Under the cover of darkness we connected up the vans and quietly inched out of the van park and stopped on the outskirts to fill up with water.

Dave made extra sure he was well equipped with water in his own words for Rosie’s sake – he filled up his 2 van tanks and 5 jerry cans of water (total water capacity 270 litres of water) Good to know someone has plenty to spare – just hoping that he doesn’t want to on-sell it to us all to make up for the loss of fuel economy!!

Just as we were on the road a quick call to stop came from Rosie – they had forgotten to put down their second bathroom vent. Not to be outdone, Kerrie and Gordon had to ….. and then we locked our tunnel boot. Branch still had not surfaced after a night on the town in Coober Pedy…

Dawn was breaking over Cobber Pedy – eerily beautiful – much like a lunar landscape.

Just a few kms down the road however we had to pull over again as Trev could not locate his mobile phone – we knew it was in the car as it was connected to Bluetooth and after turning the car inside out Branch finally appeared and it was found just wedged near Trev’s left knee in the console…

On to Marla where we grabbed fuel and coffee. Dave noticed his Anderson plug was now hanging down damaged – apparently it had been a bit loose this morning on leaving Coober Pedy but now needed repair – Branch was out again – never a dull moment on  this wild adventure. All sorted and we were on the road heading for Erldunda our next stop.

We crossed the border into the Northern Territory and made it ti Erldunda – a quick fuel stop and lunch and we headed out the Lasseter Highway towards Uluru and Curtin Springs our next free camp.

Rosie spotted what she thought was Uluru but in fact was Mount Connor – still an amazing mesa sitting isolated amongst the desert plains.

We arrived at Curtin Springs – fortunate to get 4 spots close together and set up camp. Once organised we had afternoon tea and listened to Simon Manchester’s talk on Genesis chapter 1 – a great insight into God’s creation of the world. We all feel so privileged to have this time off to go and explore such a wonderful and unique part of His marvellous world!