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Published: July 30th 2014
Finke National Park
On the way into Bogy HoleWe left Alice Springs and headed off to Palm Valley. Palm Valley is approx 160ks outside of Alice Springs. It took us roughly 3 hrs to get there as it involved a 4wd track to get down to it. The track was great. A few challenging parts but nothing too serious.
We camped in the National Park. Unfortunately we were forced to camp in the overflow section as it was surprisingly quite crowded. Talk about close camping, we could've reached out and stroked dad's head from our bed to help him get to sleep if he needed it! Haha
Palm Valley is ohhhh my god gorgeous! It is like an oasis in a harsh environment full of tall palm trees, cycads and again beautiful rock formations.
The drive into Palm Valley ( the camping was just outside the actual valley) was again a 4wd track, quite rocky and a little challenging at times but lots of fun!
The walk through Palm Valley took us about 2hrs. This is a place that again the pictures will never do it justice. It is the only place in outback Northern Territory where these palm trees grow, their nearest cousins have
only been found at Lawn Hill in far North Queensland. (Up around Amanda's neck of the woods).
We stayed one night at Palm Valley and then headed over to Boggy Hole in The Finke Gorge National Park.
The drive in was a really fun 4wd track and it took us a good two hours of driving to reach Boggy Hole. Along the way we had some issues with sand in the river bed with both dad and Gav becoming stuck at separate times however, lowering tyre pressure soon fixed that issue.
The drive was just stunning. Imagine driving on a dry river bed, lined with towering silver gums and surrounded by tall red cliff faces - just beautiful! The cliff faces are so high they almost make you feel very small and insignificant.
After some fun in the sand and a small water crossing we arrived at a really pretty bush camp spot by the river and set up camp for the night. We noticed that the clutch was really smelly but put this down to how hard Gav had to work the clutch through some of the sand.
Unfortunately rain came in over night
and we packed up in the morning in the rain - yuk! Nothing worse than rain when you are camping but not to worry on we went.
After about 500metres Gav commented that the car didn't feel right. He said the clutch felt like it was slipping but we kept going to see if it improved. Another 2 Kim's along and again the bloody spring on the back of the trailer popped out. Gav got out of the car, put it back in and mentioned to dad that he now had real concerns about the clutch in our car.
Well we didn't get much further when Gav made the decision to stop and reset up camp because there was a significant issue with the clutch slipping. Mind you it was still raining and we had only just packed up about fifteen minutes before hand. So we found a spot by the river that was nice and flat and set up camp to discuss what our next move would be.........
The decision was eventually made that Gav would attempt to push on with the car by himself and dad, mum, myself and the kids would remain at the
Palm Valley
Gav playing silly buggers pretending to hold up this rock camp site. Gav hoped he may be able to either make it back to Alice Springs or atleast to the black top to call for help. We knew that this could take several days. We had a satellite phone so Gav could phone us and let us know what was going on. So with that we kissed Gav good bye expecting not to see him for a few days. Well at least that's what we thought.........
We were all sitting in the tent playing cards to get out of the rain, Gav had left approx two hours earlier, when we heard his voice outside! We were like 'what the heck!?"
It was poor Gav, wet from top to toe, looking like a lost drowned rat! He had made it 7.4 Klm's down the road when the car just stopped. I will tell the story of what happened next as it was told to me by Gav.
"I was driving along and I knew the clutch was getting worse and I didn't think I would make it when finally the inevitable happened and the car wouldn't go any further. So I sat in the car for abit, rolled
Palm Valley
Luke thought he'd give holding up a rock a go. a smoke and just thought about what I should do next. I was stuck on a very narrow bit of track so I knew that if anyone came the other way they wouldn't be able to get through. I left a note on the dashboard saying - broken down, sorry - I figured the only choice I had was to walk back to camp. It was still raining and I knew there was no way I could roll myself a smoke with wet hands (yeah that's the important thing to worry about!!! NOT) so I rolled myself five smokes, stuffed a handful of muesli bars, my wallet, phone and knife in the back pack and set off back to camp. I had my drizabone jacket on so my top half was dry and warm but my bottom half was soaked and cold. I just kept walking and walking. I was going to take a short cut but I thought better of it and followed the track. Just when I thought it couldn't get much worse, I got out my first smoke to have, went to light it and my bloody lighter was too wet and wouldn't light!! Yep, that'd be
bloody right I thought. Just then I looked up and saw camp - thank bloody God!!"
Gav relayed his story to us, we had abit of a laugh and Dad couldn't get in The car fast enough to tow Gav back to camp! As I'm sure you can understand it made Dads day to tow Gav. (For those who don't know Gav winched dad out of gunshot up the Cape so Dad was very excited that now it was him towing Gav instead of the other way around).
Dad and Gav returned about an hour later and Gav used the satellite phone to call RACQ for help. They couldn't get someone into us until the next day so we just sat tight until then and Gav buried himself in the boys thermal sleeping bag to try and warm back up.
The tow truck turned up the next morning and used the snatch strap to get the car back to the black road where a tilt truck met them to take the car the rest of the way into Alice Springs (140klms)
It took them three hours just to get through the track from where we were
camped. (36klms). Luke went with Gav and the others stayed with us camping in the bush. We figured it would probably be about four days. We arranged with Gav to have the satellite phoned turned on at 12 pm the next day so he could phone and let us know what was going on.
Gav called the next day. Him and Luke were in Alice Springs, the clutch was stuffed and needed to be replaced. It would probably take three or four days. So we were stranded in the bush! It was a great spot to be stuck. The rain cleared the next day, we were right on a river and we had plenty of food, water and whatever else we would need so we just sat tight (maybe a little jealous that Gav and Luke were in a motel! Haha).
Gav and Luke returned three days later and we packed up to continue on to Kings Canyon putting all mechanical issues behind us. Or did we?................
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Monica
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Gav
I'm so impressed Gavin walked 4km without dying - bet you were sore the next day :p