Category Archives: Travel

Day Twenty-Eight – Adelaide to Alice Springs – Breakdowns and Ghost Towns

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The route from Melbourne to Alice Springs

The route from Melbourne to Alice Springs

We had been driving through the night and by sunrise we had arrived in Adelaide.  We stopped for fuel and kept driving.  The car seemed to be going quite well until we got out of Adelaide and problems started.  The car kept shuddering when it accelerated at high speeds. We were approaching the heat of the day and the car was struggling with overheating.  We hadn’t had a problem with overheating before now as the Bellarine Peninsular was pretty cold and driving through the night we couldn’t keep warm it was so cold.

We stopped a number of times along the way trying multiple strategies to cool the car down. We changed the coolant, we wired the fan to be on all the time, we wired the A/C fan to cool it down but nothing worked and the car continued to shudder and overheat.  We had to continuously turn the car off and on again to bring it back to speed.  We were all starting to get really tired having been swapping driving shifts and only sleeping in the back of the car and the problems were started to wear us out.

While trying to fix the car under a tree at one of the very few roadhouses a guy came over and tried to help us out but not much else came of it.  We got back on the road driving and had to stop again to try and fix it again.  One of the cars that stopped to see if we were okay happened to be this guy who lived in Coober Pedy which was about 150km down the road.  He and his friend offered to drive us in convoy in case anything should happen to the car then they could tow us.  It was really nice of them and good to know that if we were to break down then someone would be there.  But we made it to Coober Pedy and said our ‘Thank Yous’ and ‘Goodbyes’.

We were so tired by now that to cheer ourselves up we bought some hot food at the only place in town which seemed open and started again on the 7 hour drive from there up to Alice Springs.  By this time the sun was going down and the heat of the day faded away and the car seemed to be going well so I cracked on trying to get as close to Alice as we could.  We stopped at the South Australia/Northern Territory border for a quick photo and driver change and pushed on through finally making it to Alice Springs at 3.30am, 29 hours after leaving Melbourne.  We all crawled into bed exhausted.

Day Twenty-Seven – Ocean Grove to Adelaide – Crazy Ideas and Goodbyes

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After the major sunburning of 2014 yesterday, most of the day was spent inside trying not to make the burns worse.  We had to leave the house the next day so we started packing up and eating up all the left over food.  It started getting quite sad cause this would the last time I would see any of my family for a long time. Matthew and Emily would be heading back to Townsville, my Mum and Dad would be doing their tour of Australia before heading back to TCI and Ed and Angie would be driving back to Alice Springs while I would spend New Year’s Eve alone in Melbourne at a hostel.

I made a comment that if i knew Ed and Angie were driving back I would have gone with them and it made me think, “why don’t I?’.  So I looked up the cost of changing my flights and buying one from Alice Springs down to Melbourne and though a little pricey I kind of thought, why not? Why should we save our money in the bank and if you work hard for it then you should spend it on something you want to do.  So around 11pm I packed my stuff into their car, said goodbye to my parents and Matthew and Emily and we set off on the 22 hour drive from Melbourne to Alice Springs.

Day Twenty-Six – Ocean Grove – Boxing Day

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Thankfully today was a bit more productive.  Still rising late we quickly chowed down some brunch then organised to go meet Flo, Andy, Ben, Louise, Joanna and the Kids at the beach.

In true Watts family tradition, we over indulged and took everything we could think of to the beach to entertain us. From boogie boards to frisbees, to shovels, to balls and bats; we had it all.  The surf was pretty big if not breaking a long way out so we attempted to paddle out quite far but it became quite exhausting so we resulting in shallow paddling where we could push off and we managed a good few rides into shore.

After the attempts at boogie-boarding I managed to convince Ed to dig a hole with me.  We started to attempt the ultimate goal of hole digging; digging two holes with a tunnel big enough that you can crawl through.  Dangerous work, and structurally difficult.  After about half and hour of the initial hard work, everyone else seemed to want in on the action and didn’t hesitate to give us their ideas and plans while Ed and I still did all the manual labour! Anyway, this is quite a big build up to the fact that we managed two holes and a tunnel but when it came to crawling though, there was a collapse.  This is very sad because we never know when the next sand tunnelling attempt may be.

So with two big holes and a collapsed tunnel the only thing we could do is make a beach hot tub! So we did and enjoyed it for about 5 minutes before we started getting bitten by sandmites.  So that sent me back into the water to enjoy some more boogie boarding.  By the time we got home we were all pretty sunburnt from the time out in the sun and the wind had deceived us into not fully understanding the strength of the sun.

After we returned from the beach, Flo, Andy and Ben came over to say their final goodbyes to us. So we had a few drinks and some snacks and spent the last time together in Australia.

Day Twenty-Five – Ocean Grove – Christmas Day

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I woke up feel pretty sick today.  This is a common feature in my Christmas Days as I always eat way too much food and we just had to go and do it all again.  So after a huge family breakfast, opening of a few small gifts from one another, we headed over to the other family’s house for a Christmas lunch of roast pork, my favourite.

We spent some time playing with the kids and their new toys they had received for Christmas before doing our own Secret Santa’s.  I got a big bag of presents to unwrap which all turned out to be bags of Australian sweets and snacks.  I loved it.  Something I didn’t have to worry about taking in my backpack with me travelling and it introduced me to some great new snacks.  The best of all, Red Skins, you should try them when you can.

We all enjoyed a nice family meal and a lovely Christmas playing games of charades, articulate and all of the Christmas classics before walking back to our house a little inebriated.