So from Exmouth we started the long drive to Karijini national park. About 718 kms away. The temperature rising and now creeping above 40.c.
We stopped a bit before the halfway mark at the tiny Nanutarra roadhouse surrounded by hot dry bush and red earth. Here we left the air conditioned luxury of our caravan to look at the sunset.
The next day we carried on through the bush with no phone reception and very little traffic.
I made the fatal mistake of saying imagine breaking down out here!
And that's exactly what did happen! The tyre shredded on a one lane bridge and the caravan began swaying behind me and I had to quickly get off the road and on to some flat dirt damaging the awning on the other side against a tree. We got out to see all the electric wires from inside the caravan on that side pulled out and wrapped around the shredded tyre and the trim broken. It was 41.c and midday as we now had to jack up a 3 ton van and change the tyre for the first time ever. We left the kids in the car with the engine running and the A/C on which was a worry but had to be done. Luckily Stef found in the manual where to jack the van up and we sweated away doing this for over an hour. I ended up staggering around spraying myself with our little water spray bottle as I was overheating! Finally the tyre was changed and we could carry on to the little mining town of Paraburdoo to set up camp in the odd campground there surrounded by large trailer accommodation for the miners when they have a shut down. But with all our electric wires wrecked we had no aircon or fridge!
So I found out where the local pool was for us all to cool down and recover from the day's dramatic events.
Without our cooker and fridge we decided to go to the local tavern for a Sunday roast and a cold beer and enjoy the aircon as still like an oven outside. Toby now in a high chair and enjoying joining in with the family meals.
After a hot night without aircon we got a local electrician to come around and do some emergency repairs to get our eclectrics working again and the aircon back on. I used our time at this campground to clean up our dusty belongings. Our insurance company were great and said everything would be covered and so not to worry.
Whilst I cleaned everything the girls enjoyed a dip in our laundry buckets to escape the intense heat.
The campground at Paraburdoo with it's Rio Tinto miner's temporary accommodation trailers.
We were just about the only ones there which felt odd.
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