July 30-31 (Day 181-182) - Laura to Coen

July 30

Although we'd only been at Laura for a couple of days we'd grown quite fond of it. As mentioned it is quite basic, but it's cheap, reasonably quiet, has lovely cool evenings, and plenty of sun for charging the van's batteries. Nonetheless we wanted to continue on our journey, particularly as Mim had only bought about a week's worth of food, on the assumption we'd be up and back in about a week (ho ho...!)

I made some adjustments to the voltage and current meter I'd installed - it had been supplied with an oversized current shunt, which meant the current gauge read far too low. Fortunately it was just a matter of hacking away enough metal from the shunt to increase resistance to the correct point so it read accurately. This done, we quickly calibrated it, us three boys had a haircut, and we were off. I guess it would have been about 12pm by the time we left.

Bye bye bitumen, hello dirt!

One of the caretakers at the caravan park had recommended we go to the Laura Roadhouse to get fuel and supplies so we topped up the fuel tanks there and Mim got a bit of extra food. We then headed north for a while until we hit the first patch of dirt road. We weren't sure how long it was going to go for but it was fairly rough on the hard tyres we had, so we dropped the tyres to between 26-30psi (usually about 40) as a bit of a compromise between dirt and bitumen.

Time to drop tyre pressures!

This done, we continued on our journey. The roads in most places are quite wide, but their condition varies a lot. We were fortunate to get some sections which had literally just been graded, like the one below. When I say 'just', I mean, as it, the grader, then the water sprayer, then the roller, all went past us while we were doing the tyres! So that part was lovely and smooth. Some other sections though were quite bad.

Dry, dusty and wide

It's surprising how dry things appear to be up here. I had imagined Cape York Peninsula was basically a rainforest the whole way, but so far it's been more like the upper portion of Northern Territory, say north of Katherine. Not dead dry and arid like the centre, but still drier than I expected. As you can see, there are trees, but they're all eucalypts and smaller scrubbier bushes.

Hann River Roadhouse - lunchtime!

Our next stop was Hann River Roadhouse for lunch, which was only about 60km north from Laura. We hadn't really travelled far but there wasn't much food at Laura so this was a nice place to stop for lunch. Again we topped up the fuel tanks. We're doing this because we understand fuel is only going to get more expensive as we go, so while we're only putting 10 litres or so in at a time, it'll be saving a bit.

Microwaved pies and sausage rolls, but still yum!

Hann River Roadhouse. A nice green oasis in a surprisingly dry desert!

One thing we were warned about at Hann River was 'dust holes'. These are holes in the road which fill with dust but which can't support any weight, so if you drop into one you just drop to the bottom of the hole! The lady we spoke to said there was one that was 4ft deep somewhere! Apparently the dust of dust holes is usually a different colour to that of the surrounding road. Some of them are also sign-posted, but many are not. Sounds like a fun lottery to play...!

Another 50-60km brought us to Musgrave Station roadhouse. Again this wasn't that far to travel, but you do have to travel slower on the dirt roads, especially playing 'dust hole lotto', which thankfully we avoided! As we drove in there was a cow moseying along by the side of the track in, so clearly it's a pretty laid back place!

"My highway is my way, I've beared the toll;
I'm as Australian, as ..." :)
https://youtu.be/_7mDwdbQvUI

Again we refuelled here. Fuel prices are about $1.50/L for diesel, which is probably not too bad considering how far it has to be transported. Musgrave Station, like Hann River Station, has an old Ampol sign out the front! Ampol is apparently making a comeback in Australia soon, with the Ampol brand to take over from Caltex (due to a brand licensing issue with Texaco). But these are the old traditional signs from the 90's I'd say!

One interesting feature of Musgrave Station is that 1) it has an air strip right alongside the main road out of the station, which you can see in the photo below; and 2) their Brahman cattle seem to like hanging around this spot! They didn't seem bothered by the cars coming and going.

Hopefully the pilots know to check the runway for
cattle before landing!!

This cow even tried to wander into the shop gardens before being
shooed out by the annoyed owner!

Aaaand then, we come to the most interesting part of the day. We'd left later in the day than we wanted and we were really wanting to stop, but we were trying to get to Coen where we had phone signal. We were about 25km from Coen and it was after 5pm, which is when shadows start getting longer. These were already making it a bit challenging on the dirt roads as it was getting harder to spot changes in surface conditions.

But the real issue came when a small 'roo decided to cross our path... :(

Thankfully we were able to patch things up and get on our way to Coen. A nice driver stopped and drove ahead of us as a pilot to ensure nothing else jumped out at us.

Once we arrived we pulled into a nice sandy spot by the river bank. Unfortunately the sand was quite a bit softer than we expected, and in trying to turn around we got our rig nicely stuck! This is a shallow, freshwater stream which is the only reason I went in, but I didn't realise it would sink into the sand quite so much.

What followed then was about a three hour effort to get everything back where we wanted it!

First up we had to get the car out, which we managed quite easily. I had bought some 'X Bull' recovery tracks, which are basically a cheap version of 'MaxTrax'. But despite their cheap price ($65 for a pair, vs $220 for Maxtrax), they did a great job and we used them probably a dozen times. I threw these under the back wheels initially and we got out fine.

Next thing was the caravan. This was a challenge, because with the drawbar so close to the water and the sand in the river so soft, there was really no option for towing it out directly with the car, and the sand right along the river bank was fairly mobile as well. The sand is quite coarse, and it seems to just slide around the wheels rather than pack down, particularly when there's some water in it.

So we decided to move the car onto firmer sand and use a tow rope to pull the drawbar sideways to pivot the van around and get it roughly parallel with the bank. This meant the jockey wheel would be taking the weight of the front of the van, and trying to run through soft sand, but fortunately Mim spotted a piece of corrugated iron which just happened to be sitting nearby (amazing...!), which was the perfect thing to do the job.

(You may remember it was Mim who also found that thick piece of steel on the side of the road on our last trip when the caravan's leaf spring broke, and her discovery was part of what allowed us to do a successful fix and get back into Katherine. Mim is clearly the materials expert in the team!)

Fortunately before we left we had bought a recovery kit, which included a couple of 'snatch straps', some bow shackles and other bits of towing gear. They have been sitting lonely at the back of one of the drawers in the car until tonight, when their moment of glory came. And they worked a treat in the end! There were some fellow campers who offered to help us but we figured we could manage it ourselves. Lovely of them to offer, and it was nice knowing that was a backup plan if we needed it.

So this recover plan worked pretty well. The car slid around a bit and the recovery tracks were really useful for keeping some traction - as was the diff lock in the car.

Night was approaching as we were working through this but we managed pretty well. This photo below is with a towrope around the draw-bar of the caravan, which was connected to the short snatch strap, which in turn was connected to a recovery point we installed in place of the towball, for the recovery.

Mim, Matt and I worked on the recovery while Bek and Jude sat in the car reading books, and occasionally complaining about being hungry. Poor souls, of course we were warmed and filled out in the dark and the wet weren't we??! In truth there wasn't a lot more than an extra set of hands could have done.

The evening was then basically:

1. Having the car on firm sand and using the strap + rope to pull the van sideways
2. Repositioning the car to pull the van around as far as possible
3. Install the towball and try to reverse the van back up into the clearing we were originally aiming for.

Typically what happened in step 3 is that the weight of the van fairly quickly pushed the car sideways towards the river, but each time we did it we got the van further back and straighter. So we'd repeat the process, straighten it more, push a bit more and so on until we got it done. It was a slow job!

Another complication which emerged was that the thread on the clamp holding the jockey wheel in place started to strip out, which was the only thing holding the front of the van up! So we had to be very careful as we approached the end of the job that this didn't slip and drop the nose into the sand!


However by about 8:30pm we had the job done and the van on level ground! We flopped into the van while Bek made Spam and cheese on corn things for tea (incredibly delicious when you're hungry!) and went straight to bed!

The gun recovery team!

Friday, July 31

Well this was our view in the morning. What a lovely spot and this is why we came here! The Coen River runs right past here, in fact we're in what would be the river bed during the wet season. However it's a well advertised camp ground. We slept like logs (unsurprisingly) and didn't wake until about 8:30. Even though we were by the road it was very quiet, and so peaceful!

The kids had some time to play in the stream. There are no crocs up in this area.

We headed into Coen in the afternoon where a local mechanic said he'd be able to provide us with a new bolt for the jockey wheel clamp. Frustratingly when we came to set up tonight we found it was the wrong thread, and the only reason he'd gotten it to fit was because he'd used a big thumping wheel brace to force it in and most likely damaged the threads on the nut! Anyway we'll see about getting another one tomorrow.

After Coen we wanted to go back to the roo accident from yesterday to collect a few bits of trim which had come off, in particular a surround from the front right fog light. As we had the dashcam footage of the accident, which also recorded GPS co-ordinates, we were able to pinpoint the exact location of the accident. We fairly quickly found the roo, and several bits of plastic trim as well.

It was actually surprising how far the 'roo had been thrown - from the point of impact it had probably been catapulted about 30-40 metres up the road. No wonder the poor thing was dead. I know it's 'just' a kangaroo, but we all felt pretty sad having seen the little thing jumping across the road full of life yesterday, to seeing it lying there with flies and crows on it only a day later.

Having collected the bits of trim, we drove back into Coen and camped a little further along the road. There are a number of camp spots here along the Coen River, and this one was on much firmer ground and with a wider and deeper river (although also with a number of extra people camping here - still they were quiet enough).

The boys found a wash-out gully and immediately set to work making tracks for their toy cars! Bek gathered some fire wood, and while Mim got on with cooking tea I took a look at the car to work out what had actually happened. A piece of plastic trim was still dragging on the wheel a bit so I wanted at least to secure that. There was certainly a bit of damage to the points at which the bumper bar attaches, so we'll need to get that looked at properly... somewhere...! Not quite sure where yet!

-- Greg