Normanton

Well we were originally intending to head to Karumba (One of Australia's 50 or so self proclaimed fishing capitols). We've been getting complacent with the bus lately, thinking that we've fixed all the major issues. We made it about 10 K's out of town when we heard a bang and the bus veered off to the left. We managed to stay on the road and pulled over. And thought we had blown the front left tyre.
When we got out everything looked fine, the tyre was OK, everything to do with the steering looked OK (Except finding the steering swing arm bushes are worn practically to nothing and will need replacing real soon).
So, confused, we drove back in to Normanton to continue testing.
After driving around slowly with Rachael outside listening for weird noises (to the amusement of the locals in the pub) Rachael diagnosed that the front left wheel bearing had exploded. This being because it was making metal screeching noises and the metal was so hot after driving you couldn't touch it...

Here is the damage, the grease cap has exploded and the bearing has chewed itself to pieces


Is it coincidence that this has occurred in less than one week after the mechanic at Cairns re-packed all the wheel bearings? We've contacted him about it and he's sending a wheel bearing kit to Normanton which is good, at least he's taking some responsibility. It just means we'll be staying in Normanton for at least the next week. (There's not much in Normanton, it is the biggest town for about 5 hours drive any direction, with a population of 1300...) Hopefully we might get lucky while staying here and see the morning glory cloud phenomenon (although its not due to start until next month.)
Normanton is also the home of the biggest croc ever recorded, which was a whopping 8.63 metres long (crocs this size don't exist any more after mass culling, the biggest getting to about 6 metres)

Tomorrow there is a fish festival on at Karumba which should be worth a visit, so we'll take the bike (Our only reliable vehicle) over to see the sights.

Before breaking down in Normanton we've had a pretty good time being back in Oz. We stopped in at Etty bay on the way down, which is a beautiful coastal town where we had a BBQ on the beach. The town has 5 local cassowaries and they've obviously figured out that anyone having a BBQ is a prime target.
These are really big birds up close, their feet are probably the most impressive and dangerous aspect of them.
After harassing us for about half an hour this cassowary attacked a nearby teenager's car for being too shiny..

After that we stayed at a few free camps as we crossed the great dividing range and stopped in at Undara volcanic national park, home to the longest lava tube system in the world.
You couldn't explore the tubes unless you went on a guided tour, which cost $50 (which was more than we could afford after the brakes incident). We broke the budget and took the tour and were a bit underwhelmed. We also climbed the rim of one of the volcanoes (the kalkani crater) which was pretty amazing, more simply to see the landscape than for the crater though.

Trees growing out from one of the cave-ins in the lava tubes

Kalkani Crater from above

Also in lemon news we also lost the awning while parked at a free camp on the Gilbert river (or gilbert stream in the dry season). I had just started setting ut up when one of the people at the camp stopped to chat to me. stupidly I didn't finish clicking in the struts and while we were chatting a very slight gust of wind blew the awning upwards and pulled it clean off the roof.

After inspecting I found that the previous owner has, for some reason, only screwed the awning into the fibreglass section of the roof, and not bothered drilling into the metal beneath it. I just can't understand how he thought that would be OK....

Anyway, putting it back on ended up being a small issue thanks to the help of our new friends Sharon and Bruce who we've met up with at some of the free camps along the way.
We were meant to meet up again at Karumba, but the bus has struck again...

We've also had some blown fuses due to a dodgy lighter socket and the exhaust pipe has come undone due to my shitty welding. (I think I should just get welding done professionally in the future, or do a course on it..) But these all pale into insignificance compared with the exploding wheel bearing...

I've also put some very tight fencing cable on the bike rack to help attach it to the bus a bit better, to prevent a repeat from the last time it came off....

Bali

Well we headed off from Cairns airport and went to Bali and left the lemon with the mechanic for 2 weeks to fix the brakes.
As soon as we got into Bali we were attacked by sprukers trying to give us a lift to where we were going. We got into the car with one guy and he wanted to charge us 200000 rupiah ($20) to get us the 6 K's to our hotel.
We got out of his car and waited for the professional taxi service and got there for $5.
That pretty much sums up most of the trip, because we didn't go in the peak season there weren't as many westerners as usual to pick on so we got targeted a lot. The usual sale points were sunglasses, transport or food. And they would harass you to the point of blocking your exit from their shops and physically putting things in your bag to try and force you to buy it... This isn't to say the Balinese weren't nice people because there were some lovely people on the trip, but a lot of neighbouring islands would come to Bali to make money off the tourists and that was really annoying.
The drive from the airport on it's own was a real eye opener for us. It was only a 6 K drive but took over half an hour. There are NO road rules in Bali. In some ways the roads need a bit of flexibility because people always have to drift onto the opposite side (the roads mostly being single lane), but it also causes a lot of chaos and slows things down. People have no qualms about dumping a pile of sand in the middle of the road or parking in the middle of traffic, and there are scooters, dogs, chickens and pedestrians everywhere.

Kick ass pink tandem scooter in Kuta

We spent the first couple of nights in Kuta while we waited for Boris, Chris and the Belgian girls to arrive (Their plane was delayed), and after that we headed straight out of the city to try and escape the hawkers. We went up the east coast to a town called Candidasa and stayed there in a couple of resorts. (Top of the line resorts are around $80 a night which are VERY luxurious. We stayed mainly in a place at $35 a night).
Out there we had a crack at scuba diving on the USS Liberty ship wreck at tulamben, which was sheltering at Tulamben beach after a Jap torpedo attack and was wrecked when the volcano at mount Batu erupted in the 1960's causing it to topple over next to shore, making it accessible by beach which was cool.

It was an incredible dive. Bali is subject to a fair bit of overfishing (like all of Indonesia), but the USS liberty still had a fair bit of fish life (Although not many big pelajic species) it was really really good.
Another bonus from doing the dive was that Rachael managed to get her dive license on the day.
Rachael failed in Australia because apparently she has asthma and failed her dive medical (After paying $450 to complete the scuba course), but this was not a problem in Bali. Dive medicals are unheard of over there and a Dutch dive instructer just tested she knew what she was doing and passed her on the spot. How good is that, truly the Balinese way.

Rachael and Jose

Some divers off one of the shipwreck walls

Who needs a toothbrush when you've got CLEANER SHRIMPS. They'd go right up inside your mouth, they had no fear at all. It's nice to see that the fish don't just eat them after they clean their mouths out.
As for some of the Balinese people though...

Mantis shrimp

Leaf Frog fish

Coral trout?


After scuba diving we hired some Honda scooters for $5 a day and went and experienced the traffic first hand and explored the country side. Driving was really full on. We didn't have our licenses, but that doesn't matter in Bali, if we had been pulled over we would only have had to bribe the cop around $20 Australian to get off (If we were Balinese it would be WAY less).
Corruption is lithe in Bali, policemen actually have to pay the country significantly to become a police officer and then make their money out of bribes. It's a rich man's career over there.
One of our taxi drivers said he used to drive trucks from 14 years old, and had to rely on police corruption to keep his job. (Paying the officer $2 every day when he was pulled over to allow him to drive, and thus keep his job) He actually trained to be an accountant at uni, but then quit because he makes a lot more carting tourists around...

Trash Chicken. It's nice seeing chickens everywhere in Bali, they seem to have a good life. Hygenically it's probably not so good, but people were very tolerant of the chickens.

Roosters do not get such a good life in Bali. Cock fighting is officially outlawed in Bali, but with all the corruption it is everywhere. Every second house has roosters out the front for sale in baskets for cock fights.

Sad dog (Most dogs didn't look very healthy, I've heard this can be a hindu thing, some people think that if a person's been reincarnated as a dog then they've done something bad to get there..)

Kid's racing skiffs

Some Balinese kids near the hotel. They were eating some foul tasting berries off the ground. They didn't speak any English but that didn't stop them grabbing their parents to try and sell a guided tour for the area.

While wandering around I also found some local spearfishermen who took us out spearfishing some of the local islands (completely illegally). The dude (Jon) who took us spearfishing had a HUGE speargun he had lengthened himself.
He caught three small tuna's and a giant trevally on the day, these were cooked up proper bali style using slow cooking with coconut husks over chicken wire and occasionally slowing the cooking with some dirty water from the nearby pond (which everyone also washed in and disposed of fish scraps too). The fish was delicious, cooked perfectly.

Swimming in the filth water :D

Here also is a dude carrying some tables on a scooter. We saw ALL sorts of crap going around on scooters, there were up to FIVE people on one scooter, or about 15 sacks of rice or even full stalls selling food it was crazy.

That's probably enough really, we also went to the temples and the hot springs (both disappointing) and went rafting aswell.

Now we're in Innisfail getting ready to head out towards Darwin tomorrow. We're planning to head to some REAL hot springs tomorrow on the way through. The bus is back from the mechanic, we had to replace ALL the slave pistons because apparently they were all leaking, new seals had to be placed on the diff because it was also leaking oil into the brake housing, and we needed to get the master cylinder sleeve replaced and the piston lathed down to make it smooth again. In addition to this the mechanic also repacked all the wheel bearings, which I'm happy about because the rear left bearing was giving off a fair bit of heat after a long drive.
The bill in total was $1900... and after all that the brakes still feel as mushy as before... but at least they aren't leaking.
We're now broke so we've decided not to go to any more mechanics and do the work ourselves.
This evening we successfully tuned the gas to the new air filter (hopefully), which is one more job down. It's a long way to Darwin, so hopefully everything goes OK on the trip.