We got up bright and early the next day, packed up ready to head off to explore a few gorges – Adcock, Calvans and Manning were on our list. However, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry!  John hopped into the car to reverse it to connect the van as we do every day, and the car wouldn’t move. We did a quick check of everything as we’d been in 4wd the previous day and had locked the wheels, but everything looked fine.  It took the best part of an hour to find a way to inch back the car.  Finally we were all hooked up and ready to go but the car had different ideas. It crawled out of the park revving loudly. This wasn’t good.

With no phone range, we had no option but to take our time moving on, hoping the gears would click in properly. We had travelled over so many corrogations, just maybe it would fix itself as we negotiated the next lot. We can always hope.

In one of our camp books, John remembered seeing an advertisement for a mechanic. I found the ad but we couldn’t phone so we decided to make our way to him – about 70kms on rough road.

We pulled into the Imintji Community Store for fuel, and I noticed a pay phone on the verandah.  John rang the mechanic who reminded him it was Sunday and he closed at 12 noon.

‘Over the Range Tyre and Mechanical Repairs’ is located in the middle of the bush between Adcock and Galvans Gorge.

When we arrived there was a queue of cars and caravans waiting for help. The owner, Neville, was on his own trying to wade through the various car problems before noon but they kept coming. He was a lovely man, cheerful, helpful and courteous. But he couldn’t do much to help us. He said our best chance would be to limp back to Derby as it was 100km closer than Kununurra. He was sure we had a transmission problem.

It was disappointing having to turn back and pass some gorges we had yet to see. The car was really struggling but we crawled along the road for several hours to Lennard River Bridge and camped there for the night.

The next morning we limped the road to Derby at 30kms per hour with our hazard warning lights on.