trip

Bad luck on the trip.  Coming down from the Strzelecki track in the north the "road" was pretty bad.  Hadn't been used in a while and the creeks had washed parts away.  Kathryn was not worried as she is well experienced in this type of off road driving.  She has been doing fieldwork in remote areas for over a decade.  Got tangled in some fence wire around the axel then got two flat tires, one almost at the end.  Finally made it to a good road and to the place we wanted to camp.  Had 2 spares so we had used both of them.  Set up camp and made food, then noticed another tire was flat- it had a slow leak.  In the morning we called the nearest mechanic in Copley on the satellite phone, who could not understand where we were and was giving us a hard time.  Called the office and had another geo make a map with our coordinates.  Emailed the map to the mechanic and they came to deliver another spare 4 hours later.  Guy that came out was a former outback cop and said we were among the best prepared he had seen- 2 GPS units, tons of batteries, water, food, sat phone, nightly check ins, etc.  We were never lost- knew exactly where we were the whole time, and it was easy to communicate coordinates with everyone.  Stayed in Copley campground and next day got the spares fixed and got a lecture from the head mechanic, who said he put all the tires at 40 psi and not to change them.  You are definitely supposed to lower the pressure for rough driving though.  Headed back out to Gammon Ranges NP and got a little ways down the 4WD track.  Stopped to check the tires- 2 at 40, one at 35, one at 30.  We weren't sure if they were leaking slowly again, or not fixed right, or just weren't fully inflated, but didn't want to have to call the jerk mechanic again so we didn't take any chances and headed back after we filled up the tires with the air compressor.  They stayed at 40 back to Leigh Creek so we figured they had just not filled them up all the way, which was annoying cause we could have gone on.  At that point it was too late to do anything else so we just headed back to Adelaide. 

Didn't get to do any field work but did get to see some rocks and learned a lot about which roads to take.  Going back in 2 weeks- this time it should be really easy since we won't take that one road that caused all the problems.