You’ll never guess where we are this morning….

You’ll never guess where we are this morning…. WHat’s that you say? Cloncurry?

….well… err… yes. How did you guess?

Dropped by the mechanics about 4:30 yesterday afternoon and at least this time Mark’s car was off the tow truck, but the problem was they had rolled it off the truck and that is where it stayed!!

They apologised that they were simply too busy and hadn’t managed to get to it, “but drop by about lunchtime tomorrow and we will try to look at it in the morning…”

Mark gave them a little incentive by saying there was a slab in it if they could have it done by lunchtime.

We returned to the caravan park to get the Jerry can (these guys are diesel mechanics so they don’t have petrol) and when we dropped it back, one of the pommy guys we had met on the road the night before said “depending on how thirsty we get, might even try to look at it tonight!” Mark responded “Well have it done first thing and I’ll bring you two slabs!!”

Let’s see if the promise of beer in an outback town can speed things along.

With no other option, we returned to the caravan park once more to find two hot (in both contexts 😉 ) wives who were just as grumpy as we were. Decided there would be no cooking tonight, so I ferried all 10 of us in multiple trip to the pub for a meal.

The trip is really stalled at the moment and if we don’t get back on the road today, we are not going to make it to Three-ways soon enough to turn North to Darwin. Fingers crossed the mechanics (at the promise of free beer) will have a look, and fingers and toes crossed it is as simple as draining the tank and refilling. Too much more than that and we could be spending the remainder of our trip in Cloncurry!

PS – Mechanics told us of another car that was waiting on a part. Fellow needed a certain part and there was only one in Australia to get his car going again. They ordered it to be air freighted, but the silly parts company had sent it via snail mail!!! Poor guy had been stranded here a week still waiting on that part 🙁 Let’s hope we don’t encounter that kind of trouble… Outback breakdowns are simply no fun!