Monday, 9 August 2010

Scherben bringen Glueck!! (I hope)


If you can't read German, the heading above means that broken glass will bring Good Luck.  The last 300 km or so have been on one-lane highway (the Tableland Highway) that goes south from Heartbreak Hotel to the Barkly Homestead on the east/west Barkly Highway.
Very little traffic on that road (just as well) because you need to make way for oncoming as well as passing traffic to avoid collisions.  I was just settling into my driving routine, about 50km south of Heartbreak when I saw two  4-wheel drives come up in the distance behind me.  As they were going a bit faster than I was, I moved over to the left onto the dirt to let them pass, which they did at quite a pace.  They had also moved onto the dirt on the right, throwing lots of rocks sideways.  I did hear the click in the back and another pang as a stone hit my windscreen, resulting in a crack running up from the bottom centre about 20cm long.  When I looked into my rearvision mirror before going back onto the centre lane of highway, I discovered that my large rear window had totally disintegrated, smashed into thousands of little pieces.  Nothing I can do about it now, hundreds of miles from any township, so I keep going and pull out at the next rest area, about 70km down the road where I wait for Eck and Suki.
 Just after the smash...
The temporary fix until the window gets replaced
...and Thank you Eckhard for being there!!
Lucky for me, he has a large tarpauline which we cut and glue it over the hole with packaging tape where once glass had filled in the window.  Also, Lucky its not raining!!
I intend to be at Mount Isa in a few days and hope that everything can be repaired there

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