Outback (near) Disaster

We have been in Australia for about a month now. I'll retrace our path in future entries, but yesterday's experience is fresh in my mind.

With a week to go before returning back to Seattle, we had decided to take a small outback adventure. We planned a three hour drive over non-all-weather roads to a roadside tavern, probably similar to the Lions Den, which we had visited. We left early (at least by our standards) and made several stops to photograph interesting places.

Not too far out of Cooktown I saw what looked like a Confederate flag. The photo reveals that it is a modified confederate flag with "The South will rise again" incorporated into the center. This may be someones idea of a joke, or it may be that Australia also attracts some Right Wing nuts to a land that is mostly empty.

The York Penninusula which is Northern Queensland has about 18,000 people and 45,000 square miles, or about 1 person for every three square miles.



The road had been smoothed by graters, but had a washboard texture that kept us at about 40 Kilometers per hour (25mph). This stretch of road had a very red color. Other stretches were green. Our grandson Ty's performance group is named The Red Dirt Players.




























The scenery was more or less like the photo with the warning sign for a crest of a hill. There were many small trees and a background of granite boulders. It reminded me of scenes from the early Westerns.





We would occasionally come to a compelling place to rest our backs from the vibrating caused by the washboard pattern of the road.

Our first major destination was to be a lake inside the Lakewood National Park. A good portion of the York Peninsula is National Park or Aboriginal Land. There seems to be a cooperative administration of these lands.

We crossed over the beginning and end of the Battlecamp Station (Ranch),

and then went no further.

Our daughter's Mitsubishi Pajero stopped. With no sign of impending doom, it just stopped running. We spent the next 2 1/2 hours waiting for a car to pass.

The first of the only two cars we saw was a truck driven by a Queensland Wild Life Ranger (I could tell by his uniform) and an aboriginal cohort (no uniform). They tried to figure out our problem, but could not. They let us use their satellite phone to call our daughter. She and her husband enlisted the aid of some friends and promissed that someone would be to us within another 2 1/2 hours.

While we waited in the heat, with very little shade, a second car passed us. It was occupied by a French couple. They asked if they could help, but we assured the we would be okay. If they had been the first car, we could have hitched a ride to a phone, another hour down the road. Cell phones don't work in the outback. One needs a satellite phone. We could easily have spent the night in the car. We had food and water, and the nights are still warm, and there are no aggressive preditors (just don't step on a Taipan going to the bathroom! It is the world's most poisonous snake, and we had seen one in Kuranda). Sarah and Paul would have organized a search for the next day.

In almost exactly 2 1/2 hours, Paul showed up driving Ray and Nanette's Mitsubishi Somethingoranother,that isn't sold in the states. Ray had helped us plan this trip. Nanette is a PA like Sarah, and Ray is a retired airline pilot, who is enjoying being a kept man. Paul had all the equipment he could need to tow his car back to town.

We dropped the car at the local repair station, where it sits no. On of Sarah's co-workers loaned her a car, so we will be able to get around. Today everyone was walking and bicycling to cricket, swimming, the market and the IGA (Independent Grocers of Australia). I had been coming down with a cold, which I nursed today with my 1000 units of C every hour.

It took us several hours, with many stops to reconnect the broken hose-like cord that we used to connect the cars. By the end, we had learned to coordinate the towing process so as to not break the connection.