202 On Tour

I was awake before the 5am alarm, and after a quick trip to the loo was greeted with the fella camping adjacent to us emerging from his tent yelling at the top of his voice.

“HELP, SOMEONE HAS STOLEN MY KEYS. THEY’VE OPENED MY CAR WINDOWS AND STOLEN MY KRYS. OMG, HOW AM I GOING TO GET HOME?” This went on for a couple of repeats.

By this point i wandered over and asked him to keep his voice down, given it was 5am. I asked him to take me through what had happened.

“I heard the car beep and came out of the tent to see the dome light go off and the windows down.” At this point i had figured out what had happened. Most cars have a feature on their remotes that will open all windows with a long press or multiple buttons.

But this bloke couldn’t be convinced, not even when i told him our 2008 Mondeo has this feature. (The car in question was a recent model Mazda BT50 ute).

By this stage our mutual camp neighbour got up to see WTH was going on.

Sensing his best option was to follow advice old mate went to check his tent for the remote, and i went to make sure Liz was starting to wake and pack up.

Then I heard that familiar sound of keys in ignition , so I wandered over and asked ” Where were they?,” , and got a very sheepish “under the pillow” response.😁😁😁

Liz and i laughed about this for the rest of the day.

Despite the distraction we managed to get on the road by 6.15am, and were breath tested 30 minutes later.

During the morning we managed to be passed by what felt like every 4wd, campervan and caravan in WA, some multiple times.

But with a bit of luck, like just beating tour busses to servos, finding the only open Unleaded punp among lines for diesel pumps, Liz using the Mens loos 😂, and eating out of the bain marie, we kept our noses to the grindstone

and had covered 240 kms by 9.15am and 380 kms by 11.30 am.

At the stop in Carnarvon a lady from one of the tour busses cane over , most concerned that everyone on the bus thought that the sidecar looked like it was going to fall apart on every bump.

This is /was? one of Lizzes biggest fears, but we managed to thank the lady for her concerns, noting that the bike and sidecar have independent suspensions and they do jump around a bit.

So, imagine my surprise when Liz says something is coming loose 10 kms down the road. I get the sidecar stopped before Liz realises that the noise she hears is the spray jacket collar she had undone at the last stop😁😁😁

We laughed about what would happen if the tourist bus went past now, after subliminally replanting Lizzes fears.

Not 1/2 an hour later we got a check engine light again, the 1st since the Trans Continental Cairn back on day 4.

We pulled over at a station entry to give the engine 15 minutes rest. While there we rejigged a few things to help airflow , given it was 33 degrees or so.

Check engine light still on, we checked the oil (again) and pushed on in search of shade.

Lucked out with a shaded rest stop a couple of kms later, and 20 minutes here had the light gone.

With a self imposed 80 kph limit imposed for the rest of the day we made Billabong RH around 4pm, where i had the slowest fill of the trip due to the station almost running out of fuel.

While i was waiting for the slow pump i saw Liz going back and fwds between the 2 establishments at this location. Apparently neither had my booking, made 4 days prior….

Remembering i had paid a $50 deposit Liz re-entered the fray to find that the attendant from where we were booked was looking at yestetdays bookings…

That problem solved we planned out the next day over dinner.