Week 2   (June 26th to July 2nd)
Friday 29th
Just a quick update. This doesm't look like the challenge I was expecting. I'm well past the turnoff to Googs Track - on a good gravel road. My maps show the road right next to the Vermin Proof Fence but this road veers away from it and then back again. There have been no signs saying no public access.
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And there seem to be mobile phone towers at regular intervals.

Well I certainly got that wrong. I posted that in the middle of the morning.  At one stage I was cruising along at 60kph when suddenly a train went past so I turned the speed limiter off and kept pace with the engine for a couple of km, probably 80 or 90kph. I felt like Mad Max. Then I let it go and dropped back to 60 again, but obviously it was a good road in places.
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This is all there is of Mt Christie .
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There was a bit more of Barton.
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The road certainly ran close to the line in places.
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Towards Ooldea the road was in big sand dune territory, but went over the less high bit of them - probably 5 dunes altogether.
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At where Ooldea should have been there was not a sign of anything - and I believe there is a memorial to Daisy Bates here somewhere. The road crossed the line and there was a sign saying you were entering Maralinga area and it was illegal to do so without a permit. I went a little way but the road was way away from the railway line so I went back to the crossing. There was a small track continued along the line and I went along it - terribly corrugated and I couln't even get up to 20kph on any of it. After a few km I came to this.
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Another km or so and the track went through what had been a boggy area and the wheel ruts were 30 to 40cm deep. There was no way round this and no way this little car with its tiny clearance was going to go any further. There wasn't any need for 4WD, just high clearance. It was about to get dark and Cook was still about 30km along here. I decided this was as  far as I could go. Maybe some other time I'll try from the Kalgoorlie end and see how far I can get. The limited traces of the ghost towns made the decidsion easy. But I had been hoping to see the Rawlinna area - way along towards Kalgoorlie, as Arthur Upfield wrote a very good novel based in that area -  "Man of Two Tribes".
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Back to the crossing where there was a road heading south to the Eyre Highway at Yalata - another fairly corrugated road. It was now dark. Later I could see bright lights off to the left and assumed it must be a mine site as there are no towns out here. My GPS had me in the middle of a blank screen, with a message saying go to the nearest road. Finally a road appeared on the GPS, and a bit later I connected with an excellent bitumen road with white lines down the centre and the sides - and a sign indicating which way the Eyre Highway was. I was about 80km from the Eyre Highway. It started to rain and I thought how glad I was that I was not still on the dirt roads. It rained just about all the way to the WA border when I got on the highway. There were big road trains on that road with ore carrying trailers.

I'd been driving for 12 hours and fuel was getting down a bit and I knew that a lot of the fuel stops along the highway are not open all night. I bought 40L at Nullarbor thinking that would pretty well get me to Norseman - I was planning on driving all night. At the WA border check point I poured my 20L container into the fuel tank and that gave me a full tank - still with another 5L container in reserve. Many times I stopped at rest areas and walked about in the cold night air but eventually had to give up driving about 3 in the morning. I put the tent up and had 4 hours sleep. It had been a long day.

I had a fresh headwind all the way along the highway to here, and the other day had a headwind all the way north of Port Augusta. I'm getting about 8L to 100km, or 12.6km to the L.

Saturday 30th
I was on the road again as the first of the sun's rays hit me. I did get a few more L of fuel at Balladonia just to be on the safe side but think I would have been OK. Filled up at the Ampol station in Norseman and then noticed a long piece of hose hanging down under the car, and also one side of the spare tyre carrier hanging loose. The hose was easy, the same thing had happened to the hose on the other side last year. The plastic "hanger" had broken and just needed a couple of cable ties. I had spare nuts and bolts for the tyre carrier but not a big washer which was essential. Ampol didn't carry any of that stuff - and the hardware store had gone out of business. Fortunately the IGA have started to stock a bit of hardware and had the "mudguard" washers I needed - I now have a few spare ones.

Whenever I drive to Perth I always go on the Hyden-Norseman road - always. It goes past Lake Johnson which is a good place to stop for a break, or camp the night. I wouldn't go out of my way to camp here, it just happens to be on the way. This way to Perth (The Brookton Highway) also goes through Roleyston in the hills before Perth - which is where my baby sister lives.

Just for interest I asked Google maps for directions to the lake. It found the lake but had it in the centre of a blank area and could not give any directions on how to get to it. I then tried it with Hyden and  it directed me way down towards Esperance before heading back up to Hyden. Google Maps doesn't seem to know that the Hyden-Norseman road exists. I then tried the GPS in the car but it had never heard of the lake. But it did know about Hyden and directed me along the Hyden-Norseman road. If you leave the centre of Norseman you go across a salt lake area and causeway before joining on to the road.
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106km to Lake Johnson on a really great straight flat dirt road you could easily do 120kph on, when it is dry. They have started to seal parts of it.
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If there was one thing in the car that enjoyed yesterday's 12 hours of corrugated roads it was my laundry bucket - I've never seen so much dirt come out of clothes.
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There was some info that said Lake Johnson should probably be more correctly described as  "playa".
Too cool a breeze to bother about a fire tonight.

AT HYDEN. LAST UPDATE. COMPUTER PROBLEM. CAN'T CHARGE BATTERY. PUFF OF SMOKE OUT OF POWER SOCKET. WILL FIX IT WHEN I GET HOME.





Thursday 28th
The rest area was right next to the highway, and about 200m from the railway line so was a bit noisy till about 10pm, and then not much till 5am. I started on the tyre. I wasn't seriously thinking I'd drive across the Nullarbor with it -but thought that these types of damage could be repaired to a certain extent in an emergency. If you could put a big patch inside the tyre, and then an inner tube the patch should stop the tube bulging out of the tyre.
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So I took the tyre off the rim but only had one large patch and half a patch. I preferred to keep the big patch for a real emergency. Right now I was only a few km away from at least half a dozen tyre places. So I had a practice with the half patch.
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The inside of the tyre has little ridges which have to be ground off so the patch will sit flat. You need a carborundum wheel and an electric drill for this (which I imagine we all carry).
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Then the glue and then the patch.
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My first attempt to inflate it didn't work because I had pinched the tube and put a hole in it. I had to take one side of the tyre off the rim again and remove that tube and put the other one in..
It did bulge a bit but I think if I'd driven carefully on a sealed road it could have got me out of trouble.
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So then it was back to Dunlop where I bought the tubes and this time got the cheapest tyre they had. $110 later I was headed north.
I think I've ironed out all the wrinkles in the car and got rid of all the old and worn out pieces of gear (except the driver of course) and feel I'm as ready as I'll ever be for 1,000 km of dirt road.
I hadn't intended to stop at Kingoonya but noticed a camp ground just as I was leaving that I hadn't seen before. Piles of firewood, and rubbish bins, and fire pots. No signs that there was any charge for camping.
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Even I won't get through all that wood tonight - I may have to stop two nights. There are many piles like this all round the edge of the camp ground.
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My cracked rib seems to have mended. It has been very painfull the last few days - particularly if I coughed, or turned over in bed. Hardly noticed it last night or today.

Wednesday 27th
I was packed up and left well before 8am and drove north to Yunta. Then I continued going north because on my map there was a camping spot with facilities but no station marked anywhere near it. I had to see this. The route took me on some rough stony roads at times and unfortunately one sharp stone punctured a tyre. In the Hilux I used to carry 3 spare tyres but this car just has the normal spare. Since getting off the sealed highway yesterday I had the speed limiter set on 70kph. I now reduced that to 50kph and drove very carefully till back on the sealed road at Wilmington.
There were certainly a few ruins out in this area.
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And I found out that my Hema map doesn't show all the homesteads. This was the camp site with facilities.
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It was remiss of me not to be carrying at least a couple of spare inner tubes in case of wrecking a tyre and I made up for this by buying two when I got to Port Augusta. Also my thirty year old 40L water container was starting to weep out of the bottom so I bought a new one of those as well. Stocked up with food and fuel, including my 25L in cans, and had a shower at the service station.
Most people would have thrown the punctured tyre away as it is practically beyond repair but I am going to have a go before disposing of it altogether. So I have driven out of  Port Augusta to the first rest area I could stop in and will attempt the repair tomorrow. If I can fix it I am going to drive back into PA and round a bit just to test it - and if I can't fix it then I will go back to PA to get a new one. The car is weighed down with fuel, water, and food load.