Winjana gorge
Next, we headed up to Winjana gorge, which saw us on our first dirt roads of the trip. About 20 minutes after turning onto the dirt road, we pulled over to take some photos of boab trees. When we got out, we noticed that one rear tire was going flat very quickly. About 2 minutes later, it was flat.
First problem: finding the jack in a rental 4WD. It took us a good 20 minutes to figure out where the thing was (half of it was under the back seat, half was in a hidden compartment in the back cargo area). And another 10 minutes to unload the entire car to get to the jack.
Second problem: with the tire flat, there was not enough room under the jack point to put the jack. So, I started digging into the hardpacked, gravel road (without much success). At this point someone drove past. It would have made a good image, I'm sure - a blokes legs sticking out from under the car with dust flying, one woman sitting on the spare, reading the manual, and two other women standing around a huge pile of camping gear laid out neatly on a tarp at the side of the road. I explained the problem to the family that drove up, and they pulled over to help. The father and his two beefy sons came up to the car, and on three just lifted the back end enough to get the jack under. It's useful to have 3 farm lads around sometimes. After a nervous bit when we discoverd that the jack was at an unstable angle, we got the spare on. Fortunately, these guys were very well prepared - they'd just come up the Tanami road from South Australia - and they had a repair kit so we wouldn't be entirely without a spare.
That was our last major incident.
First problem: finding the jack in a rental 4WD. It took us a good 20 minutes to figure out where the thing was (half of it was under the back seat, half was in a hidden compartment in the back cargo area). And another 10 minutes to unload the entire car to get to the jack.
Second problem: with the tire flat, there was not enough room under the jack point to put the jack. So, I started digging into the hardpacked, gravel road (without much success). At this point someone drove past. It would have made a good image, I'm sure - a blokes legs sticking out from under the car with dust flying, one woman sitting on the spare, reading the manual, and two other women standing around a huge pile of camping gear laid out neatly on a tarp at the side of the road. I explained the problem to the family that drove up, and they pulled over to help. The father and his two beefy sons came up to the car, and on three just lifted the back end enough to get the jack under. It's useful to have 3 farm lads around sometimes. After a nervous bit when we discoverd that the jack was at an unstable angle, we got the spare on. Fortunately, these guys were very well prepared - they'd just come up the Tanami road from South Australia - and they had a repair kit so we wouldn't be entirely without a spare.
That was our last major incident.
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