Greg Wapling

Left home very early Wednesday morning and got up to Faraday ok, the bus felt empty as there was no car inside. Deb had sustained an injured shoulder in a recent car accident and was not taking the Studebaker. Off we headed to Adelaide in the Club Animal bus (Stewie and young Charlie in the van) where we went to Terry O'Connell's place.
Terry owns the lakester that Animal drove to a new record last year (213MPH) powered by a little 302 Cleveland. After coming home from the salt last year Terry had planned some improvements to the engine and tore the car down, but then was diagnosed with bowel cancer and has been in and out of hospital and treatment ever since. So Animal has made several trips to put the car back together. We spent the rest of the day getting the car ready, putting all the body panels on, check the fluids etc.

Thursday was pack up day at Terry's and then off to Port Augusta. Stewie and I were looking at the weather report in the local paper and I made mention of the "monsoonal front" coming across from Western Australia. While we were filling up at the servo at Port Wakefield these 2 young French hitchhikers talked Animal into a ride to Port Augusta. In talking to them as we travelled we found out the they were headed for Esperance in Western Australia and were stopping overnight in the Gutta. They genuinely thought that they would be able to knock on someones door and that they would be welcomed into the a strangers home. We tried to set them straight on that one and to watch ot for the locals. We dumped them near the shopping centre in Port Augusta and as we rove away were fully prepared to listen to the radio report of 2 French back packers killed overnight. The next morning when Stewie and I were in town getting supplies we heard 2 truckies talking on the radio, one siad to the other "There's a couple of friends for you, mate" So we can onlt assume that they did in fact survive!

Friday morning virtually as soon as we hit the dirt at Iron Knob the heavens opened and the 180 km trip which nornally takes just under 3 hours took 6 and a half hours. I have never seen anything like it. The mud was slippery, the bulldust like quicksand and every couple of k's there was 500 - 600 metres of water up to 600mm deep. Animal did an amazing job getting the bus through (a quarter lock powerslide going up a hill in a bus is interesting to say the least). In our group we also had the race car on a F350, a Ford 1 tonner with trailer camper, a Landcruiser with camper trailer and an L300 van that we were taking over to leave there as a tender vehicle. The L300 gave up after about 30k's and the F350 towed it from there. An amazing effort by both drivers, especially seeing as the F350 ran out of brakes about half way. So between the two of them they made it, just.
When we arrived at the DLRA camp, about 8 k's from the salt we found out that the road was now closed and it stayed that way till the following Tuesday. (The fine for driving on a closed road is $2000 per wheel)
To give you some idea of how much water there was Port Augusta got half their annual rain fall in 24 hours! I did read later that the forecast was for monsoonal rain which had come across from WA and I'm pretty sure this was the same weather system that flooded the Illawarra Region in NSW a day or 2 later.

Speed Week was cancelled on the Saturday, so there was a lot of time spent trying to contact as many people as we could on the one phone line that we had at camp.
After the rain stopped we eventually got down to the Lake and it was amazing how much it had changed, full of water and at the edge that we enter from no salt at all. The next couple of days were spent on doing a few jobs around camp with a couple of big bon fires and some very funny nights.

We all left in convoy on the Wednesday morning, the only road open taking us further west before we could get back to Port Augusta. It was amazing how quickly the road had dried out, but there was still a lot of water. Back to Terry's to unpack and say our goodbyes. Stayed Wednesday night at Tailem Bend (bloody cold and the Murray very high)

Before leaving Tailem Bend on the Thirday morning we went to Old Tailem Town. Amazing place so much stuff, but a lot of it was weathering away. After a good couple of hours we were on our way. I finally got home very late Thursday night.