*** Note: Sorry for the delay in posts – too busy living this travelling life, which is no holiday!! We’ll get it all up eventually – we promise   ***

We arrived in Adelaide on Saturday afternoon after a very long and hot journey from Naracoorte.  The forecast was for high 30’s and I optimistically thought – “Good day to be stuck in the car with cool A/C.  May as well get some miles done as it would be too hot to enjoy any outdoor sights or activities”.  Oh dear how wrong I was.  We were only an hour into our 4 hour drive to Adelaide when we noticed Betsy (our Land Cruiser) was no longer blowing cold air but hot.  Over the next 3 hours the car thermometer maxed out at 42 outside and a sweaty 48.2 inside the car.

The boys handled the heat well thanks to wet bandanas and “War of the worlds” followed by the first hour of Harry Potter on audio book. Julian swears he doesn’t feel the heat.  I was wilting in the sun as we headed due north.  I added this “issue” to the growing list of things that needed sorting out in Adelaide.  Adelaide is the last big town we’ll be in until Perth in April, and so the list was growing.  Next “issue” was noted as we were climbing some large hills coming into Adelaide.  We seemed to be losing power in a way we hadn’t previously and were maxing out at 60km/h. A quick survey of the vehicle revealed a super hot left caravan brake.  Add it to the list.

We crossed our fingers and gingerly made it into a low-budget caravan park not far from our friends Eric and Michelle in Hallet Cove.  Over to their house for a yummy dinner and a well-earned G&T.  Sunday was spent enjoying their company and the coastal scenery around the south of Adelaide before tackling the list on Monday morning.

Dinner at Erics

Hallet Cove

A trip to Jayco (which of course involves packing the whole van up), a local car A/C repairers (apparently all components working fine!), TyrePower to fix a slow leaking front left tyre (car), auto electrician to check out the power loss, chemist and Doctors to get the kids Meningicoccal B booster, me to get scripts filled, Julian to get a satellite phone Sim (Pivotel), Telstra to change over my mobile plan, Apple store to fix my phone after it didn’t like the Telstra Sim card, a haircut for Sam and a hair cut for me (have discovered having hair around my neck drives me crazy esp in a super hot car). Phew – all in 4 days, plus the South Australia Museum, a visit to Glenelg and dinners each night with Eric and Michelle. No wonder the kids thought Adelaide was boring!

Julian did try to liven it up a little for the boys by hamming it up with them in the laundry!

Glenelg

Sturt river CP

We set off for Port Augusta on Friday morning and made it through 20kms of Adelaide by 10:30am before Julian luckily stopped to check the caravan brakes again. Unluckily, the problem hadn’t been fixed so around we turned, back through Adelaide to the Jayco dealer. Despite being super busy and fully booked they fitted us in due to it being a “critical” safety issue. It took 5 hours to sort it out and get it properly fixed (couldn’t find the issue, so they replaced the whole brake drum). There was no way to make to Port Augusta now so we aimed for the pink lake at Lochiel; a more reasonable 140kms north of Adelaide.