3rd June: The day started out with such promise! We were leaving Mt Hart and heading for Birdwood Downs. We had driven the Mt Hart road to get to Mt Hart only 2 days ago, what could possibly go wrong?? Unfortunately such confidence was misplaced! We said our goodbyes and set off! We went through a water crossing without event and then we hit the mud and became firmly wedged in its deep and squelchy clutches!! Nic and I tried everything! Wearing our gumboots we placed the 2 Max Trax in front of the two most stuck wheels. We placed loose grass behind and in front of each wheel and we detached the spade from the roof and Nic tried to dig the wheels out as we filled the holes with grass. An hour went by! We weren’t very far from the station so I decided to go back for help wearing my gumboots, which filled with water at the first river crossing. Wet gumboots are very hard to take off and standing up I could not lift my leg high enough to drain them á la Kurt, so I just kept walking! Got to the Lodge to find that the 2 Mt Hart Landcruisers with all the recovery gear had gone to Broome that morning for supplies!
The manager called upon Jay, the extremely practical helicopter pilot who helped us when we first arrived to repair our damaged caravan step with a new long screw! At the same time Kurt arrived offering to help! Jay had a powerful HiLux and fortunately we had all the recovery gear we had purchased pre trip-in pristine condition but without the purchasers really knowing how to used it!!So the three of us set off to the rescue where we found Nic still trying very hard to unbog us!
The gear we had turned out to be great! There was an attachment for replacing the towbar on the HiLux with a metal piece through which you thread a slightly stretchy rope hook attached to a long stretchy tow rope attached by another stretchy rope loop to our recovery point on the Prado!! Technology in its place!! It worked brilliantly and in no time we were towed free of our muddy prison! I gave our 2 saviours the remaining cash I had which was $70 each- which of course they were reluctant to accept! We then had to recover the extremely dirty MaxTrax from the mud and put then in the wood carrier at the front of the caravan. The extremely muddy spade went into the plastic bags the recovery gear had come out of!
By this time we were covered in mud, especially Nic, so when we crossed the next stream we stopped and washed ourselves, the MaxTrax, the spade and our gumboots! We both had blisters from the gumboots by this time!
We then set off for the rest of the 50km road to joint the Gibb River Road- another 1.5 hours! We had half a dozen river crossings but it was the muddy areas that were the most challenging! Nic followed the track of previous vehicles and kept going straight instead of swerving!
The Gibb River Road was a snack compared to the Mt Hart Road! The low fuel light came on, so we stopped at Queen Victoria’s head and emptied one very heavy Jerry can containing 20 litres of diesel into the tank needing both of us to hold the jerrycan whilst we funnelled the diesel into the Prado!
We finally reached Birdwood Downs where Craig and Jill were patiently waiting for us! We set up camp and I cooked us a shakshuka made from the frozen Vegie sauce to which I added half a jar of chilli jam and 4 eggs. Craig provided us with a Pepperjack Shiraz and Jill provided fresh berries and yogurt!
Comments
Post a Comment