Bringing Henry Home - Fitzroy Crossing to Broome

Only a relatively short trip today - 400 km from Fitzroy Crossing to Broome – hence a short report. The terrain after the mighty Fitzroy River returns to mainly flat plains sparsely dotted with trees and covered with grass. Back to cattle country. The boabs along the road here are covered in bright green leaves, a stark contrast to the ones further north, whose bare branches making them look very much as if they were planted upside down.

First obligatory stop in Broome is Matso's for a pale ale and a spot of lunch, then off to Cable Beach to book in to an apartment for a rest day tomorrow – well and truly needed after four days on the road.

Henry, Kris and Pete's fourth day on the rally took them from Alice Springs to Tobermory Station half way along the Plenty Highway. On the Plenty Highway the dust was even worse – fine bulldust with the consistency of talcum powder and an almost liquid quality. Going through the invisible bulldust holes the dust seems to flow over the car coating everything - every hole, seam and crevice - in a film of red powder and leaving a cloud inside the car that took ages to clear. Henry behaved very well however, lapping up the kilometres happily with his new axle bearing.

Team Lost Claus didn't fare so well. A replacement fuel filter (plus spare) was found in Alice Springs in the morning but the plug of putty in the fuel tank once again fell out after a number of kilometres so it was back on the support trailer for the Saab.

Team Thunderbox fared even worse. They got the Fiat X19 out of camp in the morning and made it all of 10 metres down the road before the final curtain fell. It limped (half pushed) back into the campground and was declared clinically dead by the mechanics. Sadly it was loaded onto a support trailer for the last time and taken to a scrapyard, where it was unceremoniously picked up by a forklift and dropped into a skip bin.