Mel who own & run the roadhouse.

It was very sad saying goodbye, they are a wonderful couple, Dave kept suggesting ways to stay in Australia ranging from paddling ashore in a cool box like the immigrants to hiding out in the bush & working for cash in the hand. But it is a big world & there is a lot to see still before I get shoved in an old peoples home. After one of Dave’s amazing milkshakes we headed for the nights camp at a permanent water hole called Eringa the first home of the cattle giant Kiddman. wasting no time at all the Yabbie nets were in & within 30 minutes they were full! Due to this being a remote permanent water hole the Yabbie’s a sort of Crayfish grew to be enormous & tasted so sweet.  The following morning on my morning checks I noticed a small crack in the rear diff that is seeping oil around one of the welds, it is as if Stu knows that we are leaving & on our final leg, we now have a big leak on the Transfer box intermediate shaft O ring, Rear pinion oil seal again, the crack in the weld on the rear diff and A grease nipple has fallen out of the front UJ add to this 2 more cracks in the wind screen & drivers wing mirror smashed where a small tree jumped out on me! after 96 000 miles Lets hope stu can hold it together until the container.

Traveling south down past the Pink roadhouse for the third time we got to recover A Nissan Patrol that had shredded its tyre but the standard jack couldn’t lift the car so within 5 minutes Land Rover to the rescue, this is becoming A bit of a habit! We reached Coober pedy the Opal mining town where we toured the Old Timers mine to get a feel of what it would have been like mining Opal. Leaving There we joined the Stuart Highway for the 2 day drive south before we could turn West & the Nullarbour trip again. Stocking up on food in Ceduna less for fruit & vegetables, due to the Quarantine check point as you enter WA, we were off across the Nullarbour Plain but this time it seemed to go quicker weather it was due to the wind being behind us or that we were on a home ward leg I don’t know but we flew across in 2 days including torrential thunderstorms & raging bush fires.

Once across our destination was Kalgoorlie area made famous for the largest open cut Gold mine in the world. The view from the view point was amassing, huge 200 Ton trucks hauling material up from the bottom of the pit looked tiny in the 700 m hole, it actually takes 30 minutes to drive from the bottom to the top! Whilst there we had the chance to visit a couple that work in the mine where he tried to recruit me in to driving one of the trucks tempting as it was we had to push on. Just north Karen had been keen to visit Lake Ballard A huge salt lake made famous by 51 metal statues placed around the lake all facing the same direction. A bit eerie but Karen was happy & thats all that matters.

We had driven 200 km camped for the night and it had to happen again! Karen’s back gave up so off we go to a local hospital as she was in agony to then be told that we needed to go back to Kalgoorlie as Karen needed an X-Ray so back we go with the doctors suspecting a Kidney problem. After 20 hours no food and lots of morphine (only for Karen sadly) we are told that it was her back & she has an Arthritic hip, great! So after staying the night in A $100 motel room as its a mining town they jack the prices up we were off towards Perth.

We were invited to stay at Brendan & Lita’s for the week to catch up do some fishing and give Karen a rest as the old girl is 50! Steve we need to start looking for an old folks home LOL.