What a finish to the day, rain and more rain but I get ahead of myself.
After a good night at Kirkalocka Station, we caught up with one of the owners and chatted about their pending trip to Adelaide before hitting the road.
Today was going to be a long travel day with 675 kms to Newman – shouldn’t be too hard but you have to take in a few stops for geocaches. 🙂 Even managed a First to Find in the middle of Lake Austin (which is starting to fill up).
Our travels took us through a lot of mining areas with Mount Magnet, Cue and Meekatharra. Fuel prices were all over the place from $1.45 to $1.60 a litre. A truckie at Kumarina told me to just get enough fuel to make it to Capricorn where fuel was 23 cents cheaper a litre. In the end the fuel economy was very good on that last leg due to the weather.
For most of the day, it was overcast with some misty rain every now and again but the last leg from Kumarina Roadhouse to Newman – only 175 kms, was a shocker. It was dark and we had been warned that the area was rife with cattle on the roadway at night. No problems tonight with a couple of large sky illuminating lightning flashes and down came the tropical torrential rain.
Visibility was down to zero at times and most of the journey was at 50 kph instead of the usual 100 kph. We managed to get through to Capricorn and finally Newman with rivers forming on roads and the CB radio was alive with truckies talking of the numerous floodways starting to fill. I think we got through in time.
The caravan park at Newman was full but they weren’t going to turn someone away in this weather so they gave us a key to a donga which we could plug into and we were set for the night.
Finally I was about to get my rain bucket to work and start filling the tanks with fresh rainwater.
