Outback partway between Coober Pedy and Woomera
We posted yesterdays blog just before supper. By the time we’d completed supper it was starting to get warm in our motorhome. I checked the air conditioner and it didn’t seem like it was giving us any cool air. Within half an hour it was very hot in the motorhome, probably up to the outside temperature which was still running about 39 °C. Enid sat outside, I stayed inside and opened all the windows, and with the fan on the air conditioner and the small circulating fan it was tolerable, but not comfortable. By 9 pm we’d made a decision not to go any further north, but instead to return to Port Augusta at daybreak and try to get our air conditioner fixed.
Emu at Woomera
It did cool down a lot overnight. By about midnight we could sleep comfortably. The wind increased from the south and a south wind here brings in colder air from off the Antarctic and the Southern Ocean. Morning was actually quite comfortable, and we were on the road before 7:30 am. We drove into the very strong south wind all day, so our diesel consumption was very high. Just after we started we saw an emu south of Coober Pedy. We also saw three wedge tailed eagles, one in a tree but the other two eating kangaroo carcasses. Then we saw another emu just south of the turn into Woomera. Since it was on the opposite side of the highway I turned around in order to get a picture. There was a hitchhiker there heading north, and I think we falsely raised his hopes that we were going to pick him up.
We got into Port Augusta in good time and asked at the camp ground registration where we might be able to get our air conditioner fixed. The attendant told us the name of a repair shop, but when we got there they could only fix automobile air conditioners. However they did contact a refrigeration repair shop for us and so we headed off again. When we arrived the owner of the repair shop was just taking the seat out of a truck to fix it’s air conditioner, but when he heard our plight he dropped that and started work on ours. He really did take pity on the Canadian tourists. I was able to help him some, and it took about two hours and he had fixed the problem. We had a cracked pipe so that we’d lost our freon. He removed the cracked section, added more freon, and our air conditioner seems to be working fine again.
Enid had a long chat with his wife while we were working. She learned a lot more information about Australia. It does get warm here in Port Augusta, usually going to around 46 °C, but apparently this year is unusually cool. I imagine that is for the same reason as the eastern part of Australia is suffering from all the flooding and rain.
We won’t be making it north to Uluru now after all. Instead we are heading back into the outback but this time to the Flinders Ranges, as the forecast is not too bad from now until Thursday with highs in the high 30’s.