Wrapping up

Well what an adventure it was! We'd planned for 11 months away and ended up with 16 and a bit! In total we travelled about 53,000km and the car scarcely missed a beat! We have seen some incredible parts of Australia, but most importantly we've had really valuable family time together while doing it.

June 10 (Day 399) - Wilmington to home

During the night we'd heard sheep and goats bleating on the hills nearby. I daresay they were cold because we sure were! After a morning cup of tea (for the kids too) for our sore throats, we left our campsite early again and headed straight into Wilmington.

The view from our camp spot near Wilmington

 

June 9 (Day 398) - Marree to Wilmington

June 9 is the day we expected to finish our trip, however the best-laid plans of mice and men so often go astray!

Sunrise

Our camp just out of Marree

7am outside Marree - the cold is well and truly upon us!

7 degrees!

June 8 (Day 397) - Oodnadatta to Marree

 Oodnadatta is a pretty small town, similar in feel to Birdsville. We dropped into the Pink Roadhouse for a coffee and a bit of food. Fuel was about $2 per litre so we were thankful we filled up all the jerry cans at $1.52/L in Marla.

The Pink Roadhouse, Oodnadatta

Inside the Pink Roadhouse - included a decent enough sized store

June 6-7 (Day 395-396) - Alice Springs (NT) to Oodnadatta (SA)

 We enjoyed the Memorial Meeting on Sunday with Nat and his family in Alice Springs, along with a Sis Lisa who joined us for the day. We tuned into Cumberland's meeting where Bro Trevor Gore exhorted on the lessons we can learn from the rebuilding work of the wall of Jerusalem under Nehemiah. After that we enjoyed a roast lamb lunch (thanks Nat!) and packed up.

Our camp in Alice Springs!

Lunchtime - Nat, Lisa, Keelan, Bek, Roha, Jude, Elora, Ollie, Matt, Mim, Greg

May 21 - June 5 (Day 379-394) - Kununurra to Alice Springs (via the Tanami Rd)

Kununurra

We stayed in Kununurra for a few days. We had one night at the Hidden Valley caravan park. Next morning we found one of the caravan tyres had a slow puncture. The tyres were getting very low anyway and I had been debating changing them in Kununurra (expensive) vs taking a risk and hoping they'd limp us back to Adelaide (cheaper). The puncture tipped the scales in favour of replacing the tyres so we got four new tyres put on at the Bridgestone dealer. They weren't actually too expensive, I think about $210 per tyre compared to $180 or so for a comparable tyre in Perth.

New tyres for the van!

May 10 - 20 (Day 369-378) - Derby to Kununurra via the Gibb River Road

 

660km drive along the Gibb River Road

Monday May 10 - Tuesday May 11 - Mount Hart Station

EDIT: We have a video we hope to have of a lot more content of the Gibb River Road. When we have it finished we'll update this post but for now the priority is getting the content updated!

We set off from our overnight stop on the side of the Gibb River Road. This section of the road is all bitumen so it wasn't anything unusual.

Our rest stop for the night

Fixing the back of the toolbox

About 20km along the dirt road appeared ahead of us, so we pulled over just to check everything was nice and tight. The rear toolbox was slightly loose, but in the process of tightening it up I managed to break one of the bracket bolts holding it on. This led to 30 minutes with drill and angle grinder to set things right!