It was good catching up with Mum, likewise with Greg in Bali, and also all of our friends at the wedding. But back to the job at hand – driving around Australia, and although it felt like we’d already done a lot, we looked at the map and realised we had much more ahead of us!? With Maria serviced and re packed we cruised on down the Hwy. A quick roadside lunch at Katherine, a right hand turn, and we headed west.
After a night in Gregory NP we had all these other wonderful NP’s lined up. Walks and waterfalls, oasis in the desert. Then, 13,000km from home, Maria lost power and spluttered and jumped rather slowly for 40km across the NT/WA border into Kununnura. Darwin mechanics? Our luck ran dry real quick. Maria was sick. The border control took our evergreen herb garden and all our fruit and veg, and to top it off Steve reversed into a pole after booking Maria into the local motor hospital. Broken down and broken door. Yep the back door was wedged unopenable. “Lets work while we are stuck here” Jess says attempting to stay positive. Nope, after 4 days we cound’t find a job in Kununurra to save our lives. So, with the help of a panel beater we got the back door working again, and Sever from East Kimberly Mechanics tuned Maria up as best he could but diagnosed her needing some minor surgery – a new fuel pump. But, the pump was in Perth, so it could be in Broome in a day, or we had to wait another 4 days for it to arrive in Kununnara. With LPG available, and Maria tuned to go up to 80km/hr on a failing fuel pump, we opted to leave for Broome immediately. Priorities were set. 1. No detouring off into beautiful NP’s 2. Fix Maria, work, and surf. Or surf then work.
There’s plenty of road and Boab trees between Darwin and Broome. We picked up the new fuel pump and had it installed for a carton of emu bitter. Ok, next, work? There’s a Pearl Industry in Broome but we literally missed the boat by one day! We took our first WA swim at Pt Gantheaume but reality was we needed to work pronto if we were going to do a month of yoga during November in Thailand. The wheels on the bus rolled further south. You guessed it, more road between Broome and Carnarvon, lots more. Visiting 80 Mile Beach and Coral Bay on the way we finally arrived in Carnarvon (?where there was hopefully a job for us?) 9 days after leaving Darwin.
