The Skerritts: On The Road Again (Finale)

Up and at 'em nice and early and driving by 6am. The idea was to get to Jurien Bay, spend the night there as its then only 2 hours back to Perth. Jurien Bay is 10 hours drive from Coral Bay!!

Dry river bed

Dryish river bed

V V dry river bed

Yet another river bed, having a dry old time eh?

We past a lot of supposed 'rivers', non of which had any water in them. However, judging by the width and depth of the river banks, they must get a hell of a lot at some part of the year.
About 3 hours into the journey we came across a place called Gladstone Lookout. It has no facilities whatsoever, but its one of only a few places that you are allowed to camp legally over night. We decided this would be a good place for breaky. The views were just incredible, that's as long as you like looking at complete nothingness! The total silence at this place was simply deafening!

North

South

East

And Wend!

There was some sort of shrine to some bloke or other who had spent many days at this spot but had eventually croaked it and his missus decided this would be the place he would have wanted to rest.
This pile of junk had all sorts including lots of gnomes, thongs (flip flops), tea pots, kettles, old pairs of knickers and even bra's. Makes you wonder who had left them and if that's why the old bugger liked it so much and exactly what he was doing up there all the time!!!

Grannies bra front right.

Tea pot top right.

Whilst we were aloft we came across this dutch chap, Tom, who had left Melbourne last January with all his worldly goods strapped to his push bike.

He had cycled along the south coast of Australia as far as a ferry, hopped across to Tasmania, cycled around that, hopped across to New Zealand, cycled around the North AND South island, come back onto Australia mainland, headed north to Queensland, right across the top of Oz, and was now dropping down WA on his way to Margaret River. Then it would be along the Nullabor (5,000 km's, it also boasts the longest straight piece of road in Australia, also the longest golf course in the world, mentioned in earlier blogs),

The sign says it all!

and back to Melbourne, hoping to be back there in April 2013. He had already done 20,000 km's (about 12,500 miles), on his own, most nights camping at the side of any road he happened to be on when night fell.

Basic or what?

Oh yeah, sometimes the complete nutter would cycle at NIGHT, dressed in his BLACK cycling outfit, mental absolutely mental when you think of the size of some of the road trains that you have over here.

This coming up behind you when you are on a push bike would sort your constepation out!

We gave him a cuppa, someone else came up and gave him a beer, and another couple gave him a cup cake. All of which he gobbled down PDQ.
You should check out his blog http://thodo.nl, its all written using an Ipod he found at the side of the road at the beginning of his adventure. In particular look at the map of what he has done to date and check out his journal dated 14th October 2012, near enough a name check I'd say.
Some of the photo's are mind blowing, particularly when he is camped up and the road trains at night.
Check out the one of The Huntsman spider he found in his billy can, wow, scary.

The Girls.

Here he is, Tom The Mad Dutchman, even looks like a Smurf.

The lady on the left is Valerie. She has been on the road for 10 years +

Well, all us Knights of the Road said our good byes and set off south again. About an hour later our nightmare started, first we had a blow out on the right near side tyre whilst we were overtaking the biggest Winnebago and trailer you have ever seen.

Uh Uh!!!!!!

No, not a snake, what was left of the tyre

We were about 370 km's (230m) from Canarvon in the north and 420 km's (265m) from Geraldton in the south. Jurien Bay? Well that was a further 195km's (122m) on from Geraldton.

Right

in the

middle

of F*****G NO WHERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Add to that, we had no mobile phone signal, the jack to change the wheel was a scissor type, the kind you would find in your everyday Ford Fiesta, how the hell were we to jack up two tonnes of truck when the offending wheel is now sitting off road on sand?
Luckily, a passing motorist stopped, who did have a mobile phone signal and they let us use the phone.
Very long story short, we contacted the RAC Roadside assist, who were based in Shark Bay, two and a half hours away, they said they would be with us asap. This took about 45 mins to sort, by this time the couple who let us use their phone needed to go, they were going to a wedding in Coral Bay would you believe? So I then decided to go to The Overlander Roadhouse, about 15 miles back north, so I could use the land line telephone and just check that the RAC man was actually on his way. I flagged down a guy going north who gave me a lift, I have never seen a guy as big as this one. He made Giant Haystacks look like a midget, I'm still not quite sure how he got in the car (it was the equivalent of a Ford Mondeo in size) and even less sure how he gets out!
Anyway, all good with the RAC man who confirmed his man would be setting off asap. Hitched a lift back to the van whereupon, Valerie who we had met at Galdstone Lookout had arrived and was asking if we needed any assistance, very nice of her but nothing she could do. I think the final ignominy would have been if Tom had caught us up and gone cycling on by, but he never showed, thank God. Another chap stopped, Kevin, who was also in a Winnebago, had a proper trolley jack which he let us use, even hooked up his portable genny to our van so we could turn on the AC and keep the kids cool.
Well, 5 guys had different attempts to remove the spare from under the van, non of which managed to release it. Nothing left to do but wait for the RAC man.
Four hours later 'Fuddy' showed up.

'Fuddy', no the steel toetectors, not even a uniform. Aren't RAC vans blue!

Well, all our man had was a trolley jack, a battery operated hand held disc cutter and a piece of cardboard (he used this to lie on to get under the truck!)
The first problem he had was he, like us, couldn't get the spare off, so he just cut the wire with the disc cutter. Then he couldn't get the remainder of the tyre off the wheel as it had wrapped itself around the wheel. It was like he was trying to remove a porcupine it was so sharp. Luckily our kind Kevin had a pair of industrial gloves otherwise we would still be there now.

'Fuddy' and Kevin

Well, 4 hours after our incident we were up and running again. I can't tell you how stressful it is driving in the wilderness without a spare tyre.We were definitely not going to make Jurien Bay by nightfall, we were struggling to reach Geraldton!

Finally pulled into Geraldton about 8pm, first van site wouldn't let us in as we were too late in the evening, so eventually we got into Bel-Air Gardens Caravan Park (sounds fancy eh, wasn't too bad really)

First thing we needed to do was to get some food, so opted for an Indian, we had spotted a takeaway just on the way into Geraldton.

Got back to the site, ate the scram (its about 10.15pm by now) then Our Wend went off to the ablutions block and I went off for a shower. I'm in the shower and can hear all this screaming and shouting, just thought it was some lively spirited kids or something like that. Then I heard it again and it sounded like Our Wend. Put a towel on and went out side, Our Wend was screaming that we had been robbed. Sure enough, a couple of 'Bogans' had entered the van and helped themselves to two hand bags and both mobile phones.

The Police rang the next morning to tell us that overnight they had caught the buggers and retrieved the two bags but no mobile phone and could we go in and make a statement? What we later discovered was that they had taken the disposable underwater camera with all the shots of Little Niamh snorkeling at Coral Bay, bastards.

Burglary is the single biggest crime problem in Geraldton, with between 50 and 75 every night! Little bit of useless information.

Welcome to Geraldton eh?

We finally got back to Perth about 4pm Monday all in one piece, with a cool 1,800 miles behind us,