MONDAY 4 JUNE     OLD POLICE WATERHOLE

I was up at 7.30am.

The morning was cloudy, but it was high cloud. There was a strong breeze – from the S-SE. The day remained quite cool, due to the wind, and remained cloudy. At one stage, I wondered if it might rain? The track back out could be a bit tricky in spots if it got really wet. But, I thought to myself, if the worst happened, this was not a bad place to be marooned for a while.

Most of the morning time was devoted to man-work on a broken down Lexus. Yesterday, it had come up the rough Hatches Creek track from the south. The first we knew of any problem was when a couple of men came to our camp to see if John had a drill. He did. He also had the genset to run it with, so there was a considerable unpack of the back of Truck.

The Lexus was three camps back from us, but people from three  other camps ended up involved – us, and two lots who were packed up ready to go, as was the Lexus.

It seemed the tumblers in the ignition slot had collapsed, which meant the steering was locked and the airbag suspension was uneven.

One couple had a sat phone and they managed to get onto the guy’s Toyota dealer, and eventually got almost step by step instructions how to demolish the innards of the steering column. It was really convoluted – there was so much stuff packed in there! Wiring central…..

It took about three hours, and several sat phone calls, but the men finally got it pulled apart, to the point where a screwdriver stuck into something, would allow it to function.

M and I, having a functioning camp, made hot drinks for the others, and eventually I cooked some lunch for all  – savoury pikelets.

The woman from the Lexus was not at all well – it was not really made clear what was wrong with her.  They were intending, from here, to go north to Barkly Homestead on the Barkly Highway – some 150kms of very rough track. They did not leave here until 2pm. We hoped, for her sake, that they make it through with no more breakdowns. I thought they would have been much safer going out the way  we’d come, but the man seemed determined to stick to his original plan. I thought he was ill-advised to do so, particularly given that, of all the guys working on the vehicle fix, he’d seemed to know the least!

After that little demo, they could keep their fancy expensive vehicle – we would stick with the much less sophisticated, but more rugged, Defender!

With not a great deal of the day left, M and John fished in the waterhole. John had caught some crabs and water beetles, overnight, in a net. The fish proved totally not interested, so the crabs were let go, having failed as bait.

While they were thus occupied, I went for a walk – for two hours – down the road to the south of the campground, some of the very rough Frew River Loop Track.

The scenery was interesting and the walk was good exercise. M and John walked out and met me as I was returning. John did not have his Skins on, and his hip was playing up.

Spent some time at camp admiring the sunset over the waterhole.

The progression of the sunset…….

We had the usual quiet evening by the campfire, and an early night.

It was very windy through the night.