We’re in Carmila, a little town on the Bruce Highway about 100kms south of Mackay. We’d spent Saturday night at the curiously-named Flaggy Rock Community Centre (hereinafter to be known as the Fraggle Rock Community Centre – apparently the locals also use this nickname).
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_zsz_MlVvI[/youtube]
The Centre is just off the highway and is a 5 acre plot that used to be the playground for the three-classroom local school there that was closed in 1996. Now run as a free camping site ($10 per night per vehicle, hot shower and toilets and all the wide open lawns you could ever need) and meeting place for local community groups, it’s about 1km off the highway and is a fabulous spot for an overnight stopover (max 72 hours stay allowed). The school buildings are used for meetings, bingo, craft groups etc and the display cases there contain endless memorabilia related to the long history of the school. As a teacher I found it fascinating as I guess you’d expect.
It’s still raining as I think you already know. On Saturday the rain gauge at Fraggle Rock recorded 300mm of rain for the day (that’s 12 INCHES for my US friends). Central Queensland coastal region where we are right now is experiencing its heaviest winter rainfalls since 1870! So, when we awoke on Sunday morning and packed to head off it was worrying that the Minibago wouldn’t start. Thinking it had probably gotten water in the electrics, I sprayed copious quantities of WD40 around but to no effect.
We let it sit for a bit then tried again but no dice. The engine turned over but wouldn’t fire and the attempts were accompanied by worrying backfiring in the exhaust pipe. NRMA was called (we had upgraded our membership to Premium just before we left (thank goodness) and they flick-passed our problem to the RACQ (Royal Automobile Club of Queensland – also known as Race Around Corners Quickly). A serviceman arrived quickly (the local RACQ depot was at Carmila, just 9 kms back up the highway towards Mackay) and he was unable to help so he suggested that we wait at Fraggle Rock for one more night and he would send a tilt-tray for us on Monday morning first thing.
So, after being brought back to town the local mechanic’s shop fell onto the job and it emerges that the bottom pulley has a rubber centre and that the pulley has rotated around the centre and put the timing out. We are hopeful that this hasn’t resulted in top end valve damage as happens if the timing belt actually breaks, but we are now stuck in Carmila until Thursday when a new belt overhaul kit and pulley arrives from Brisbane.
See comment above about NRMA Premium Membership. For an extra $56 over and above our existing Road Service membership fee, we are entitled to $3000 worth of services, motel accommodation, car hire and transportation costs. So we are presently warm and dry in a room at the Carmila Sands Motel (built brand new in 2015!!) with room service available and free wi-fi. It’s still belting down outside and showing no sign of letting up at this stage, but we don’t care!
Not much to report apart from this, though I’m guessing that neither Valentino Rossi nor Jorge Lorenzo would like to be here at the moment!!
Oh, and on a motorcycling-related theme, we stopped in at WSMC’s track at Proserpine and caught up with a few hardy individuals who were doing some practice for last Sunday’s meeting. They don’t get much wet-weather riding up there so they figured that Saturday would be a good opportunity!
dunc says
damn phil a bit of bad luck with the breakdown
glad you have it getting sorted and i am sure you will find some things to do in
fraggle rock
now will that name stick with you.
enjoy the time away as its all a experience
Phil Hall says
Yeah, very unfortunate. The guys haven’t been able to fix it so it’s being freighted home. Gutted that we didn’t get to finish the trip but we had heaps of fun anyway. Next time!
dunc says
sorry to hear the trip has fallen short for you both.Just means that it is on the list of to dos so your got your next plans already started.