Started out quite early so we could get some decent kms under our belt and take it easy once we pulled off onto the dirt roads later in the day. Trucked north up the Tablelands Highway which is very much the road less travelled. Only one vehicle width of tar so we had to pull off to the side when roadtrains approached from the opposite direction. No arguments there.
Made it to Cape Crawford at the other end of the highway and fuelled up before turning off the tar onto the Nathan River Road which forms part of the Savannah Way, a 4wd road that (roughly) follows the Gulf of Carpentaria. Gulf country... and croc country! Very remote but very beautiful. Happily trundled along with a rough plan to have a bit of lunch somewhere and set up camp when we found a decent spot towards the end of the day. Very rocky road but we took it easy enough, or so we thought.
The car started feeling wrong and I pulled over to find a completely shredded tyre on the back left side. Not a huge drama, apart from the hissing noise coming out of the back right tyre! Yes we'd managed to pop 2 tyres with only 1 spare (although buying 2nd spare had been on our list of things to do in Darwin). A few colourful words ensued and we quickly decided to try to fix the leak on the right side then sit down to have some water and a bit of a think. Not the best situation to be in when you're 100km up a 400km offroad track in the middle of the outback!
Tyre fixed ok after blocking up under the axle in case of operator error. Luckily we had a puncture repair kit and an air compressor amongst our gear. Sat in the shade for a bit and thought about order of operations for changing the left wheel. Might seem fairly easy but a tall 2 tonne truck keeling over in the sand and rock isn't the easiest thing to jack up in the air at the best of times, let alone safely. We'd done a bit of jacking practise in the front yard before we left with mixed results and that was on the flat grass. We ended up getting everything out of the truck to reduce the weight, chocking the front wheels (trying not to get bitten by snakes while looking for appropriate rocks) and digging out the area around the flat tyre so as to reduce the jacking height.
So, both wheels fixed ok after about 2.5 hours in the stinking hot NT sun (44 degrees inside the truck according to the thermometer). The repair on the right side seemed ok but it took 2 goes to seal the hole so we weren't sure whether it would hold and we no longer had a spare. Where to go next? Back 100kms over the harsh rocky road to just a tiny servo in the middle of nowhere? Or push on ahead which, if we couldn't manage to find a spare Landcruiser wheel to buy, meant 300km of dirt and rock then another 100km of tar to Mataranka.
We ended up backtracking 5km to a turnoff from the main road to Lorella Springs Station. We'd heard about this place but it was 30km off the main road on an even worse track so we'd written off visiting the campsite despite it apparently being a beautiful spot. We'd only seen 4 vehicles in the whole 3 hours we were stuck. One ranger who wasn't coming back that way for 3 days, a pair of 4wds on their way to Lorella Springs and one weirdo bushman guy who was camped at Lorella Springs. We'd said that we'd try to make our way back there (they had a phone at least) and if we didn't appear in a couple of hours to come looking for us.
By the time we got to the camp, the whole place knew about our plight and they'd put several plans in place to come and rescue us in case we didn't turn up that night! Even better, the guy that runs the station had just gotten back from Darwin with 6 second hand wheels and tyres for a troopie just like ours! He offered to sell us a spare for only $100 which was about 5 times less than what we'd expected we'd have to pay all the way out there. We've met some fantastic people already on our travels but this was a really special place. Spoilt a bit by the bushman guy who'd actually come out to where we were stuck to offer to sell us one of his crappy spare Hilux wheels. We seem to either meeting amazingly nice people or quite the opposite, not much in between.
Finally we got our camp set up (and while doing so were offered dinner by a nice lady camped across from us) and stumbled down to the hot springs with a beer each to wash off the dirt. 10pm by the time we finally stopped and we'd been up on our way at the crack of dawn that morning. Despite the stress, we felt pretty lucky about how things panned out, funny how the dice rolls sometimes...
