Rachael was getting cabin fever though after being stuck in Coffs on her own for 5 weeks, so it's good to be travelling again.
We've had to go up the East coast alot faster than we would have liked, in order to get to Cairns for our flight to Bali on Wednesday, but it's been a good trip regardless, except for the usual mechanical issues.
The bus is like a small child, you think its a really cute little vehicle and then it goes and breaks down...
In this case it has:
* Leaked out all its brake fluid. The moment we decided we were going to start the trip up to Cairns from Coffs harbour we realised we had no brakes. We had to bleed the brake lines and replace the old crappy fluid (which was 50% rust), but the brakes are still shot, it brakes ok, but only if you pump the peddle before braking, but it's not always the first thing you think about when you have to stop quickly. We've booked it in to a brake specialist in Cairns while we go on holiday, hopefully its not too expensive... ... it will be though. We'll probably have to go back to work real soon.
* We also decided to put a motorbike on the back of the bus using a pre-made motorbike rack we bought at Murwillumbah (see below). This didn't go so well because we forgot to tighten the bolts on the back and the rack came off while were were driving up towards Grafton. This was the next set back on the trip. We managed to bend the rack back on and put new bolts on and then drive up to Murwillumbah (really carefully). The bike was OK, it was leaking a bit of oil but it was an easy fix. We welded the bike rack back up in Murwillumbah, and it seemed like it was better than ever. But my dodgy welds were too crap and started to crack, so we had to get a professional to fix it up past rockhampton.
* The guys who welded it up were really nice guys, and only charged us $15 to fix my crappy job. BUT when we got it welded we didn't detach the deep cycle batteries, and they got fried by the Arc welder... Or at least they looked fried, cos they were no longer holding a stable voltage (Significantly changing to the point of turning the battery solenoid on and off every few seconds), so we bought two new batteries for $500, we felt pretty stupid but had to bite the bullet while we were still in Rockhampton. Then the old batteries miraculously started holding a voltage again (It's still fluctuating a bit though). .. Now we have HEAPS of battery power, which can't be a bad thing really.
* While we were driving down into Balls beach (near the whitsundays) the ENTIRE left cupboards came clean off the wall!!!! EVERYTHING!!!!! I have no idea what Mike Savage was thinking holding the cupboards on with just glue and ONE L bracket. ... Honestly, who thinks that that's going to hold... He didn't even use one bracket for each side of the cupboards... This is just one of a lot of problems we've had with the previous owners dodgy ways of doing things, but I think we've found them all now. Luckily we had some spare L brackets and liquid nails so we could fix it on the spot, but it was a real pain in the ass because we wanted to check out the area, it looked really nice.
* The engine also started idling really slowly, and even started stopping altogether. This was worrying, until we talked to one of the dudes at a free camp south of Cairns (The source of most of our mechanical tips) who said it was probably either the choke flap was partially closing or the air filter was clogged. Turns out it was both, the choke has always sat a bit askew which I thought was OK because it was only a couple of degrees, but apparently it's no good for fuel economy, and the air filter was full of crap after all the dusty roads after Rockhampton which was restricting air flow even more. We've since replaced the air filter and now the mixture is too lean. causing the engine to idle poorly again ... Go figure...
As far as travels go we've been heading up the coast too quickly to do too much tourist stuff, between driving and bus repairs we haven't seen a lot. Cairns has been nice though, we stayed at a free camp at "The boulders" yesterday and went out from there to see our first crocodile in the wild. The boulders were nice aswell, there's a swimming hole at the campsite with huge granite boulders strewn along a small river. This morning we moved from the site and saw a Cassowary hanging around outside the bus which was pretty cool.
Cairns the city has been really nice aswell. It's got a lot going for it, excellent restaurants and a great feel. Alot of people our age aswell which is a nice change from grey nomads.
