Our next planned stop was a free camp at the Gascoyne Rover South Branch just over 3 hours drive away so we did not rush to get away this morning. Dave took the opportunity to spit and polish the Pearl interior…

The day dawned a beautiful one – sunny with not a cloud in the sky as we drove out of Newman…

However, just 100m down the highway Klaus came over the radio to let Gordie know he had no lights at all on the van….

We all pulled over and found Branch on the taillight of the Lotus – not a good look!!

Gordie and MacGyver started troubleshooting trying to work out exactly where the issue was…. The Titan’s lights were OK and so they assumed it was potentially a fuse in the Lotus after checking the connection between the Titan and the van which looked ok.

The decision was made to continue on sandwiching the Hunters between us and the Weiss’s so that the lack of lights would not pose a risk to others….

We started again and within about 5 mins Gordie came on the radio alerting us to the fact that the Titan was now playing up as well – over revving – and would not drop back to under 2000 revs… clearly the issue was more serious than first thought… Gordie had been having issues starting the van over the last week or so due to the contact switch ( he had the autosparky at Newman check it out the day before and it seemed to be working)…. All the issues seemed to link to this part, so we decided to turn around and go back to Newman to see if there was someone available to look at it again… Kerry rang ahead and fortunately found someone who was going to meet us at the visitor centre carpark to take a look…

We drove back into Newman via the south entrance which had some great metal sculptures of Aussie wildlife…

Trev and Gordie had another look at the part while waiting and managed to get the Titan running OK after a bit of a clean…

A friendly tradie stopped for a chat through his window – always someone happy to offer advice 😊

As the Titan now seemed OK and we knew what the issue was, Gordie rang back the tradie who had said he would come – he was still an hour away from coming and when Gordie told him what they’d done he advised him to buy some auto electrical lubricant and use it to spray the switch to hopefully prevent the contacts from sticking….

So, we all went across to Dome for a coffee and Gordie grabbed the appropriate lubricant and we were finally back on the road…. 2 hrs since we had first set off… it was not an issue though as we were heading for a free camp so no problems with arriving before office closing time ….

We were not that far down the road when the Titan started over-revving again and Gordie figured out that it was when he applied the brakes that the switch was sticking…. So, we had to be strategic in the drive and Gordie had to use the handbrake – and not turn the car off or into park …. And that seemed to work… the final solution is to ring ahead to Kalgoorlie and get the switch part ordered in to be replaced….

We drove over the Fortesque River which actually had some water in it…albeit not flowing….

It was a fairly straight journey with barely any traffic heading in our direction which was helpful for Gordie, however there were multiple wide loads that we had to pull to the side too, off the road and slow down which made it quite challenging for the Titan…

We had not seen so many huge pieces of machinery being transported…. Incredible the money and equipment that goes into mining!!

We stopped at Kumarina Roadhouse to get fuel…

and a huge truck carrying 2 pink buckets for the haul trucks in the mine came in…. they were pink in support of breast cancer – and dwarfed the Titan!!!

The countryside changed repeatedly between arid red desert and green tufts of spinifex and trees…

We passed a pink lake – which was not very pink….

There was some road kill which made for great food for the wedge tailed eagles in the area – we passed a few along the road – very majestic birds!!

Klaus let us know of a cow taking a nap on the side of the road…. (??)

Arriving at the free camp on the Gascoyne river we were able to set up in a wagon train as the areas were large… there were toilets and a dump point there much to Rose’s delight!!

We set up and got the fire started as it was quite cool – the weather was turning increasingly wintery as we headed south ☹

Trev and Gordie gave the Titan switch a squirt with the auto electrical lubricant…

While we were setting up a huge wide load and it’s pilot vehicles pulled in for the night… a large bulldozer heading for the Fortescue Mine at Newman…

Everyone bar Klaus sat around for happy hour – he had mysteriously disappeared…. With his metal detector….

And as the light faded we got concerned that he had not returned so Trev went looking for him…

He finally returned – not gold in hand but again having found plenty of “scrap metal”….

Klaus then gave Rosie a demo with his metal detector….

Happy hour was enjoyable – until in the heat of the moment red wine was spilt ….??Branch??? and left Dave with a wet seat… and a mess for Rose to sort…. The backup beach chair came into use, and all was well…