From Mount Isa to Cairns: Back on the Road at Last

At last, the Hiace is sitting in a Toyota workshop instead of making unsettling noises in caravan parks. We collected the new power steering pump from the post office yesterday and somehow managed to book the van in for the very next day. With any luck, the pump is the entire problem. Mount Isa is a perfectly pleasant place, but after a week you’ve seen most of it, including the aisles of Woolworths.

The other mechanical drama has been our lithium battery. We bought a proper charger after discovering that a battery connected to 170 watts of solar, parked in the middle of a giant Queensland paddock under relentless sunshine for five straight days, still managed to give up two days before we left Boulia. It has now bounced back to one hundred per cent, which is encouraging.

If it decides to collapse again, I’ll know one of two things has happened. Either something in the solar setup is plotting against me, or Darwin’s wet season slowly drowned the poor thing’s will to live.

Assuming tomorrow goes according to plan, we’ll leave Mount Isa with functioning power steering, a fully charged battery and what I can only describe as cautious optimism. From here we’re heading east towards Cairns via the Atherton Tablelands, trading red dirt, spinifex and endless horizons for waterfalls, rainforest and humidity. We’ll keep an eye out for work along the way, partly because topping up the bank account seems like a sensible long-term strategy, and because travelling indefinitely is considerably easier when someone else is helping fund it.

There’s something comforting about having a loose plan again. The road points east, the van should hopefully point in the same direction, and for the first time in a little while it feels as though we’re travelling because we want to, rather than because the nearest mechanic told us to.