25 days on the road, all going well – left Port Augusta heading to Coober Pedy 540.2km, that’s about 6hrs with a caravan, so we thought we would free camp somewhere along the way. Again not much wild life to see, however the wildflowers were starting to blossom – I want , to say Wattle, but I don’t think they were, however they were bright like pockets of sunshine along the highway, great contrast against the bright red earth. We passed several salt lakes, most notable was Lake Heart. I keep myself busy by trying to spot wild life, crocheting or annoying Ian, sometimes I do find it quite boring all this driving and then there’s no internet! – What no service, no one told me that – I thought Telstra had service everywhere – but you go hours on end with no service. What if, yes, the what if?

A constant discussion between Ian and myself was when is the best time to stop – for me as I’m the chief cook and bottle washer, earlier is better. That way I can get a little walk and contemplate what we will have for dinner. However, Ian likes to push the boundary to darkness, which is not my option, so I spend my time convincing him to take time to watch the sunset. Next discussion is which free camp will we choose – for Ian, there has to be someone already parked and a little away from the road – me. I’m not so fussy so I don’t mind – the compromise is if its before dark he gets to choose, if after dark, the first one we come to, sounds fair. Any way on this occasion we stopped at a place called Bulgunnia about 120km short of Cooper Pedy – there were two other caravans parked, so we parked in the middle. I went for a short walk exploring our position and taking photos of the wild flowers with my beautiful new Cannon camera, so was in 7th heaven. Ian sat having a beer relaxing. I came back just intime to get photos of the sunset with both Ian an Fat Cat – ( I think I have mentioned Fat Cat before, he is our holiday mascot that the grandchildren love to see in the photos and see what he’s been up to). For me it was a little confronting when we stood and watched the sunset, looked 360 degrees and just saw nothing but outback – red dirt and small shrubs, no trees and no internet or phone service. I was grateful to see two other vehicles around us – the people didn’t come out, but that didn’t matter, the sun had gone down and so must we. Our gourmet meal was beef stew that I had prepared in advance. We were both tired, its surprising how tired you get driving these long distances, even sharing the driving – for me I have to concentrate to keep the van steady….. its not like driving the car where I can do more than one thing….no only joking.

We decided on an early night – our track record of having early nights has not been very successful, so I was a little weary, any way bed time it was.

We were woken up with the caravan shaking, rocking, the wind was howling, I thought what the hell? “Ian what is happening”, I felt like Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz when the house lifted into the tornado – I was terrified. The front window cover was flapping, I thought it was going to blow off – “Ian can you go outside and close the flap” – Ian – “you’re kidding me…. NO”, I reached for my phone – SOS no service – it was 11pm. We laid awake for 3hrs listening to the howling wind and the caravan shaking and rocking, too afraid to go outside….. we must have finally drifted of to sleep. We woke about 7am… I ventured outside to see what damage was done – none all was good, the other two vans were still there and our front window cover was still attached to the van – we were all in one piece – what a night.

I went to get the car keys and open the car door when the car alarm went off, WTF, I couldn’t open the door – the alarm kept on going. I manually opened the drivers door but the alarm still was going off. I wet to Ian, “the car alarm won’t go off”, Ian, “have you tried the key?” not the response I wanted – with that I went into the caravan and gave him the keys and said “go and look at the car please?” He came back looking very sullen – “what’s up” I said – Ian – “the battery is dead” – I said – “OMG No” then I thought for a moment, “no worries, you bought that new beaut battery charging thingie….. lets use that”, Ian – “oh yes I forgot about that, do you know where it is” – “sure in the back of the car”. We had not even looked at the gadget we had bought before this day, sorry, no Ian did charge it – the sales man said, “just hook it up and press charge” – not the simple, it did not work – no internet to you-tube how to use the battery charger!! It was the blind leading the blind. 120 kms out of Coober Pedy… WTF now. Ian even resorted to the car manual – but alas, nothing worked.

I was internally panicked. When we first discovered the battery was flat, I said to Ian, lets go and talk the people over there, no we will figure it out he said- in the mean time a couple of motorcyclist had also come and gone -Another caravan had pulled into the bay to have breakfast, the man came over but could not help, didn’t know how to use the charger and did not carry jumper leads. What is it with men, they do not want to ask for help? When everything failed – Ian relented and said to ask if anyone had a set of jumper leads. Lucky for us, the people in the other caravan always carried jumper leads, never used them but carried them – and got us started – the wife gave me tips on what to see and where to stay in Cooper Pedy as they had just left. It was so good to hear the engine running, the car was working. Still no internet or service for at least another 60kms. We set off, however the car was making a funny noise when Ian put it into gear – so he decided that we would crawl at 80km/p/h – I thought my God, we are never going to get there – we had travelled about 20mins in limp mode, when I suggested that maybe we stop at the rest stop that had an emergency phone and we could call for help, it was coming up in 20kms – either when we stop the car it might reset itself (I was thinking with computers you turn it off and it resets, maybe its the same with cars) and start normally: or it wont start and we are at square one again – or we keep going at 80km/p/h. I again asked another driver if he had jumper leads before we turned off the car – we were ready – again as luck would have it – the car started and had reset itself and went perfectly, we could now travel at 100km – we made it to Cooper Pedy – booked into the caravan park and took the car to get the battery checked – it was all good, green light- we lived to tell the tale, don’t know what caused the problem – but we were mobile and had internet and phone service – I was happy.

The moral of this story is: always carry jumper leads (which we have since bought) and try out new gadgets before you need them. We rely on technology so much that when we don’t have it we are lost!

Next blog is on our stay at Cooper Pedy – a fascinating town. I’m loving living on the road……