We stayed three nights at Karijini and thankfully by the second day the wind finally died down and we were able to relax without being windblown so much. We were a bit slack and didn't do all the gorges and walks however we did go back to Fern Pool a second time for another swim, that's still about a 2km walk return.
We left yesterday morning, nice and early, and headed for Tom Price to pick up fuel and supplies and give ourselves plenty of time to get to Millstream. We were told by the camp hosts at Karijini that the road between there and Millstream had claimed a few tyres and to take it easy. About 105km from Tom Price, Geoff noticed the car swimming a little so he pulled over and found that the rear passenger tyre was punctured, I circled the hole for later and we put the spare on from under the car (this took two hours as we had to set up a tarp to shade us from the midday sun and retrieve the buried tyre changing gear, compressor, etc, then of course we figured we may as well have lunch too). This spare had been there since we bought the vehicle and was a retread, we assumed it would get us to at least Millstream where we could fix the punctured tyre in the comfort of camp. 115km later, that spare blew and took with it the mudflap, flare, a piece of the tail light and somehow managed to knock the rear view mirror out of its bracket next to me, it was just hanging there so the mirror wasn't broken. There were pieces of tread and tube for 200 metres up the road behind us as well as the mudflap. Luckily we had another spare on the roof rack that wasn't a retread and we were on the road again, arriving at Crossing Pool Campground at around 5.30pm, very tired and covered in red bull dust.
The following morning while Geoff was fixing the punctured tyre, he checked the tyres on the trailer to make sure everything was in working order. Three for three, one of the tyres on the trailer had a bulge under the tread and it was considered too risky to continue with it on, so another tyre change was made. The tyres on the trailer are one inch bigger than the cruiser tyres so we were very lucky we were carrying three spares, one for the trailer and two for the cruiser. The punctured tyre is almost fixed, it has a very slow leak and is our only spare so fingers crossed we will be able to get it fixed properly and replace the other two in Karratha on Monday. The mirror is being held in the bracket with sticky tape and the pieces of tail light have been superglued back in place. The flare and mudflap are sitting up in the roof rack with the remains of spare number 1. In the course of changing the tyre the second time, one of the wheel nuts jammed and broke a stud off so now we need to get another stud as well as new tyres.
On the upside, Millstream Chichester NP is very nice and it is incredible to see the amount of flood damage from February this year. Near our camp is a very large tree trunk about 600mm across, complete with roots, hanging 5 metres above the creek wedged in the branches of a paper bark tree. The paper barks across the creek have had over a metre of their roots exposed from erosion and the landscape is incredible.
