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!

Pumping up the tyres for the last time after finishing our time on dirt roads

The first thing which slightly went wrong was actually last night when Jude went to plug the inverter cable into the power plug and found it was gone! The red weatherproof case must have gotten knocked open by a stone, the cable bounced down and got caught under the wheels and simply yanked out! All that was left inside the van was the remnants of the plug!

As we set up to leave, we could hear a grinding sound from one of the wheels. It sounded like a rock inside one of the brake drums, but it didn't budge after going forwards and backwards several times. So I pulled off the wheel and brake drum, didn't see anything come out but the sound went away. It was probably a very small stone.

We drove onto our first stop at Farina as the staff at the Pink Roadhouse had recommended the bakery to us, so we thought we'd have breakfast here.

On arriving the inside of the van had an electrical burning smell, which we eventually traced to some wiring which was burnt out. This particular piece of wiring was related to the battery charging system and wasn't that important, but to be on the safe side we disconnected the charging cable from the car for the rest of the trip until I get a chance to look at it at home.

Farina is another old railway town, however this one's being restored by a volunteer group who are making amazing progress! The ruins are still ruins at the moment, but all sorts of parts are being restored. They now have a fully working cafe in one of the old buildings they've rebuilt, they've restored the underground bakery and use this for baking bread which they sell in the cafe. There are all sorts of trinkets for sale and we bought a couple.

Farina

The underground bakery at Farina

Inside the underground bakery - it was so warm inside as the fire was still going!

Poor Jude ran into a wooden beam between an old doorway
in some ruins while we were in Farina. Another thing not to plan!

Farina was very interesting and we spent much longer here than we'd intended. 

We left and drove onto Copley for lunch, which was another spot we'd been recommended to. To be honest we were not really feeling like lunch yet (except Matt who's refrain for the last few months has been "I'm so hungry" - he is growing like a rocket!). This wasn't really as good as Farina although it was nice enough, and maybe we just weren't so hungry.

Lunch at Copley bakery

Leigh Creek is about 10 minutes down the road from Copley and we needed to buy some more nice tissues as we're all getting a bit coldy from the sudden cold snap in Alice Springs. I talked about Leigh Creek last year and its very '80's feel, so this time I got a couple of photos of the signage to support this.

Leigh Creek - note the very 80's signage - persistent from when this town was first built.

Since our visit Leigh Creek has gotten more State government funding and it looked a bit busier than last time.

Travelling through the lower Flinders Ranges

Another spring gone!

We topped up with some fuel in Lyndhurst and then drove onto Hawker for a complete fill as the fuel was a bit cheaper there. After I filled up Mim came in and told me one of the leaf springs on the van had broken again! I couldn't believe it! We had gone through a bit of a spoon drain in town but were only travelling slowly and it didn't feel like it could have been that (later analysis showed the spring had a small crack already, probably from the Oodnadatta Track). Ironic that we'd made it across the Gibb, Tanami and Oodnadatta roads / tracks with no problems, and then it breaks in a country town! By now it felt like the caravan was protesting loudly at us finishing the trip, or returning to Adelaide; or that it had had enough and couldn't wait to get home!

Still, in a funny way I was glad it had broken, because we'd bought the spare springs in Perth and had felt it had been a bit of a waste of money in hindsight other than peace of mind. So I got the tools out again and popped one of the new ones on.

Changing the leaf spring in Hawker

This took about an hour, so we're getting better at it! It meant though there was no way we would make it to Adelaide at a sensible hour, and Matt really wanted to visit the Wilmington toy museum the next day. So we drove through the lovely town of Quorn and stopped the night at a free camp at Horrocks Pass just outside Wilmington.

Mim making the last dinner in the caravan :(

Our stop for the night in Wilmington, by Horrocks Pass

 -- Greg