www.wrongwaydown.info

Arrived home safe after a short drive from Horsham VIC... some stats:

Distance driven from Darwin: 5731km or 3561 miles.
Distance driven melbourne to Adelaide: 772km
Distance on the Ghan (Adelaide to Darwin): 2979 km
Distance on the Kangaroo Island Ferry: 32km

***Total km travelled: 9514km ****

Car issues/damage/maintenance:
1x15 amp fuse blown
Broken passenger side wing mirror mount - fell apart (fixed in Adelaide)
Broken passender side front window winder (yet to be fixed)
New air filter (in Adelaide)
New oil and oil filter (in Adelaide)
1x3m ARB roof rack added in Darwin
Zero flat tyres!

Land Rover Series/Defenders/Forward Control/Military spotted on round trip: 63 - including Aus Army 6x6 Mobile workshop at Daly Waters pub, an excellent condition Series I in a field in Snowtown, a white Series II in a vacant lot in Gepps Cross Adelaide.

I have posted some videos from the roofrack mounted video camera here:
http://www.wrongwaydown.info/?q=node/69

The two day drive home.
The ferry back to Cape Jervis was very very rough, and quite late... both Deb and I were quite ordinary but didn't actually throw up thankfully !
We had thought that we would take the scenic route home through Mt Gambier, but the weather, especially the wind, was pretty bad - in fact, Deb was having some trouble keeping the car on the road. So we decided, to take the quicker inland route, with a night stopover in Horsham VIC.
The drive was pretty uneventful, and we were so tired when we arrived in Horsham, that we really couldn't decide what to have for dinner.

We decided to do the western "loop" around K.I to take in most of the major points of interest. We were woken by a cute Blue Fairy Wren bashing itself against the bedroom window... seemingly it could see it's reflection. We had a leisurely breakfast of pancakes, made from the mix we'd carried from Melbourne, to Darwin and all the way down to SA!
So the loop down the South Coast Road, and then the North Coast road takes in many
The loop included:
- Aussie sea lions - a guided tour of the smelly beach where a colony of Australian Sea Lions lives. Excellent and cheap tour - just a hell of a hill to get back up from the beach. And a lot of flies (again!)
- We had lunch at the remote Vivianne Bay General Store - which is pretty much geared up to supply people fishing in remote parts if the
- Admirals Arch - an amazing cave formation at the bottom of a steep cliff. But it has an excellent boardwalk to get down to it. Pretty spectacular - and it has a large and noisy colony of NZ Fur seals
- Remarkable Rocks - an unmissable formation right on the coast... see photo!
On the way back to to Emu Bay via the North Coast road - we saw a large, and grumpy looking Koala crossing the road - this was the first time that either of us had seen a Koala in the wild.
There was a massive thunderstorm at about 1am - a particularly massive bolt knocked out the power to our house - which was a bit of a problem as the hot water had an electric heater. Oh well, cold showers wake you up I guess..

The accommodation was really comfortable, and we didn't want to get up - but we had to as we were booked on the 9am ferry to Kangaroo Island. Jack the snooty Donkey was very excited by seeing me loading the car... and ran over to me braying.. we sadly didn't have anything to feed him.
He arrived at the port a little early, but soon we were loading into the pretty small ferry. Only the driver goes with the car on board (the passenger(s) have to walk on separately) and 4wds have to reverse on. It's really really tight - leaving just enough room to squeeze out of your car. There is someone to help guide you into the spot though. The ferry has pretty good coffee - which was well needed, and it only takes around 45min to load and travel the 13km to from Cape Jervis on the mainland, to Penneshaw Kangaroo Island. The weather was nice and calm, so the sea was very very flat.
As soon as we unloaded in K.I., we headed for the Tourist Information place to get a good map. As we had a full day - we had decided to "do" the east of the island... many of the roads on the island are very high quality but remote dirt roads. So we did:
- American River - was a cute spot.
- The Clifford's Honey factory... creepy displays of a section of a live hive, but really really good honey ice cream.
- Cape Willoghby lighthouse - amazing location and displays. Great views. Many many many flies.
- Picnic lunch on the wharf.
The accommodation that night was in a huge house in Emu Bay, a small village on the Northern coast of K.I. It was very well equipped and could sleep up to 10 people !

We'd decided that as the car was running rather rough, and needed a repair to the passenger side wing mirror that broke in Port Augusta (you don't realise how much you really need one of these!), and the car was due for it's 160k service anyway - we would get the car some maintenance in Adelaide. We still have (at the very least) a couple of thousand kms before home, and the oil wasn't looking good at all. And we didn't want to have anything fail on us. So, we phoned ahead and booked the car into Ultratune Glenelg - and that we'd be proper tourists in and around Adelaide for the day when the car was being attended to.
As the Ultratune was in Glenelg, we walked into downtown Glenelg for brekky. Yum. As it was Melbourne cup day, there were a lot of ladies staggering around in high heals on the way to various functions. Then we headed into Downtown Adelaide on the nice, and modern lightrail.
The car wouldn't be ready until around 5pm - so we explored the shops in Adelaide. Including the Haig's chocolate store of course! Had a look at the amazing Adelaide central market - an amazing array of food opportunities after the bland outback pickings.
I got a phone call from Ultratune mid afternoon to say that the car needed a new $70 air filter as the old one was "f**ked mate". I suspected the the car was trying to drag air through a filter clogged with outback dust, mud and bugs. According to the mechanic it was solid! No wonder the car was running rough!
Picked up the car around 4pm, they had taken the passenger door off to fix the wing mirror (poor sods!), and after it's oil change (etc) the car was running very very well - much more power, and much less diesel engine rattle.
That night - we headed down to Cape Jervis - the tip of South Australia, and where the Kangaroo Island ferry leaves from. We stayed at a fantastic self contained cottage, just a couple of kms from the ferry port - such a shame that we were only in there for 12 hours. The accommodation also had it's own grumpy donkey called "Jack" - who just didn't want to interact with us at all.
Next morning... over to Kangaroo Island on the ferry !

While we were in Woomera, we knew that The Ghan would be passing by at sunset. After all - we had been on it at that location exactly 2 weeks earlier.
Deb was keep to get a close-up photo of it, so we headed down there on a very windy evening, to wait for the 1917 pass at Pimba (the roadhouse near Woomera). In the end it was about 1/2 an hour late, and passed by pretty quickly. I has using my camera handheld, but Deb (very correctly) used the tripod. She produced some amazing pics (but mine were all too shaky from low shutter speeds). This is probably the best example.

As you know, we are planning to make it down to Kangaroo Island.. so Adelaide was a natural stopover on the way. And of course when we arrived at Port Augusta - we had completed the Stuart Highway from North to South... and so we just had to go down to the beach in Port Augusta (just as we had at the Timor Sea in Darwin) - to complete the job!

Today was another 500km+ day.. and we calculated that since we left Darwin the total is 4187km! In the end we will have done well more than 5000km of course.

Car issues:
- The passenger side wing mirror detached itself, and flopped around a little - just before arriving in Port Augusta. We tried to fix it using gaffer tape... but it didn't work. And what a stupid design - I couldn't fix it without removing the door (!!) - so we removed it all together.
- The oil is getting very thick and black. The car is due for it's 160,000km service - but I'm going to do that with my trusted mechanic at home. So - tom'w the car is going in to a local Adelaide Ultratune for an oil (and thereby filter), total coolant drain and replace as at the moment it's full of water from various nasty salty bores around Australia, which can't be good for moving parts. The mechanics may also be able to fix up the wing mirror, if they have time.

As we are without vehicle tom'w - we are going to be tourists in and around Adelaide. And we'll be investigating and booking Kangaroo Island!

It doesn't look much in that shot - but in the middle, that was very deep and fast moving. And the mud... well you can see how deep the mud is under the car!

As we couldn't make it to the Oodnadatta track from the Coober Pedy end, and the weather forecast for that area wasn't good at all - we decided to change tack and head down the Stuart Highway to Woomera (and beyond to the South Coast of SA). This means that we can save the Oodnadatta track for another holiday - and a different time of the year ! And it also means that we now have no plans, a bunch of money, and a location in South Australia.... so we are vaguely aiming at a couple of days in Kangaroo Island. We have both never been there - both always wanted to go... and the ferry trip (with vehicle) would be fun.
So - we headed to Woomera. Woomera is originally build for the Woomera rocket range - and it's a perfect Australian town of the 1950s... perfect houses, apartments, a theatre, shops, post office, hotel, schools, a museum, a bowling alley... well apart from one thing. Very very few people - almost none - it's a ghost town. Woomera is maintained by BAE and the Aus Dept of Defence as a rentable accomodatiion facilty to go with the weapons testing range. It also now acts as a service base for the surrounding mining industry. It's truly picture perfect, but bizarre and rather creepy. The whole town is just waiting for something to happen.

Well we stayed here for one night, in a fairly crumby caravan park cabin - with it's own attached pizza outlet (but again for who ??), and it's own bar (again for who??).