8.7.18 Alice Springs to somewhere near old Andado

Up and about early again and lots of faffing this morning, my tent zip is broken so the boys had a play with that, I got my spare tyre back on my car. Some needed to do some more shopping. Met everybody at Maccas and departing Alice Springs about 11:15 heading for Old Andado. 

Fixing the zip

Filling up with water as we are out and about now for a week or more. 

Headed out to Santa Teresa and onto Binns Track again. A track full of bull dust. Ran through amazing territory including Rodinga Range, some weird fungi. 

Passing Alice Springs airport.

Entering Santa Teresa

Some of the dust. Mary and Phil in front with an approaching vehicle in that dust. 

Here come the vehicles.

Another one appearing from the dust plumes.

Dust

Lunch stop.

Lunch stop

Lunch

Rodinga Range. 

We were hoping to make Old Andado but couldn’t. Today was to be the roast day, so we pulled off the track and started the usual unpacking, collecting wood, digging toilet hole and putting up toilet tent. HOWEVER, when I went to open my back door... it didn’t. Nothing worked, not WD 40, not jacking it up, not pushing it or locking/unlocking. (Phil and Mary’s back door was also stuck, but they managed to get it opened.)

I couldn’t access my tent or sleeping bag or blankets or a fair bit of food. However we did manage to wangle blankets and sleeping bag out the top of cargo barrier. 

The plan was to try and access the back door through the car, this required removing EVERYTHING in order to get to the cargo barrier to unscrew and remove it, to get to the back door. The photos below tell the story. It needed to be unpacked. Remove fridge, back seats, unpack everything from the back seat area and also remove the water tank and anything else we could reach from the cargo area, this meant removing false floor and then unscrew and take out the cargo barrier, thus allowing us to remove the tent and containers from back area. This enabled access to the rear door from inside. Having consulted the owners manual, there was an access point to open rear door from the door panel - however this still did not open the door. 

Fridge out. On the left, all the other guff on the blue tarp. Back seat on the ground behind the tree, water tank leaning against it.

Sarah and I working on undoing all the nuts and bolts to remove cargo barrier.


Phil in the hot seat with Steve looking on.

Phil still getting in to test bits out, Stef conferring.

Mary and Sarah supervising.

Stef and Steve.

Phil still curled up into there.

Out comes the latch assembly.

Stef unfurling himself having removed the parts for closer inspection

Back cover off door and Stef climbing out whole Phil checks the door bits. 

So the inside panels were removed and finally the door opened. Then there was the diagnosis of the problem. By now I was putting the car together again. 

All the while this was going on  (about 3 hours had elapsed between pulling into camp at 4.56 and and 8.00) the roast was being prepared. I had a changing team of people helping me unpack and dismember the car, others to fix the issue and that left mainly Greg, Col, Reve and Mary cooking tea. Mary and others put up my tent, Sarah helped pull the car apart and unpack.  Milani cleaned up the back of the car - everyone was doing something. Stef, Steve and Phil were helping with the heavy and technical stuff. 

Everyone checking it out. 

Here comes Stef

The actual offending part. All gummed up with 9 years dust and yesterday’s bulldust was the tipping point.

Working at the speed of light as the sunsets.

It didn’t all fit back in with help. Back panel back on.  AND there were no nuts, bolts or bits left over.

Looks just like it did before it was emptied.

Same same. 

Anyway in the end the issue was dust. A build up over the years and probably the bulldust as the final straw. 

Even weirder after we started to pull Ska apart, Mary and Phil found they had the same issue - their car rear door wouldn’t open either. Phil fixed theirs thankfully. 

Anyway eventually after delicious roast of beef, pork and lamb with all the veggies, followed by Sarah’s famous self saucing pudding I got the car back together again. Boy what a long night. 

Now time for bed. It’s a cold one again.