Sunday 1st August - Alice Springs

Our rest day wasn’t quite as restful as we’d hoped as Anne did four loads of washing and I spent the morning under the Land Rover; nothing like gender stereotypes. I carried out fluid checks, wheel bearing checks and adjustment, propshaft UJ checks and had a general look at suspension bushes and anything else that can wear. The tyres are looking a little skinny on tread and I removed another six bits of wire sticking out of the inside sidewall of one of the rear tyres, but luckily they don’t seem to have punctured the inner tube so there were no more tyre lever exercises today. I think we need to investigate new rubber. I was going to replace the handbrake cable but I couldn’t get any purchase on the screw holding on the drum as the head has been mangled, so we remain without a handbrake. However, this is probably a good thing as we’re now used to not having one so I can foresee us forgetting to release it if we fixed it. We did get most of the afternoon to relax and read, but I think we’ll have to try to slow down a bit in general. If only they had made Australia smaller.