Oz Trip - Day 42 to Day 45

Day 42 to Day 45 – 12/6/2012 to 15/6/2012 - Alice Springs

Over the next couple of days we had a heap of jobs that needed doing along with having a few sleep ins due to the early starts to get to the rally.

We also had a guy coming to look at our diesel heater. I think because I didn't drain the diesel out of the tank over our summer months, there was a bit of green slime growing around the outlet in the tank and also in the inline filter. I think this then caused the heater to gum up and was blowing a lot of smoke and cutting in and out. The service technician also said that it needed a new glow plug and the gauss in the heater was blocked and he would have to order parts in. So it looked like we were going to be in Alice for a little while.

We had the annex walls up to help stop the cold wind

A frequent camp visitor

I also had the get a chip fixed in the windscreen that we picked up. Nearly two thousand kilometres of dirt, corrugation and rocks and not an issue, turn back on to the black top and I get a chip in the windscreen within the first couple of hundred kilometres. The Pajero also needed a service so that was dropped in at the local Mitsubishi dealer ship. Before we dropped the it in for its service I took it through the “Laserwash 4000” to get rid of a month and a halfs worth of dust. We couldn't believe how good it came up looking! I just wish they had a “Laservacuum 6000” to do the inside of it for me.

We had a chance to walk around the mall in Todd St. It was pretty deserted. A lot of shops looked like they had closed down. A bit understandable really when there was a shopping centre that contained Woollies and all of the speciality shops in air conditioning. I can't see people wanting to go to the mall to shop in the middle of summer here! One thing that struck as unusual was that in all of the shopping centres it cost you 50c to go the toilet.

The weather over the next few days changed dramatically. At the race we were pretty much wearing all of our cold weather gear, thermals etc, but a few days later it was getting close to 30deg and I was contemplating going for a swim in the van park pool! It was so variable. By the time we ended up leaving the temperatures were back down to the 0 deg over night again.

The rest days also gave me a bit of a chance to catch up on some of the blog posts.