A broken spring

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Day 141 - The broken spring

Another hot night, it seems we’re not used to it quite yet or we wouldn’t be banging on about it quite as much! When we don’t mention the humidity in the first sentence then you know we’re finally settling in.

We’re having the car serviced this morning which involves us getting around on the bikes whilst it’s away! The garage isn’t far from the campsite, only 5 kms and we get there nice and early so we’re the first in the queue should there be one! When we bought PIE there were 166,066 kms on the clock and now we’ve got 184’184 so we’ve racked up 18115 kms on our trip this far! To be fair we’ve had a couple of lifts for days out from Kangaroojack and then the adventure twins Tony and Jane, had it not been for the generosity of these two couples we would have clocked up more!

With the car dropped off our intention was to cycle to the Howard Springs Nature Park but the sun is already blazing as we came back past the caravan park so we thought better of it! We’re being very lazy we know but it’s the heat you see, oh and the HUMIDITY!!

We had plenty to do back at the caravan, we needed to ‘install’ the new bedroom lights we’d bought on Saturday to replace the ones that nearly caused a major flare up in the caravan! I thought I’d documented the ‘pillow singe’ incident when it happened but I must have overlooked it as we were in Alice Springs at the time and there was a lot going on! It was on one of the rare occasions that I’d gone to bed first and I put Darryl’s bedside light on then moved his pillow away from the bottom of it because the lights hang over the bed and obviously a hot bulb and a pillow shouldn’t mix. Anyway, in comes Darryl who notices smoke coming from the pillow which is now nowhere near the light. It seems for the nano second that the pillow was under the light it burned a hole in the pillow case and singed the pillow itself, the lights have got to go! We’d already smashed the one of my side a couple of days in to the trip. They are so badly positioned and this event proved how dangerous they are too so we no longer use them but until we meet a friendly electrician (Uncle David!) we’re not sure how to disconnect them fully as all the cabling is hidden away. Anyway, the installation of the new lights took approximately 5 minutes. It involved the very delicate removal of the backing to the sticky stuff used to attach them to their new home! Voila, new bedroom lights!

We got the call to say that the service was complete but there’s an area which we should consider getting sorted, the rear brake line looks to have been leaking very slightly (Mum don’t panic!) so we biked back up to the garage to pick it up and discuss the situation further. Alan, the mechanic, was excellent and very helpful however we’re in Darwin and we’ve got a Nissan! It’s got nothing to do with it being a Terrano, it could well have been a Patrol and we would have had the same issue because this place is brimming with Toyotas not Nissans! Typical! We go through some scenarios, one of which is to continue with our journey because we’re pretty sure that we’ve always had this issue right from the start. We thank Alan and tell him we’ll be in touch when we’ve made a decision about what we’re going to do as the next opportunity we would get to sort this would be Perth, a mere 3942 kms from our current location! More on this dilemma later!

With plenty of the day left we decided to head out to Howard Springs Nature Park, by car! It’s quite a long way from the caravan park but it would have been an easy, flat ride and there is a very small swimming pool at the end of it!

The area was developed by the army back in the 1940’s as a recreational area for the service men based around Darwin and for those convalescing after being released from hospital. It was also built to stop them going stir crazy with nothing to do for the long periods of inactivity, the area gave them a place to play football, cricket and of course a place to swim. Sadly the main pools are no longer safe for swimming due to the build up of potentially harmful microscopic organisms in the water, there are signs everywhere. There is a small toddlers pool though which we saw people utilising and they said the water was lovely and cold unlike most of the swimming areas and pools around Darwin where the water is normally the same temperature you would run a bath at!!

We have a really good walk around and find plenty of birdlife plus some huge, no scrub that, enormous fish in the main pools! There are also file snakes living here but despite hanging around for ages we don’t manage to spot any of those but when we wander down the side of the main pool we do find two water monitors! They were pretty big too, the one dived reluctantly into the water but the other stood his ground!

We made our way along the back of the pools and spotted a sign for the springs but when we reach them we find that the spring is pretty much broken, there’s little or no fresh water coming through at all which could be the main source of the water troubles here.

We find our way back through to the park but hear some familiar noises high up in the trees, there are fruit bats here so we go further into the woodland to investigate! We can’t get a clear look at them but we can see enough to know they are probably Little Red Flying Foxes, the same type roosting at Mataranka but there are no where near the same numbers here!

As we come closer to the main pools again I spot a ranger so walk over for a chat. He’s an apprentice with the Parks and Wildlife organisation and was happy to answer my questions about the type of monitors and bats that we’d seen and also explained what’s caused the build up of the bacteria in the water. It’s really down to the lack of spring water coming into the pools, the supply was plentiful but due to more mining and the water table being broken and inadvertently diverted elsewhere the water doesn’t get refreshed and the bacteria builds up.

The future of Howard Springs is still in doubt in terms of it regaining it’s status as a place of recreational swimming, the scientists say that the pool could be drained and refilled with fresh water but long term the same build up of bacteria would occur and there’s a possibility that the whole area will be re-developed in a similar way to Leanyer Recreational Park but we don’t know what that’s like as we haven’t been! We chatted to a family from Adelaide who had brought their young son here for the day. The chap remembered swimming here 20 years ago so was really disappointed to find that it’s no longer possible saying that back then it was such a busy, jolly place to be.

We walked the creek walk and found a pretty bird along the way which has taken us an age to identify but it’s a Rainbow Pitta! I’m sure you’ll all sleep better for knowing that, hopefully we will! After one last unsuccessful attempt to spot a file snake we headed back to the camp for a swim in the larger pool there!

Throughout the day we’ve discussed the best way to resolve the issue with the car, Alan had done a good deal of phoning around on our behalf and had been frustrated with some of the quotes he’d been given and the timescales. Either way it was looking likely that it could be a week or so before it would be resolved as the parts would have to come inter-state. No drama though and as it’s Thai Green Curry for dinner that should blow all the cobwebs away!

Another late night, just too warm to go straight to bed!

Night all, sweet dreams

Dar and Sar

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Photos

Darryl holds the weapon against mozzies
Dettol mixed with baby oil - it's doing the job!

Difficult to identify
but it's a Rainbow Pitta