I got up fairly early and cooked up some bacon and eggs for breakfast. While cleaning up I realized that I had a slow diesel leak from under Blute. Probably only a couple of mls overnight, but enough to be worrying. I backed Blute up onto a nearby rock so we could get underneath for a good look and after wiping down the dust and diesel we found a very small spot where the fuel was very slowly escaping. It was on a weld but not something that was structural, so shouldn't get any worse. This was something to add to the demise of my UHF antenna which although structurally still fine had gone to producing static on every channel, so the internal wire connecting the antenna to the radio must have been damaged. Time for the hand held radio.
We navigated back over the rocky sections slowly and Shane and I decided to head to Alive Springs to see if TJM could do anything for me while Brett was heading home for work later in the week. . We followed the Binns Track and stopped off at the Arltunga historic area for a look and a few photos.
We stopped for lunch where the Binns Track headed north towards Gemtree and Brett headed off this way following a chatty motorbike rider, while Shane and I continued onto towards the Stuart Highway. Once on the highway it was an easy run into Alice. A quick stop at TJM and they really couldn't help much as even though the tank is still under warranty they would have to send out for parts or a replacement so nothing was going to happen for at least a week. So Shane and I droped into Repco just across the road and picked up some fuel tank repair stuff. He got some stuff that you need to knead while I got a packet of epoxy resin that is supposed to bond to anything, hopefully one of the two will seal up the small leak.
We then convened at trip meeting at Hungry Jacks for afternoon tea and planning. We decided to head out to the free camping area opposite Glen Helen Gorge on the Finke River and tomorrow we would head out to Haast's Bluff then loop around to the Tanami Track and head to Halls Creek. We got to camp about 4:30 pm and set up quickly, there was no fire wood around so I had to break out the bag of emergency service station firewood. As we'd had a late afternoon tea neither of us needed dinner so we sat around the camp fire writing up our respective blogs. It was not too chilly and thankfully there was no mozzies. We ended up going to bed relatively early.
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