June 29 (Day 150) - Townsville part 3

Monday 29 June

On this lovely morning we enjoyed pancakes altogether and then Greg and Jonathan changed the transfer case fluid in the car while the kids climbed trees, read books, played board games and rode around on bikes and made up other games together.  I enjoyed lots of cuddles with Chloe while chatting to Maxanne.

Later in the day Greg went with Jonathan and Joshua to a rental place they help to manage to help install a new kitchen

 

Pajero

The morning transfer case fluid change was a pretty easy job - just unscrew the drain plug, let the old stuff run out, and then refill with a hand pump.

Even though the old fluid looked pretty good when it came out, it was still considerably darker than the new stuff, so it was worth changing.

Transfer case fluid. New on left, old on right.

After they came back from doing the kitchen, they changed the fluid in the front and rear differentials. Greg had checked this before we left Adelaide and they still looked OK, but again once it was drained out you could see the difference! 

Differential fluid. New (bottom left), front diff (top centre), rear diff (bottom right)

 It looked like the rear diff fluid had been changed, possibly at the 180,000km service when it was due, but they may have not bothered with the front diff. Anyway they're all clean now.

They then went onto the fuel filter, which was pretty grotty as well!

Eww! Lots of sediment floating in the fuel filter. And the ends of the filter element
(through the holes) is supposed to be white!

All the contaminants on the fuel tank side of the filter. Lucky there IS a fuel filter!

They went very late, not finishing until after 12 as they had a good old chat afterwards!

-- Mim

June 26 - 28 (Day 147-149) Townsville to Rollingstone, and back to Townsville!

Friday 26 June

Thursday packing up had taken a long time so we decided to give ourselves a bit more time and head off Friday once we had finished. It would also give Greg some time to go out and get the other laptop and set it up while we weren't travelling.

Finally after packing up we had some lunch and then headed off to fill up with fuel and then to find a spot to camp. Wikicamps has been so useful with all sorts of information about locations and what facilities they might have and possible costs if any.

June 23-25 (Day 144-146) - Townsville part 2

Tuesday 23 June

Mt Stuart

With the car and caravan all sorted out, we decided to do some more sight seeing today as we'd had several days around the house. We had breakfast & made plans to head up Mount Stuart, which is one of two large mountains in the greater Townsville area. We talked about Castle Hill in our last blog entry which is close to the ocean; Mt Stuart is inland somewhat, sitting about 7km south of central Townsville, and is a prominent feature of the skyline.

What are our travel plans at the moment?

Hi all,

PHEW!

That's the sound I made when I finally got the blog up to date! It has been a bit of a grind, especially the videos, so I hope they've been interesting enough.

Anyway now that's out the way I wanted to give you a quick update on our travel plans. You're probably aware Queensland's borders are still closed at the moment. This actually suits us fairly well, because it means there aren't any southerners filling up campgrounds and escaping the cold winter. Sorry fellow SA'ers, we do feel sympathetic for those who would want to be up here, but at least for us it's working OK.

The Big Picture

On a broad scale, we are still hoping to complete the full lap this year, but a month or so ago we roughly sketched out a couple of contingency plans if we were unable to get into either WA or NT. Loosely, these would be to either:

June 19-22 (Day 140-143) - Townsville part 1

Friday June 19

Caravan Brakes

Our front left van wheel with its shiny
new magnet just installed (just in front of
where the man is working)!

First job off the rank was to get the caravan brakes fixed up, so I rose early Friday morning to take the van up to Bartel Trailers. I stayed with the technician while he did the work and learned a lot from what he had to say. This also gave me a chance to see how he did what he did just on the off-chance I have to get in there and fix something in the Outback sometime!

June 18 (Day 139) - Home Hill to Townsville

After breakfast we headed out of Home Hill.

Just on the northern outskirts of Home Hill, just before the Burdekin Bridge, we saw a rock museum on the left, so thought it might be worth a look.

It was reasonably interesting, although very old in its layout. It had been started by the father of the man who owns it now, who himself would be in his 70's, and the general decor, raw timber cabinetry and mismatched shelving units gave an appearance of a private collection started in the 1950's, run on a shoestring budget, and which had bit by bit grown over the years and probably outgrown any plans the original owner may have had! I imagine it's the type of private collection of artifacts collectors may have held in Victorian times on their personal field of interest, which people may have been willing to pay a small sum to view.

June 16-17 (Day 137-138) - Home Hill and Ayr

June 16

Home Hill is a quiet little town with a train line running through it. The showground is set back a block from the highway, but the train line runs right along side the showgrounds. This is preferable to being close to the highway, however, as there are only several rail services per day and during the trains they tend not to sound their horns!

The train line is primarily a freight line, but it seems to run a daily passenger service too. It seems a lot of these cane growing areas have a 'local' mill, as in every 100km or so, where the sugar cane is crushed and turned into cane sugar juice. Once crushed, this juice is loaded into stainless steel tanks on carriages and is then freighted by train down the coast to be refined into molasses, golden syrup, and all the other steps until you end up at plain white sugar. It is presumably cheaper to do this than carting the whole sugar cane down to a larger mill for processing, and then refining of the syrup.