The Road to Lake Eyre – Part 2

Are you ready to find out how we ended up in Bourke, NSW?

Well, this is how it went down.

If you recall, I had taken over the driving at Eulo and we had just turned onto the first of a long stretch of dirt roads, heading for Hungerford. After driving a couple of hours, I pulled over as Peter needed a comfort break. I got out of the car for a bit of a stretch while Peter did what needed to be done. I could hear a heavy stream of water and thought, He’s been holding that in waaay to long. Then I noticed water spilling out from Chunky Bum’s door.

I voiced a few expletives as I ran to get the key, then a few more when I opened the door and was greeted by a torrent of water. By this time Peter had heard my distress calls, and when he realised what had happened, add a few expletives of his own.

Somewhere along the corrugated road our kitchen tap had “bounced” open, and while we drove merrily along, it had emptied our entire supply of water, some one hundred and eighty litres, into the sink. Shouldn’t be too much of a problem, except…we were carrying our coffee machine in the sink and had used tea towels as packing. This, of course, was a very effective method of blocking the sink hole. Once the sink was full…well you can guess the rest. One hundred and eighty litres.

We were lucky, if you can call it that, that we had stopped near the entrance of the Currawinya National Park. There was a large area with an information board and a turnaround point, which allowed us to get fully off the road.

Grabbing every towel we could get our hands on we started mopping. Once the thick was up we took a break, surveyed the damage, and made our plan of attack. The plan was simple, while I prepared the tables and floor mat, (remember we were in red dirt territory) Peter started to pass out everything that was wet. As it turned out, that was everything. Well… almost everything.

The water had gotten into all the floor level cupboards, as well as the cupboard and six drawers under the sink. It had also drenched everything stored under the bed and my electric piano, which lives at the foot of the bed.  

While we were working, we had a visit from a Ranger who thought we were planning to camp there for the night (I mean who camps like this?) we eventually convinced him were not going to stay and he wished us luck and went on his way.

Four and a half hours after our arrival we had put away everything that was dry, scattered the ‘still damp stuff’ around the van, and put the ‘still wet stuff’ in the back of the canopy. We made a cheese sandwich and washed it down with an ice-cold beer, then congratulated ourselves on our lovely clean caravan, before getting back on the road to Hungerford.

About an hour later, we pulled over so I could take photos of a family of Brolgas. Things were looking up. Not! That was when we noticed that the ceiling hatch over our bed that Peter had closed, hadn’t.

Interesting fact from Peter: As you drive, the pressure on the outside of the van is considerably higher than the slight vacuum created on the inside of the van, so any dust will be sucked into the vacuum – it’s just physics! What this means, in short, is that dust gets into places where you don’t even know you have places! Oh Joy.

All I can say is it’s a good thing Peter likes cleaning 😊.

You know how I always look for a silver lining? Well, I was struggling that day, but… I did find one. We thought that all our water had been pumped onto the floor of the van. Not so. The pump doesn’t reach all the way to the bottom of the tank, so there was some water left for emergencies.

However, we didn’t realise this until after we arrived at Hungerford. In a case of deja vu, I noticed that there was water leaking from the bottom of the tank. Yep, somewhere between the “Big Flood”, the “Dust Debacle” and the dirt road to Hungerford, a stone had hit and snapped a connection off the bottom of the front water tank and leaked out the very last of our precious water!

So not only did we not have any water at all, but we also couldn’t refill the tank ‘cause it had a bloody great hole in it. Not that it would have made any difference. You see there was no drinking water available for travellers at Hungerford. Could it get any worse?

Apparently so. Big Ears (car) had a falling out with Chunky Bum (caravan). Big Ears decided he didn’t want to share his battery with the dead weight he had been dragging behind him for the past year and a half, so he simply cut off supply. So poor old Chunky Bum had to rely on solar energy alone.

In Peter-speak – The isolator had an intermittent fault and inhibited the 12 volt supply from the car to the Anderson plug, so the caravan batteries would slowly discharge as we used more power than the solar panels could provide. This needed to be fixed.

Talking of things to be fixed, we’re don’t yet know if we burnt out the water pump. We’ll have to wait until Peter fixes the tank, so we can fill it, and test the pump. Fingers crossed.

And that my friends, is why we are now in Bourke. No caravan charging from the car, no water, no water tank, no Strzelecki Track.

Oh, and we’re thinking of trading the van in for a boat.

See you out there somewhere

On tow and on the go!