Woke up to a gloriously sunny morning, still with a serious nip in the air but it is nice to see the sun.

We waiting for Alan and Sandy to catch us up, which should happen around lunch time.    In the meantime a bit of minor maintenance and then time for morning tea with the Dam as a backdrop.

Pat decides that she wants some snags and chicken cooked up for snacks, gives me the opportunity to try the slide out bbq a feature of our new van, it works well.

Then we get the phone call that Alan & Sandy had got within 50 ks of us when they lost the turbo after three and half hours driving from Kalgoorlie.    They are shattered of course but have no alternative but to turn round and head back to Kal.   They have decided that even if they get it fixed they don’t have the confidence to head out on the GCR and so will return home, assuming it can be fixed in Kal.   We’re upset for them but we will continue as planned to Alice and Brad and Denise will decide what they want to do there.

Our next stop is Laverton to top up with fuel and water, when we get there the whole place seems to be road works and pavement upgrades, with roads closed everywhere it is impossible to get the vehicles to the Information Centre, where the water is.    We have to get permits here to enter Aboriginal Lands, it doesn’t cost anything but we are always concerned that we are telling people where we live and that we will be a thousand ks from home for the next three days!

By the time we have located an alternative water source and got onto the GCR it is later than we wanted it to be,

so we stop a bit earlier than planned, light a fire and get into a glass of wine, we’re talking for a while before we realise it dinner time and decide to have dinner by the fire and quite soon it’s after ten and our bedtime.