Broome or Bust – Downtime in Derby

On the road is a lot of fun and we have settled into a nice set-up/pull-down routine.  Still, we’re finding that after 10-12 days free camping and being on the move, sitting still for a few days allows us to repair, recharge and re-stock.  And so we found ourselves in Derby and our first smell of the ocean for over two weeks.

With our jockey wheel now fully seized, I was more than happy to bring out the big gun, our Vevor hydraulic jack to get it up to a nice height and chock it up with a log.

Unfortunately (and how many times have I used THAT word), we were totally unfamiliar with the local conditions.  What SEEMED perfectly flat  ground disguised a 4” layer of dust and, just as we had reached the desired height, the van rolled forward maybe an inch or two, just enough to topple the jack and have the drawbar come crashing down.  On first inspection, the jack looked like a certain Norwegian Blue, the casing cracked in several places and half buried.  Again the cavalry arrived, and two car jacks working in tandem got it up sufficiently to retrieve ours from underneath.  All this time, the courtesy lights on the jack were still flashing merrily, so more in hope than anticipation, I repositioned the jack and hit the button.

Oh Lordy, a miracle !! Up she went, oblivious to what seemed a mortal wounding, and we were back in business. After we had finished setting up, I took the jack into the kitchen and bandaged the wounds with gaffa tape.  It’s looking gnarly, but it lives!!

It took a day over four to remove all the dust from the Jeep and do a few odd jobs around the van.  We bought a new heavy duty jockey wheel and order was restored.

Derby is a functional coastal town with a small port that services the outlying mining companies.  We took a run out to the jetty and found a local with three crab pots tied to the railing.  A quick chat and Tamika was in the tackle shop five minutes later and marched triumphantly out with her very own crab pot and bait holder.  We had arrived in Derby at the end of the neap tides, which means not that much difference between high and low, so when we turned up at the jetty all bright and bushy-tailed the next morning, the tide was flowing like a river under the pier.  You’d need a concrete block to secure the crab pot to the bottom of the harbour.  The aforesaid local was there again, just packing up, and recommended we try the creek a few hundred metres away, which we did. 

Tamika put a couple of chicken wings into the bait holder, placed it into the crab pot and threw it with gusto into the creek, only to see the bait holder float to the surface and then slowly out of reach, drifting away ever so gently on the incoming tide.  Oh..right….We laughed at that crucial missed step in the process, but undaunted she, this time, TIED another chicken wing to the pot and we sat and waited for the giant mud crabs to come running.  Again, we weren’t to know that your average muddy doesn’t get out of bed for one chicken wing, but it was fun sitting on the edge of the bank, dragging our chairs a little further up as the tide came in.  “Hey” came a voice from my right. A tall lanky aboriginal man jogged towards us.  “You gotta move back.  Big crocodile live here”.  Well, he didn’t have to ask twice.  I’m not sure that they weren’t more concerned about the welfare of a ‘sister’ than the whitey she was with. We chatted with the small group for about 10 minutes, but the croc warning seemed to have been a dampener on Tamika’s enthusiasm, so we headed back to the van.

The rest of the week mosied along until Saturday.   Derby is pretty laid back and when the cemetery is touted as a must see, Saturday night at the local speedway was not to be missed.  An eclectic mix of red dust, country music and cars parked, tails in, around the track.  There was plenty of action and you could barely catch your breath between races.

The surprise was the six to nine year olds tearing around the inside track in what are called quarter racers.  Powered by souped up lawn mower engines, these kids take it very seriously, following the same rules as the grown-ups and kitted out in all the gear.  Top speed looked at around 45-50 kph, but never too far away from their Mums or Dads who were called on to push start their budding F1 stars from anywhere around the track.

We ‘re still having trouble with the car fridge, but  have narrowed it down to what we think is a blown in-line fuse and a resultant dead charging battery for the fridge.  Broome is now less than 150k’s. We’ll spend a couple of nights at Roebuck Plains and head into Broome first thing Saturday morning.