Monday 9 August 2010

To Leichardt Lagoon


It has been an eventful trip to Leichardt Lagoon which we have visited before. On our way here we travelled along the Savannah way which leads to Undara Larva Tubes which we have visited twice before. The road has been one of our bug bears on our previous two trips and was the inspiration for us getting a two way radio as there is a constant stream of road trains on a very narrow road, in some places only a narrow single lane of bitumen and the two way provides some measure of communication between vehicles.
As a general rule of thumb however if you see something bigger than you coming either behind or in front – get out of the way because he won’t! However we were very pleasantly surprised when we discovered that much more of the road was sealed and in some places two lanes so we thought we were home and hosed. We were more than happy to pull over anyway as we’re not in a hurry and others are. Obviously so, because we had just pulled over and allowed a vehicle with a boat attached to go past which he did at high speed and broke the passenger window on Ian’s side of the car by flicking up a stone. Damnation, damn and a few other words too!
However following our glass half full philosophy, it could have been worse, we weren’t hurt, there was no-one sitting in that seat and it could have been a windscreen. Nonetheless we wish our fisherman a very poor catch when he reaches his destination at Karumba!
As I started sweeping millions of pieces of glass from the car a couple of grey nomads stopped to see if we were OK which was very nice and a B double with a very friendly truck driver stopped to offer assistance. We assured him we were OK and he began to drive off, but stopped just beside the car and hopped out and asked what were we going to do with the hole and did we have any suitable tape. Ian had hundred mile an hour tape (guess you will know what that is!). It was like that scene from Crocodile Dundee when Paul Hogan says to the thugs of New York “Now this is a knife!” He produced from his cabin a roll of blue tape which caused me to say “Now that is tape!”.
For those who may find themselves in a similar position, the best solution as he recommended to us is cover the window with a towel, it’s much more effective than plastic as we discovered. The things you learn. We proceeded on our way without further adventure except for thinking bad thoughts about cars with boats and new respect and kind wishes to our angel from Emerald who delivered our random act of kindness. We’re sure going to have to add blue tape to our kit now!
Our overnight stop was forgettable so I won’t talk about it!

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