Aug 2 (Day 184) - Bramwell Station to Bramwell Roadhouse

Well this was SUPPOSED to be the day we headed up to the tip! But the best laid plans of mice and men...

The day started with some welcome rain! We actually had some last night but there was a bit more this morning, probably only a couple of millimetres but it was lovely to cool the air down and dampen the dust slightly.

Ah! Some welcome rain!

We packed up and Matt was driving the car and van out, and I asked Mim to check one of the brakes on the caravan was squeaking.  She looked surprised wh

Eurk! That's not supposed to be like that!

en Matt put the van brakes on and asked me to come and have a look – when the brakes went on, the whole rear right wheel shifted backwards about 10cm! Oh dear. The only other time I’ve seen this was on our last road trip, and sure enough on closer inspection with a sense of foreboding, I found the cause was the same – a broken leaf spring!

This time the main leaf had snapped about 10cm in from the end.  On reflection we figured this probably happened at the unmarked Dip in the road yesterday.

Sproing!

This threw a huge spanner in the works. I spoke to the staff at the station and they said there was a mechanic - ‘Les’, at the roadhouse who might be able to help. I spoke to him on the phone, and it didn’t sound particularly promising but said he’d have a look.

The van was still driveable – the back of the van’s weight was now resting on the end of a single leaf (normally this one’s helping the main leaf which broke), so it was running roughly in a straight line, but we didn’t want to hit too many bumps.  Of course if it had indeed happened when we thought then we’d travelled a fair distance with it already just on one leaf, but we didn’t want to take any chances. So we limped the 6.5km up the road to the roadhouse and had a chat to Les. He took a quick look and said we’d need a new spring, which we’d probably have to get from either Weipa or Cairns. Being Sunday nothing is open today, so we pulled into the camping area behind the roadhouse for the afternoon and intend to make some calls first thing tomorrow morning to find out where we need to go.

We have a few options. If there’s one in Weipa, we could leave the van here and drive back. It’s only a couple of hundred kilometres either way (of course in metropolitan terms I know that ‘only’ sounds ridiculous and out of place in that sentence, but it’s not too far in country terms). If we have to get one from Cairns, then freighting one up via the next service truck or the mail plane might be an option, or driving back to Cairns to get one (you’d want to hope it’s right hey…!). This will come down to cost and time.

Here we are!

The rest of the day was fairly quiet. The boys played with cars and Matt was doing some filming but managed to drop the camera and the lens mechanism broke. Unfortunately he dropped the OTHER camera in the river the first night at Coen only a few days ago, and that got sand in the lens mechanism! There’s also a Kelpie here which Bek loved playing with.

The roadhouse isn't too bad a place to be stuck. It's flat and there's water available and there's a shop with some basic supplies. Unfortunately there's no internet signal but at least there is a wifi option. It's very expensive - $20 for 500Mb, but it does give us something for essential communications, including arranging the new springs!

It’s interesting looking back – since we left Laura we’ve 1) hit a kangaroo, 2) gotten bogged at Coen, 3) stripped out the jockey wheel bolt also at Coen (and had the mechanic give us the wrong replacement initially), 4) I’ve cut and grazed various hands, fingers and shins, 5) broken both of the kids’ cameras and 6) broken the spring on the caravan! All in about 300km! When the rest of the trip has gone without a hitch! They say the Cape stresses vehicles like nowhere else, but most of these things could have happened anywhere. Anyway, such is life!

-- Greg