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June 25th 2013

Published: June 26th 2013

We are not in Crystal Brook at all, but in Mallala which is not in the list of places on this travel site. There is a nice free camping site at the town oval where the only thing you need to pay for is to have a hot shower. This is an excellent idea for small towns because it draws travellers into the town where we spend money in their town.

We were talking to another caravanner here last evening and we got to the where are you from bit and when we said Brinkworth he told us he had stayed in our little park in 2012. He also said that "some woman on a bike" came and advised him they were only supposed to be there 72 hours. He rang the council who said it was okay to stay longer. Not a good impression to be telling people about as he travels methinks.

The last blog you had from us was to let you all know that we had experienced another failure of our shock absorbers and needed to return to Katherine for repairs. Firms in Katherine refused to work on our van because of their concerns about the cruisemaster suspension in place apparently there have been some failures of this type of equipment recently in the area. Rudi organised for a firm in Alice Springs to do the repairs which meant an 1100 km trip south on 1 set of shock absorbers thank heavens it was all on bitumen.

We took three days to get to Alice Springs free camping all the way. As we moved south we noticed it began to get colder as you would expect. I was not really in the mood to take pictures and record our travels as I usually do. When we got to Alice we found the workshop we needed and left the van and headed off in a loan car for a couple of hours. Of course to Hungry Jacks for their free wifi and I found a power point to charge my kindle which was getting very low.

We got back and our van was ready to go so we paid the bill and headed south. After another three days of travelling around 450 kms a day at 80 km per hour free camping all the way and getting colder and colder we headed to Woomera to stay in their caravan park. The beautiful lush lawns are all gone, hit by very harsh summers but the park is still clean and tidy the facilities are okay, the water is HOT, the new Maytag washing machines and driers are expensive at $5 a go but I was desperate by this time. They even have a bar which opens at 4pm every day and the drinks are very reasonably priced. If you are in Woomera on a Thursday the RSL Bowling Club does cheap meals and on Friday the Sports Club does. There are now only about 160 permanent residents down from the 7,500 in it's heyday.

We developed a new game every morning. Before going to bed we would ensure our weather station was registering from outside the van and as we sit having our coffee we would watch the temperature drop. As far south as Woomera the low was 4.9c

One more days travel saw us in Adelaide and we tried to book in to the Highway 1 Caravan Park. That was a fiasco. They now seem to have 75% cabins and the absolute minimum number of van sites. We were assigned a site no 47 which was drive through. When we got to the site a cabin had been built on no 46 slap up against the edge of our site (this seemed to be news to the people in the office). Our site was only about 10 feet across and the people on site 48 had deployed the largest annex I have ever seen with guy ropes every two feet extending onto our site. The road was about 10 feet wide and you couldn't swing wide enough to get onto site 47 without either hitting the cabin or taking out the annex.

Back we went to the office and they could not give us another site so we got our money back and asked where there was another caravan park. According to them it was 25 kms away south of the CBD. If you have ever driven in the Adelaide you would know why we choose to head back north.

We ended up in Mallala a small town about 50 kms away. We free camped at the sports oval and were so exhausted decided to take a day off and just relax. Our temperature game on the first morning showed the outside temperature was 4.2c and on Tuesday 3.3c. Because we have a vinyl floor I am thinking of cheap carpets to offer a little protection from the cold coming up through the floor. the first Cheap as Chips I see.

On Tuesday we broke camp and headed back to Adelaide and went to Desert Sky where we spoke to Rudi about the issues we have had and presented a letter and documentation of the amount it has cost us and requested compensation. We firmly believe that we have a good case for compensation because he was aware of the issue one month after we took delivery of our van in May 2012 having been advised by Vehicle Components to upgrade the plate when attaching the shock absorbers and our van was under warranty. We had the van back there in July for some minor repairs and were not advised of the problem. When arranging for the work to be done in Alice Springs Rudi told the welder there that he knew of the problem and had not done work on our van.

He was not convinced of our argument and wanted to take the issue to cruisemaster. We are expecting a telephone call today. He stated that the problem "will be sorted out" and we believe he is working with us on this but we have no intentions of backing down. We have now had our telephone call and Rudi on behalf of Cruisemaster requested the amount of kms we had done before there was the first failure of the shock absorbers and then the 2nd. Because I use Nomad Notes to keep track of the milage and fuel use we were able to do this and the total number of kms that the van has done altogether is less than 15,000. Where this is going we do not know but hopefully from our point of view it is a positive. It does seem strange that both sets of shockies would fail in less than 15,000 kilometres. Our speculation, perhaps they were faulty.

With regard to the rest of the feedback we gave him some work was done immediately a little bit of sealing the exterior and our awnings and we are taking it back when we return from WA in September for the steps to be cut off, the whole interior to be sealed to cut down on dust entering including the water heater, shower and apparently where the electricity enters the van from the connection to the vehicle, protection to the water tanks to be installed, the stabilisers are to be checked out as we have had trouble with them. We were considering moving over to another brand and when advised the ones we were contemplating are made in China and the ones we have are locally manufactured have decided to stick with these. They seem to attract mud and dust like flies flock to a rotten piece of meat but they are made in Australia.

Rudi wants us to keep an eye on the new shock absorbers we have had fitted (West Coast Suspension) to see how they perform.

Next we headed off to K-Mart where we purchased more sweaters, ugg boots, some pillows (two of ours turned out to be child size and annoyed us). Then to the supermarket to stock up on things like SOUP, we think we will need it.

We visited Ruth and Ray before heading back to Mallala where we are holed up again. The low was 5.9c this morning. Alan and Sylvia are visiting England at the present time so we missed them.

We have decided to head off tomorrow and possibly stay at Crystal Brook or Port Pirie, then work our way along the coast of the Eyre Peninsula. In PP we hope to get the latest chip on our new windscreen repaired and buy the carpet scatter rugs to cut down on the cold through the floor. Yes we know we are mad to head to the Eyre Peninsula at this time, it is winter and it will be cold and possibly wet, but we will also be close enough to Adelaide to return if necessary. We have never been to the Eyre Peninsula and after experiencing the number of vans and grey nomads above the 26th parallel we are opting for off season from now on.

I will break out the camera and start to record the new journey, what a pity we had to cancel the rest of the outback trip. We should be at Lawn Hill now (Boodjamulla) maybe at a later date.

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