A Crack In The Head

I'm currently in Port Augusta, about 300 km north of Adelaide. It's a small town that deems itself the "Gateway to the Outback". Interestingly, it's the first place we've seen significant numbers of Aborigines.

We got some bad news on our way out of Adelaide yesterday. The mechanic in Kingston told us that we had a crack in the head of our engine. To me, this sounded like a serious problem, but he told us not to worry. He said he puts Mitsubishi engines together all the time and sees these cracks alot.

Just to be sure, we stopped at a mechanic in Adelaide, and he told us we'll be lucky to make it out of the Nullarbor. He said if that crack works it's way all the way through things are going to get very interesting. At best, we'd be firing on 3 cylinders instead of 4. At worst, it'll blow the rocker cover off and oil will go all over the place (again).

Michael, Laetitia and I talked about it and decided we haven't come this far just to turn around. We're getting to Perth even if we have to abandon Gigi in the middle of the desert. This little twist just adds an element of excitement to the journey.

Finally, I found out today that the Eyre highway through the Nullarbor desert has the longest stretch of straight road in the world. 145 kilometers without a single curve.

It's going to be a long ride.

Our tentative plan (click for larger image)

Posted by flow Frazao on January 27, 2005 at 10:12 PM in Australia | Permalink