Alice Springs & Lawn Hill Trip - Day 6

Day 6 - 7/6/2016 - Gemtree

What was meant to be a rest day turned out to be only a semi rest day.  The night before as I was getting the camp chairs out of the store box in the camper, I had one arm holding both chairs and then tried to close the storage door with the other.  As I was repositioning my free hand I dropped the storage door and it snapped the plastic hinge and the door came completely off.

Doh!

So I spent the first half of the morning trying to get in contact with Australian Offroad and organising a new hinge to be sent to a repairer in Alice Springs.  A big thanks to John for making it happen.  It was made difficult with no mobile signal and only very slow satellite internet connection.  Luckily they had a good old pay phone, so after doing a bit of ringing around a new hinge was organised and a booking made at the repairer.  We were only in Alice Springs for a limited amount of time and the with the Finke Desert Race and public holiday, the timing was going to be close.

After that was sorted I setup my auxiliary solar panels just to make sure that they were working ok.  On the last couple of trips the connection from the panels to the camper had been a bit flakey so I had the plug replaced.  When I plugged them in this time with the new plug I was still not getting any current flowing to the camper batteries.  I have two outputs on the panels, a regulated and and unregulated output.  After a bit of testing with the multimeter I worked out that the unregulated output wasn’t working so I pulled the junction box apart on the back of the panels and found a fuse had blown.  I didn’t even know there was a fuse in there so I didn’t have any spares of the size that it required.  Luckily the shop at at Gemtree had some fuses of the correct size.

With the new fuse installed, it all tested ok with the multimeter, and then plugged into the camper and no still no current.  So I went back and checked them with the multimeter again and no current again.  So I opened the junction box again and found the fuse blown again.  I wasn’t sure what was going on now.  The last thing left that I though it might be is the +ve and -ve cables were reversed in the plug.  So I pulled the plug apart, changed the wiring, installed a new fuse, (luckily I bought 3 to have a couple of spares), and this time when I plugged it all back in, it all worked as expected.  Current was now flowing into the camper.  So whoever changed the plug had not put the plug back together with the right polarity. Grrrrrr.

That afternoon I had a wander around the park and through the dry creek bed that was beside the park.

Not sure what was making these things

Australian Ringneck

White-plumed Honeyeater

Unfortunately there was a bit of cloud around again so the time lapse didn’t really work out.  But here is one of the still shots.