Dual Battery Setup – Part Two

Disclaimer: this is how I put this together, it is not intended as a guide, and is based on my limited personal experience. I am not an electrician, nor do I accept any personal liability for any accidents that may occur after reading this post. Always speak to a professional and be aware that electricity kills.

Well the second battery has been a constant source of pain throughout the trip.  It seems to finally be resolved, however it’s been a long and exquisitely painful journey.

After arriving in Karijini I had some help from a friendly camper next to me with the cabling.  It turned out he was a sparky, so I let him loose and didn’t check his work, after all I’m just a tinkerer.  Turns out i should have watched this a bit more.

The Gibb River Road is pretty much non stop corrugations, which work electrical connections loose.  Cue one dead battery.  Pretty much every night I was having to borrow power from Brienne in order to keep my battery going.  At the end of the road we stopped in Kununurra and I bought an Optima Yellow Top.  I should have done this in the first place as you can run these until they have no charge, and then recharge them.  The one I ended up going with wasn’t like this and ended up in the scrap heap after a week.  A swap of the battery, check the solar works, and off again to Lake Argyle.  Where the battery was dead once more.

More borrowed power and some checks on the cabling and rewiring late at night whilst most of the camp slept.  Unfortunately we were in the middle of the campground.  The next morning everything looks good, and it’s time to go to the Bungle Bungles, so off we go again, with an upgrade of an automatically powering on battery charger thanks to another cable run.

On arrival into the Bungle Bungles the battery is dead again.  And I lose the last of my cool with this system.

Five minutes later and it’s a full rip apart of every connector, to find that the auto sensing cable has shorted, the cables connected in Karijini are not, and everything is essentially held together by electrical tape.  A full rip apart of the system and re-connect of all the cables and everything is back on track.  For about a day.  The fuse that was in place between the RedArc and the battery kept blowing due to heat.  Once back in Broome a trip to the local auto-electrical store and I had some different connectors to connect a midi fuse rather than the car stereo one.  After changing this out and using cable ties to hold the system in the air I’ve not had a problem so far.  Touch wood.

Windjana to Bell, a tale of two gorges

I spent the morning doing some mechanical checks on the truck, specifically looking at the suspension to see if any of the nuts had come loose on the gravel roads that we’ve silent a lot of time on recently.  As the suspension has been upgraded this was a basic check, with the left front shock needing a bit of tightening. I also managed to get some photographs of the Wedgetail eagles that make WA home, and are up here in huge numbers. I must admit I had thought these beasts were up there with Yowies and Dropbears as I’d never seen one until now.

After this I went to Windjana Gorge and saw my first crocodile in the wild. You can only swim in certain parts of the North West because of the crocs, and watching these guys on the shore i had no intention of getting in. I think they saw me first as I had a weird sensation of being watched, similar to when I was at an alligator farm last year in Florida. The crocodiles were all on the far bank and in the water, however I heard that a French backpacker had asked if anyone would pay him to touch a croc just a few hours before.  You can’t stop stupid I guess.

After this we went back to the cars and then headed to Bell Gorge and falls, about a two hour drive over gravel roads with just enough blacktop that you knew what you were missing, and the first water crossing of the trip.

This was more like it, waterfalls that you could swim in, even if there was a bit of a hike. The water was quite warm compared to Karijini, and pretty powerful, I couldn’t swim against the current directly to the fall edge, instead I had to go side on, then drifted back to shore with the current.

The hike back to the car was a bit more fun when not stinking hot and then into camp for another fire and some Mexican inspired food.

We also got an update from a DPAW volunteer on the Freo game, a win for us!

 

The Gibb

Today we reached the Gibb River Road.  Two years of planning (somewhat weakly as my better half says), dreaming, and reading as much as we could get our hands on. We left Broome, and headed to Derby for a refuel and then a 5km backtrack to the start of the Gibb.

And its just another bitchumen road. What the hell has gone wrong!

Well it is for the first 50km. Then the gravel starts. And it steadily gets harder. Here we go, it’s getting fun. After more roadworks,  they seem to have cursed this trip,  we get to Tunnel Gorge.  This is a naturally occurring tunnel, formed by water over the centuries that goes for about 750m. The creek that has formed it still runs through it, providing a rare chance to walk a tunnel that has a creek and bats flying through it.

To make it even more interresting there are stalagmites and stalactites throughout the tunnel, along with waterfalls in a couple of spots.

The most interesting ones that we saw were the ones on the waterfall that weer inside the tunnel.  These were little more than shelves of rock about six feet above the creek, but also highly impressive.  At the far end of Tunnel Gorge was my first look at Aboriginal Art.

From here we went to Windjana Gorge for overnight camping. We had a small fire in one of the campsites, and went over the plans for the next day. Whilst doing this and getting stuck intosome raviolli and sauce we had a kangaroo bounce out of the bush about ten metres from us, before bounding away across the campground.

I also got to try out something I had been considering since the start of this trip, camping Ugg boots. They are keeping my feet toasty warm, and for a $25 buy, are up there with the best purchases of the trip, and mean i can keep my good Uggs for at home in the house.

Broome

Broome is a pretty spectacular place.  We got into Broome just after lunch and managed to get a start on the normal things in life like washing and cleaning.  The miracle of indoor plumbing was not lost on any of us.

Once the basics were sorted out we went out to Cable Beach Club and the Sunset Bar for one of the most spectacular sunsets I’ve ever seen.  There were no tables left when we arrived at 4, we got lucky and ended up sharing one with another couple.  We had dinner at Divers Bar just down the road and ended up having a relatively early night as we were all a bit tired from the previous week.

The next night was a bit of a bar crawl starting at Matsos, and ending at Divers, with the obligatory photo of me in front of the only Irish Bar in town, called Captain Murphy.  Unfortunately there wasn’t any Murphys on tap, so it was a quick pint of Guinness.

The next morning we packed up and left Broome to head to the start of the Gibb River Road.

Kimberleys Food Preparation

The biggest problem that I’m hoping to face on this trip is food. The reality of three and a half weeks on the road with a week between major towns means that a bit of planning is needed.  To this end I’ve grabbed some steaks, snags, and burgers from Harvey Beef and put them into vacuum sealed bags.  This should maximise space and keep everything for as long as possible.

As well as this I’ve packed some Weet Bix and dairy products for breakfast and snacks, and most importantly the milk will help with my Nespresso fix in the morning.

Lunch will be cold cuts, antipasto, and sandwiches on travel days, to be honest anything I can eat whilst driving.

I’m hoping to catch some fish, however given my complete lack of ability so far I’m putting this into the “it might happen, but just in case” basket.  To help here I have a couple of rods and reels, some tackle kits, and a filleting kit.  If anything is caught the vacuum sealer and freezer will help to keep it as fresh as possible, for as long as possible.

Add some junk food to this and I’m good to go.

Karijini

We’ve spent the last few days in Karijini National Park enjoying walks, climbs, and the gorges there.

On the day of arrival we ended up sleeping in the overflow day parking lot as this was the first weekend of school holidays. Whilst there was barely enough room to swing a cat between campsites, this has worked out in my favour as a sparky was in the camp opposite and came over when he saw me fiddling with my dual battery setup. More on this in a separate post, needless to say it worked out extremely well for me, with about an hour of free work.

The second day saw us move to a proper spot, almost without meaning to as we chanced our arms and ended up with a spot big enough for us and our new temporary guests. The crew of Pod are a lovely couple and their amazing almost two years old little girl, nicknamed Boo for her love of the game, who immediately ran the six adults around as though it was her own private kingdom.

We spent the next couple of days in Fern Pool, Hammersley Gorge, Joffre Falls and Knox Gorge.

Fern Pool was easy enough to get to, a quick five minute drive, 10 minute descent and walk, and then a swim in an Aboriginal site (allowed). The water was extremely cold, but very needed after a couple of days of no showers.

Hammersley Gorge was a drive and a half, almost at the opposite side of the park, with the majority of it being on corrugated dirt roads.

Once at the gorge the buzz of drones ruined the serenity, however these left about ten minutes after we reached the bottom. Some sandwiches and discussion over whether or not to swim was had, along with some photo opps. We then ended up in the icy cold water, significantly colder than the previous day – which is not something that I thought could happen, for a swim and then the climb to the top. Boo decided I was to walk with her to the top holding her hand. The only trouble being that some of the steps were the same size as her, so I ended up carrying her and my kit about halfway to the top. Bring on the cardio workout!

After the drive back to the centre of the park we came to Joffre Falls for a look at the least favourite named falls (we’re all game of thrones fans), before moving onto Knox Gorge where we got a couple of shots that look far worse on camera than they actually are.

Back to camp and another night of food, wine, and laughter before a pack up and Boo wishing us all goodbye as we were off on our way to Eighty Mile Beach.

80 Mile Beach

First off, I don’t know how long the beach actually is, wikipedia claims it is 140 miles.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighty_Mile_Beach.  I do know it is stunning and that it is the only time in my life that I think I’ll have access to as much beach as this with no one else present.

The reason why – the drive to get here.  It was horrendous.  We left Karijini, refuelled at Port Hedland, and then turned off at the sign for the caravan park, before taking what I can only describe as the wrongest turn on the trip so far.  We’ve spent hours backtracking across a station to get here, all of the roads appear to be unused for a significant period of time, and the fields of kangaroos and cattle don’t appear to know what to make of us in our trucks.  Given the chance though I’d do it all again.  This place is stunning, and we really are spoilt in WA with our choice of beaches, this appears to be one of the best.

I’ve managed to get the drone airborne for the first time on this trip as well.  for all of about five minutes before overconfidence and lack of skill saw it hurtle into a sand dune at full speed.  I hope it’s ok, it was amazing having a different view of where we are.

The next stop is Broome where it’s the final rest, recharge, refuel, reload, stop before we head to Derby and the start of the Gibb.  I’m looking forward to having a real bed for a couple of nights and some icy cold Matso’s beers.

Captains Log

Cardate 001

After a later than planned start due to packing taking a couple of hours longer than I planned, I got on the road.  By this stage Neal and Amber were two hours ahead of me in their truck Brienne, an ugly blond hilux that may be familiar from the #RescueRanger entry.

I made a quick loop North to Joondalup and grabbed some last minute supplies (beer and food) and then started the drive proper, overtaking mining equipment that was going around 30kmh whenever I could. The next stop was Dalwallinu for fuel, where a local kindly pointed out the turn off for Great Northern Highway in the next town along. This head to be my last turn for the day.

Out of Dalwallinu it was a long drive to the next stop, Mount Magnet, for fuel. This was only interrupted by overtaking road trains and more mining equipment. It’s hard to convey the size of this stuff other than to say that in Deadpools words I was wearing the wrong coloured trousers for overtaking things this size.

From Mt Magnet it was more of the same, stopping at Meekatharra for fuel, and getting the information that I was now about an hour behind Brienne’s intrepid crew who had stopped at a 24 hour camping spot.

Another 55 minutes on the road and I was behind my last road train for the night and spotted a kangaroo in the bush. 5 more minutes and I was in the camping area, welcomed by a small fire and chicken wraps. Happy Days!