I was now into the upper reaches of the canyon. This was originally named ‘Zion Canyon’ and, being in Utah, was in an area settled by Mormons. They pressed up along the Virgin River towards its source in the canyon, homesteading and farming the land – including inside the canyon.

So how did it get the biblical name (Mount Zion is the name of a hill in Jerusalem, upon which the ancient Jewish people built their temple)? One website answers:

Brigham Young was, of course, the second leader of the Mormons after the death of founder Joseph Smith. He had many wives, perhaps over fifty, so one wonders what size entourage accompanied him on the trip to the canyon. He died in the 1870s. The canyon was the subject of a government survey around 1900 and in 1909 was declared a ‘National Monument’ under President Taft and became a National Park ten years later.



Squirrel on the run. Though the squirrels are moderately used to humans, they can be frightened enough to get up a pace like this.

Those sandstone walls were closing in on us as we continued further into the canyon. Looking up could be daunting…



Looking up. The perpendicular walls of the canyon were imposing and closing in on us.

But from some of the walls there was growth, watered by permanent springs high up in the rocks:



Green sprouts. The green of the vegetation clinging to life up the walls contrasted dramatically with the colours of the rocks.

With the path now narrowing, we were walking closer to the walls at times. More of that growth was evident here…



Weeping Rock. This is one of the canyon features, where the high wall features growth encouraged by those springs.

…as we walked by the canyon feature known as the ‘Weeping Rock.’



Up higher too. I am often amazed at how plant life clings to near-impossible places as it grows from seed to maturity. Here it clambers up the cliff face.

Soon we got to the first of the pools where people dip into the fresh water to cool off. The running water must have been refreshing and I was really sorry that I wasn’t equipped to put myself into this picture.



Pool. This water runs into the Virgin River, but here it’s little more than a stream. But a refreshing one for those who were keen to take a dip.

At this point I found I wasn’t alone watching this taking place, some big round eyes not far away were looking on as well:



Watching squirrel. Just near me on a rock, shading himself (herself?) under those leaves, this squirrel looks ready to launch into a desperate run should anyone get too close.

Not much further on we found the main area for taking a dip. As the time moved towards midday it was in the sun, too, with the stream filling the canyon from one wall to the other and preventing me from going further.



Boots and all. Many were going in with their shoes on, which I wasn’t prepared to do. Whether they were wading through or fully immersing themselves, they looked like they were enjoying themselves.

I started to walk back to the last bus stop. There was a good crowd around enjoying the scenery, the water and the sunny day. I stopped to take a photo of the fallen rocks:



Fallen rocks. This particularly large chunk of sandstone probably fell hundreds of years ago, now it’s well-settled in the sediment.

People were both coming and going, and in these upper-reaches of the canyon the path was of limited width. And there was no side-tracking, unlike points further down in the wider sections.



Walking out. By this time of day there was as many people walking out as were walking in, so the pathway got fairly busy. Note the narrowness of the canyon ahead.

Looking at the religious connections again, I got a photo of the ‘Court of the Patriarchs’…



Court of the Patriarchs. The three rock edifices here are likened to the Patriarchs of the Hebrew scriptures.

…which was explained on this signboard:



Patriarchs explained. Carrying on the notion from Behunin’s statement that ‘these mountains are natural temples of God,’ Patriarchal names have been given to the peaks. Left to right, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

On the signboard it says:

It goes on to explain that a Methodist Minister, Frederick Vining Fisher, gave the peaks those names in 1916. A staggering thought, it seemed to me, when the whole place is bathed in Mormon heritage and it’s located deep inside Mormon country. Such names are seen all over Utah, even Mount Carmel is named after a place in the bible lands.

It all gave me something to think about as I drove off towards Nevada. Before I left I got another photo of one of the buses:



All roof vents open. Yes, it was a pretty hot day in midsummer when I was there and the buses all had their ‘air conditioning’ turned on.

The drive out was straightforward enough. Much easier for me than it had been the previous time as I had the 360 going well compared to a somewhat asthmatic slant 6 the last time. I Stopped to go online at St George and made another stop at the NAPA store in Hurricane, which had moved since I’d been forced to buy a wheel bearing there back in 2012. This time I got a couple of small things, some oil and an oil filter as I felt the engine deserved an oil change too, then I got back on the road.
As this route essentially followed the path of the Virgin River, I was looking forward to going through the Virgin River Gorge again, but the day was starting to go away on me…



Heading for Nevada. This is how failing light affected my trip this day, the Virgin River Gorge is getting nearer but so is darkness.

The Interstate, which I’d joined after Hurricane, cuts across a corner of Arizona here, then enters Nevada. As I was starting to run the fuel tank down a bit I pulled into a Shell gas station in Mesquite to top it up…



Shell at Mesquite. It was dark by the time I got to Mesquite, but I merely bought some fuel to take me further.

…and then continued to Las Vegas. It came into view across the darkness of the desert, the brightness of its lights contrasting with the blackness of the sky and the desert:



Vegas in view. Las Vegas is visible from a long way away in the night time, its lights spreading out widely across what used to be desert.

I headed for a Walmart, it turned out to be the Kensington store, with a view to – perhaps – camping there for the night. I parked in a quiet spot near a trolley return bay, which gave me somewhere to put my stove so I could cook my dinner.



Walmart Kensington. Here’s where I cooked my dinner after the drive from Zion National Park.

It had not been a long or tiring drive that day and I still felt pretty fresh, so even though it was getting late I decided to drive on to Boulder City just to get a few more miles under my belt. The total for the day was then only a little more than 220 miles or 355 kilometres.

My remaining goals were few now. I had to be in Phoenix to pick up a number of parts – gearboxes, a block and so on – which had been with Leo Dickson for over four years. I’d planned to get these from him during the first trip but he had to go away at the time I’d be somewhere within range and so I missed out. I didn’t go anywhere near there on the second trip, so this trip I had to pick it up. But Leo was currently in Hawaii and not due back for another three days, so I had time on my hands.

I picked a likely spot for a quiet night in a carpark in Boulder and slept there for the night. Apart from another look at Boulder dam I didn’t have a clue what I’d do the next day…

 

It’s great sleeping in the van, you wake up with the sun and climb into the driver’s seat and head on your way. But this morning the first stop was only a little distance away – the Hoover Dam. Built in the thirties to dam the mighty Colorado River, it’s an impressive wall of massive size. 726 feet (221 metres) high and holding back the largest reservoir of water (Lake Mead) of any dam in the US with 37 cubic kilometres when full.

When it was built it was the largest in the world, but time has seen it eclipsed in that by dams all over the world, while Lake Powell, upstream in the same river and dammed at the Glen Canyon in 1964, is almost as large.

As I drove down to the dam I knew this wasn’t going to be a big day, in fact I would only cover a little over 200 miles by the end of it:



My visit to the dam was going to be very different to the first time, when Janet and I arrived there in the dark. This time it was the rising sun silhouetting the surrounding hills.



First light over the water. This was my first sight of Lake Mead as I drove down the hill from Boulder City.

What had really grabbed me that first time was the concrete arch-supported bridge just downstream from the dam. I was really keen to see that in daylight too…



The bridge. The Mike O’Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial bridge, named after a former Nevada Governor and an Arizona footballer who forsook his lucrative career to go to Afghanistan, where he was killed by ‘friendly fire’.

The purpose of the bridge was to relieve the dam wall of its duty as a highway link, over which the traffic had fact had outgrown its capacity many years before. For some years trucks had been required to go a different direction while the hairpin bends leading down to the dam slowed cars to a crawl. Which was convenient as they also had to take it easy to allow sightseeing pedestrian traffic safe passage.

The new bridge, completed in 2010, allowed Arizona’s Rt 93 to be built up to Interstate standard and provide better access from the I40 and Kingman to Las Vegas and the Northbound I15, and it also includes a pedestrian passage to give views of the dam.

However, I stuck to the older parking bays as I went to a couple of different viewing locations to look over the bridge and the dam:



Dam and bridge. The sun is just hitting the far peak here, with the very low Lake Mead water-level obvious. The bridge deck is 960 feet (273 metres) above the water line and the main span is 1,060 feet (323 metres) long.

It didn’t take long for the sun to change the scene significantly:



Sun coming up. As I changed my location a little the sun rose and lit up the bridge and the hills behind it.

It surprised me to see the way the water bleaches the colour out of the rocks of the gorge in which the dam has been built. Again, the low water level is obvious here:



Bleached rock. Looking back up the gorge into Lake Mead, the setting is yet to change as the sun is held back behind the higher hills to the East.

It was as this transformation from the rising sun was taking place that I moved to a higher viewing position. I also had some breakfast from among the provisions I had in the van as I awaited developments.



Sun on dam wall. It is a very large dam and it shows here, and the power generation from its waters feeds into the grids of Nevada, Arizona and California.

While the road over the dam once did go through to Rt 93, it was closed off when the new bridge came into being and it was necessary to go back over the wall to rejoin the main road. I got this shot as I approached the bridge to cross the river and the border into Arizona:



On Interstate 11. It is an Interstate on the Nevada side, I guess this naming might continue into Arizona one day. Passing through between the high points on the Western approach of the bridge I was ready for an easy run down to Kingman.

When I got to Kingman I went to the Powerhouse Visitor Center, a place we went back in 2012, and where it’s comfortable to stop for a while with some amenities available. I parked the van in the shade of that tree at the railway end of the carpark and used the Visitor Center's wi-fi…



Kingman carpark. A powerhouse built about 1907 to supply electricity to Kingman now serves as a visitor’s centre and, around the other side, a Route 66 museum.

…where I was joined by a local who and parked next to me. It didn’t take long to strike up a conversation, but eventually I felt it possibly lasted a bit too long. One thing he did establish for me, however, was that a wrecking yard a few miles South of town might well be worth a visit. A number of trains had rumbled by while I was there too, just as you can see them in the Google Earth picture.

This yard was on the old Route 66, too. There’s quite a distance of the old road that’s been relatively untouched in both directions from Kingman, with the stretch towards Ash Fork being the longest piece still extant and taking quite a different route to the modern roads which have replaced it.

After a stilted start when I took a wrong turn, I was on the old road and heading for Dan’s Auto Salvage and Towing, which instantly looked like just the kind of place I wanted to find:



Dan’s Auto Salvage. I soon found the wrecking yard and it was obvious I’d enjoy myself here this day.

Going inside the small office area, I was soon granted the go-ahead to wander around and see what I could find of interest. Mostly I was keen to find some parts which would serve as good spares for the van when it was living in Australia. Some tail lights soon came off an old wreck, while it was a newer model from which I plucked a pair of spare brake discs. I didn’t get anything big – no gearboxes or diffs – but I might have if I’d known and planned ahead for the visit.

It was hot and walking around back and forth between the cars, going back for tools and so on, made it a bit more difficult, but I know I’d go back there again.



From the South. I drove away from here happy that I’d found some bits to take home.

Having learned about the more remote routing of the old Route 66 heading East from Kingman, I’d decided to go that way. Having spent so much time on the I40 I was finding it hard to imagine this 2-lane road carrying all the traffic that crosses this country.



Onto Route 66. The old road heads further North from Kingman before heading East, avoiding some long climbing sections which see the I40 Eastbound and Westbound lanes take different paths about halfway to Seligman.

It’s not as though the old road misses all the hills, either, this picture showing an additional lane for slow vehicles up one of the hills:



Through the hills. I guess we’re supposed to imagine driving this in older cars, but the biggest difference to ‘the old days’ would be the lighter traffic flows.

The hills did continue for a little while, but the road was still good and empty…



Mesa country. Very American desert scenery prevailed as I worked my way through this hilly country.

…and easy driving because it was obviously well-built for the high traffic levels of the past. One little town along the way, now sleepy but once thriving, was Peach Springs:



Peach Springs. This would have been both a welcome sight and a speed trap in the old days.

It was just a tiny place where a few hardy souls keep it alive today, but in those halcyon days there would have been people everywhere as travellers took a break from their long drive or stopped for a meal or some fuel.



Deserted. Well, maybe not deserted, but the traditional expression about firing a cannon down the main street would certainly apply a lot of the time. A grocery store is on the left, directly opposite an abandoned gas station.

There’s still a shop or two and definitely a Post Office. I imagine a lot of souvenir mail is sent to folk ‘back home’ from the latter.

Further along I saw this place…



Grand Canyon Caverns. I didn’t stop to look but later learned that these are the largest dry caverns in the USA and are a couple of hundred feet below ground level.

I was now getting keen to cover some ground. It wasn’t that I had any need to be anywhere, but I’d decided to stop at Ash Fork but wanted to spend a little time at Seligman before heading there and I had been at the wrecking yard for a couple of hours.

As I drove along I noted that I was catching up to a train travelling a parallel course:



Catching a train. Across the flat I was watching this train as I caught up to it. A long train with goods heading to the East, it was something to look at as I drove.

I’ve now seen many trains along this path, they’ve been there parallel to the I40, and a number going through Kingman the two times I’ve stopped there. All have been long and heavily laden, indicative of the huge quantities of freight there is going back and forth in America. In time I got alongside the locomotives:



Three locomotives. Power is needed to get these trains moving and linking three locomotives is an obvious method of gaining that power. From Kingman to Flagstaff the railway climbs over 1,100 metres.

By such means I whiled away the time getting to Seligman, and then I was there.



Arriving at Seligman. We had enjoyed our brief stop in Seligman so much in 2012 I was keenly looking forward to appreciating their humour again.

The Roadkill Cafe was still there…



Roadkill Cafe. We’d gone around the other way last time, so I hadn’t seen the deer out front. Venison, anyone?

Another feature dating back to the earlier times of Route 66 was the size of the motels. Just everyday ‘mum and dad’ motels, all rooms on ground level:



Small motels. Typically run as a family business with very little hired help, these motels are more like many in country Australia.

Souvenirs of Route 66 abound in these places:



Gift shops. Gift shops with a heavy leaning towards Route 66 memorabilia, adorned with thin gs to remind visitors of the fifties and sixties.

But something was different. The Edsel with the continental kit and mannequins sitting each side of the spare wheel was gone! I enquired about it, “A drunk crashed into it and totalled it,” I was told.



No Edsel! The Edsel was right there where the old Dodge pickup is now. I think the Texaco sign is new.

And on to Delgadilla’s shop, where I planned to get something to eat. The Chev out front dates back to the original owner, Juan Delgadilla, who cut the top off in the fifties to use it as a promotional vehicle for the store.



Delgadilla’s Snow Cone. Even the ‘Dead Chicken’ sign dates back to the founder, father of the present owner.

I went inside and spoke to John Delgadilla, telling him how I’d enjoyed my visit back in 2012 and showing him a photo of Janet at the trick door. We had a bit of discussion about how the humorous side of Seligman has come about. There was no ‘sauce’ flying about this time, but he still got to me with his stunts:



John Delgadilla. A funny man, this was when I ordered a milk shake. “Do you want small or large?” he asked.

After having something to eat I got back into the van and headed on towards Ash Fork. It was still the old Route 66, the I40 was about two miles to the South at this point, and so it was quiet running, and as the afternoon was getting along the sun was low behind me.



Heading for Ash Fork. This motel was the last of Seligman, the road ahead remained quiet and was pleasant to drive on without much traffic.

Still there were odd places where there were signs of past prosperity, relics of those days like this one:



Dead gas station. Undoubtedly a lot of gas was pumped here, some flat tyres fixed and other repairs carried out in the workshop area. Not for a long time, however.

About seven miles out of Seligman this bridge across the railway line showed that there have been upgrades made to this road, the old bridge to the left probably being too narrow for modern standards:



Old railway bridge. There are two bridges side by side here, but the old one is blocked off.

Only four miles before Ash Fork the old Route 66 road came to an end. We swept up over the I40 and joined it with a long merging lane…



Back on the Interstate. Not for long, with just four miles to go into Ash Fork. The long shadow of the van is evident out in front of it.

I went to the truck stop in Ash Fork and enquired about getting a shower there, planning to sleep in the van. “We don’t have showers here,” the man told me, “try the camping ground.” So I drove off to see how I’d get on there, but on the way I saw a sign which led to me getting a motel room for the night…

 

The desire to get myself showered was strong. I was heading for the camping ground, however, when I spotted this place:



The Ash Fork Inn. Not much more than a shower would cost, how could I knock that back?

Why bother with paying about $13 for a shower when I can have a shower and a bed and TV for the night for a little more than double that?

I was sold on that idea and pulled up at the old motel. It was ‘homely’ and basic, but I took a room and started to settle in. The first thing to do was put things I was trying to keep cold in the refrigerator, but I soon worked out that it didn’t work. I wandered over to the office again and they soon swapped that over.

The décor was humble Route 66, I think you could say…



Wall art. Everything Route 66 is related to the fifties, so was this room, nothing fancy but nice enough.



Phones. The phones were a bit older than they needed to be, but the movie poster was for “Oceans 11” and I guess with Peter Lawford in it there had to be a connection to the fifties there.



Desk area. The corrugated iron backdrop was a bit modern, but all else hinted at the halcyon days. That’s two framed pictures of the motel in the room, by the way.

So I settled in for the night once the refrigerator changeover took place. Browsed some forums, did some e.mails, made phone calls and had something to eat. In time I headed off to make sure the sheets weren’t going to be washed for no reason. Not that I got them dirty, but at least I did use them.

In the morning I had some cereal I was carrying with me and then went out to explore this little town before it got too busy. I quickly learned that there’s a thriving quarrying business here:



Flagstones. About fifty quarries operate around Ash Fork when times are good, the main production being flagstones cut from Coconino sandstone.



Kaibab stone. Kaibab stone is a limestone, but that’s a minor business alongside the flagstones from sandstone.

There’s even a dam, over a hundred years old, just outside of town built by the railroad over a hundred years ago from the Coconino sandstone. And another built of steel, but that’s another story.

The town thrived until the sixties with the flagstones, the railroad employing residents (who lived in houses built by the predecessors to BNSF) and tourism dollars from travellers on Route 66. Then the railroad was moved ten miles to the North to give a better gradient climbing to Williams, the I40 bypassed the town (but only just) and in 2007 a downturn in the building industry brought the flagstone business almost to a stop.

But things are looking up again now, apparently, with new home construction on the increase and there’s always a trickle of Route 66 tourists coming into the town. They see things like this:



Pickup. From the sixties, this Dodge pickup is parked outside as if to put it on display.

Those railroad homes are among the homes now housing the 650 residents of the town. It looks like a fairly pleasant place without any great rush and bustle among its inhabitants, but it’s a town presently suffering from all that accumulated business loss and quite a lot of people live on low incomes.



Quiet streets. Well, it still early, but well-kept neighbourhoods to the North of the main street look comfortable.

Along the main street there is a variety of business houses. Some, of course, have been closed for a long time, some look like they’re struggling. Not so much this one:



Ranch House Cafe. The cafe sign boasts about its ‘Famous Green Chile’ and ‘Good Home Cooking,’ while credit cards are also accepted. The neon sign at Zettlers Market might well be to induce the community to buy their lottery tickets and scratchers there.

Naturally there’s a sandstone building for the Post Office, while I thought this place…



DeSoto’s Salon. The hairdresser has decorated their building with a car in keeping with the Route 66 theme.

…might have been a body shop or something until I got closer. De Soto is my favourite Chrysler brand, actually, probably bringing back nostalgic memories of when we had Dodge, Fargo and De Soto trucks running around in Australia in the fifties and it had a more attractive name. I know, I know, in the US all of the trucks were Dodge or Fargo, which was the Plymouth equivalent in the range. And no De Sotos.

The De Soto name continued in some markets for a while after the 1960 abandonment in the US, South Africa using that brand to rebadge Dodge Darts, while a tie-up with a Turkish truck builder saw De Soto trucks built there into the late eighties.

Returning to my day on the road, which was only a short one with about 150 miles to cover, I chose the ‘scenic route’…



The Arizona climate which attracts many Northern states residents to Winter in this part of the country is quite difficult in the Summer. The day was starting to warm up a bit when I started on my drive South.



Out of town. A good 2-lane road stretched out before me, with hills in the distance promising it wouldn’t all be simple straight-line running.

It was a quiet drive, but the temperature was rising. It quickly reached about 115°F, which is 46°C, and I had the vent windows open to blast cool air in and the rear and side windows open as well. So I was comfortable enough for the drive and able to enjoy the scenery.

The scenery, of course, was that hilly country seen in the distance in the previous photo, so the road was to have some character about it, with twists and turns coming regularly.



Rocky country. Cuttings like this kept the road from being too twisty, but there was still plenty of bends.

This, of course, meant that I could enjoy some pleasurable motoring, none of that boredom like the Interstate experience gives. The van, at the risk of repeating myself, is quite a nice thing to drive, and ‘driving’ means and includes steering it around bends in the road.



Winding road. A nice piece of road between the trees, it was making use of the van’s ability to handle such conditions.

At the higher points, of course, it was possible to see different aspects of the mountains that were now surrounding me…



Mountains close. Some mountains weren’t far away. I was right in the thick of it now.

…while at times it was the more distant hills with the typical haze between myself and them:



Mountains in the distance. We were constantly in touch with the hills here, though the regular haze kept the more distant ones from being seen clearly.

There wasn’t much of Arizona’s population out in this country. Some small towns came and went, Prescott being the biggest. Wilhoit was spreading on both sides of the road, a scattering of homes on large blocks of ground after a very twisty mountain section crossing a range which separated it from Prescott.



Wilhoit. Barely a blip on the radar is this bunch of homes between tracts of arid-country scrub and bushes.

Rather more complete, as a town, was Yarnell, just a few miles further along. As I cruised into this town I was arrested by the sight of a place with a sign which said ‘Days of Vintage’…



Days of Vintage. Antiques for sale here, but the cars – both sectioned and complete – attracted me more.

…where several cars had been sliced down the middle for use as display items. I looked around briefly and then realised this might be a good place to pick up some things I wanted for when I picked up my load in Phoenix on Sunday.

There wasn’t anything there to suit, but at a nearby workshop I picked out a couple of pieces of scrap steel tube which looked like they’d do the job for me. And so I pressed on, with occasional advertising signs for land catching my eye. Like this one:



Own a piece of Arizona. Four acres might be a good area to build on, and the owner might finance the purchase. Bargain!

After travelling through all this mountain country it was soon time to descend to the lower level of the plains, but the steepness of the range required that the road divide into two for the purpose…



Road divides. At this point the downhill traffic takes the ‘high road’ while those heading North came up the ‘low road.’

…and just around the next bend there’s a lookout to enable travellers to get a good look at both the road and the country ahead:



Mountain descent. Here it’s clear how the road has been carved into the mountain on two levels for Southbound and Northbound traffic.

Also visible from this lookout was the large Alvarado mine, where gold, copper, silver, lead and zinc are mined. Also, further into the distance, is the town of Congress:



Alvarado Mine. This mine takes up a substantial amount of the desert floor for its above-ground workings.

The next town of any size was Wickenburg, and it was here that I was to stop to get myself some lunch. On the way into town, where the road from Kingman joins the road on which I was travelling, there’s a roundabout with art known locally as the ‘Giant Spurs’:



Giant Spurs. Roundabout art, just like the kiwi fruit I saw near Peyrehorade in Southern France two months earlier.

I found a nice treed rest area at the other end of the town, backing onto a creek and well laid-out. Except that it wasn’t laid out in a manner to give lots of shady parking spots and with the van’s dark brown roof it soaks up the heat coming from the sun. Nevertheless, I crammed over into a corner where I could get some shade and set about preparing some lunch, I cooked steak and eggs.



Wickenburg rest area. A sizeable area with trees surrounding it, but hard to find shaded parking spots. The van is shown here in the distance on the right.

The day was still young as I drove on into Phoenix. I was looking for a Walmart so I could establish a ‘camp’ for the day and a half I had left before Leo Dickson returned from his trip to Hawaii. The Surprise Walmart Supercenter wasn’t far at all from the start of the built-up area and so that determined where I would pull up.



Walmart Surprise. The main entry to the Walmart carpark, I would now be more or less stationary for the best part of two days.

I’ve explained previously that Walmart allow camping in their carparks, but only in the ‘staff’ carpark sections. The stores, virtually all of them open 24-hours a day, are naturally enough air-conditioned and they have nice clean toilets and places where customers can sit and rest. And they have wi-fi so one can use the internet.

What more could I possibly need?

 

While I was planning this trip it was always intended that the last stop before taking the van to ship would be at Phoenix. Leo Dickson had helped me out over a few years by picking up parts for me in different parts of America when the seller wouldn’t arrange shipping.

Leo was retired and spent his time taking on jobs transporting cars from one part of the country to another driving his Dodge Pickup with a hefty car trailer attached. As he was doing this he could pick up the odd gearbox or engine block when he was in different areas, the idea being that he’d ultimately take them to my shipping out point at Long Beach when he was in that area.

He still had some of these stashed at his place and I was in Phoenix to await his return from a family vacation in Hawaii. With this in mind, back at home before I left I was telling people where I was going, concluding with the statement, “By the time I get to Phoenix we’ll be knackered.”

But really I wasn’t. When I arrived at the Walmart I quickly sorted out where I could camp…



Blue lines. This is the corner where I was able to camp, the staff parking area as distinguished by the colour of the lines.

…in this far-flung corner of the carpark. At that time the lines here were yellow, but the Google Earth view shows they’ve been painted blue now, designating ‘staff parking’ which makes it legal to camp there, while the rest of the carpark was divided up with white lines:



White lines. My photo of the carpark, one of very few pics I took in Phoenix, shows the lines which are now yellow to have been white at that time.

I say ‘was’ because Google Earth shows that it’s now yellow-lined.

That settled, and bearing in mind the temperature – that 115°F heat was being absorbed by the asphalt surface all day and remained hot right through the night – we were enduring, I sought out a spot where I could park in the shade, at least for a few hours in the morning.

This was it (again courtesy of Google Earth), where the Corvette is parked…



Shaded spot. The cover didn’t exist then, but there was a couple of spots which were shaded by the building until the sun got up high each day.

…was good for shade until about 10am or so. Arizona doesn’t have daylight saving, so it was earlier than you might expect in other places. All I had to do was drive from my camping spot to this spot before shoppers started to arrive.

With nothing to do on the Friday afternoon and all day Saturday, I had plenty of time to wander around and notice things. That is, apart from sheltering in the air conditioning and browsing to buy a few things. One little bit of car-art caught my eye:



Beat not babied. This damage must have been there for a while, I thought it was a good-humoured approach.

I decided this was a good opportunity to give the van an oil change, and I wanted to get another battery to take home with me as the price was quite good. To do the oil change I bought a device like this one:



Oil drain pan. Just the thing, or so I thought. The one I bought was only slightly different to this one.

The large lid comes off to allow the oil to come down over a bit of an area, then goes back on so you can take the oil away all clean and smooth. Well, not quite, both lids were prone to leaking and it turned out to be a messy business all round.

I did the oil change out there in the middle of the carpark in the heat. Just madness. And the shirt I was wearing – definitely not a good one – was way less good when I’d finished. I changed the filter too, of course. During the Saturday I also managed to visit the McDonalds near the entry…



McDonalds. I didn’t take this photo either, but I found it on the net. The McDonalds was handy for lunch on Saturday.

So it was all a little slow as I waited the time out with just a few jobs to do. One other thing which did occupy some time was sorting and shuffling things about in the van to make room for the many items I had to pick up from Leo. And, of course, throwing out old containers, packets and papers, particularly papers we’d used to soak up spillage from the ice chest early in the trip.

To do this I took a drive to seek out somewhere I could work in the shade. I found a place where there are professional offices and the like just a mile or so away with covered parking spots for staff and clients, long carports effectively which weren’t in use on a Saturday afternoon but cast some nice shade for me:



Covered work area. Google Earth got this picture for me too, the long carports used by the people in the offices in the complex.

The heat was certainly oppressive and it made me wonder about the expansion of Phoenix over recent years. Why would people want to live in this heat. I knew that a lot of people from Northern states like Michigan and Illinois regularly spent Winters here, so I concluded they might have misjudged how nice it might be at other times of the year and made a commitment based on that false judgement.
To cope, I dressed lightly and kept inside when I didn’t have anything to do. The Walmart staff might have started to wonder about me sitting there for hours on end with my laptop on my lap. I’d decided the hairdresser at the store entry, this was at the opposite end of the building to the McDonalds store, was a bit expensive and that a haircut had to wait a few days until I got home.

For my second night there I decided I’d cook up a nice meal in the middle of the night. There was an area outside near the garden section of Walmart where there were tables and chairs, so some time after midnight I drove over to park as closely as I could to these settings…



Dining tables. These tables and benches were unused late at night and provided me with somewhere to set up my camp stove.

…so it wasn’t too far to carry things back and forth to cook a meal and make a coffee etc.

That evening I made contact with Leo, he was back from Hawaii and we arranged that we’d meet at an address he gave me across to the Western side of town about 10:30 or so in the morning.

I truly wasn’t ready to see how things would turn out there…

 

I had plenty of time for breakfast before I struck out for Leo’s on Sunday morning. Driving out through some of the suburbs I got to an area which was more rural. Desert rural. And there I found the house, which was empty. Leo turned up about twenty minutes later.

The items he had there for me included a bare block and pair of heads, a V8 short motor, two automatic transmissions and three manual transmissions along with a gearset out of an A833. As mentioned, I missed out on picking them up four years earlier, but he got them out and put them in the yard expecting me to come. And so there they stayed.

It might not rain much out in these places, but it does rain, and these things were lying on the ground. Well, not all of them, one of the automatic motorhome transmissions was missing. I’d made room in the van to squeeze them in through the side door, laying down cardboard to protect the carpet a bit, and the things I’d had there my use would sit on top of this stuff for the rest of the trip.

Loading it all in was a bit of a difficult job, but the neighbour had a forklift and that helped a lot with the short motor particularly.

I was not happy about the state of things.The short motor, which had only done 20,000 miles since a rebuild, had rust in the bores, on the cam and the lifters:



Rusted up. This 318 Poly short motor was rebuilt only a couple of years before Leo picked it up. Left out in the weather did it no good at all, though I admit it’s got worse because I’ve left it out at home too.

The shaft of the gearset had rust on the spigot end…



Damage to shaft. This gearset is from an A833 and the shaft was quite important to me. It will cost me $100 or more to reclaim this.

…which had come out of it’s wrapping and was sinking into the ground.
t was clear that four years exposed to the elements had seriously devalued these things. But there was nothing I could do about it and I bid Leo farewell and turned for the road to the Interstate 10, which carried me for the rest of the day:



According to the Garmin I had 347 miles to go. I had to be there by Monday afternoon to put the van in for shipping. I had repacked my bags for the flight home, deciding what was to stay and what was needed at home more urgently, and so I started to head across the desert on the I10. I made a few stops…



Burnt Well Rest Area. The artwork on this truck struck a chord with me as I took a break only 45 miles after leaving Leo.

…with the first being at the Rest Area at Burnt Well, snacking on some of the many things for the purpose by my friends in Arkansas. Driving on across the desert proved a bit monotonous on this road. I was still having fuel vaporisation in this kind of hot weather, but it wasn’t holding me up. In fact, it was probably just saving me fuel as it forced the engine to run lean.

Occasionally I would see something which grabbed my attention, like the horizon here:



Ragged horizon. Something to ponder as you sit on 65mph – and the width of the no-man’s-land between the opposing traffic lanes is clear too.

Another thing that cropped up in my viewfinder was this pair of twisters:



***** *******. Or that’s the Australian name for them, but they’re also known as ‘dust devils’ in some places.

Of further interest is the fact that they turn the opposite direction to the Australian ones here. Just as water going down the plug hole does.

Boredom could certainly set in, you have to look for things to keep your mind active on drives like this. I do a lot of it and have become very used to finding ways to occupy the mind to stay alert. I tend to make phone calls as I drive along, the stimulus of a conversation activating thoughts. Of course, these days I use a bluetooth hands-free as I call friends and family. I just wish I could find one as clear as the one built into the radio of the 2012 Forester.

I wasn’t alone out there by any means, as this picture shows:



Traffic and mountains. Things to look at. The truck and pickup have overtaken me here as the heat has brought on the vaporisation. The mountains break the monotony of the flat country.

A couple of ranges helped with the monotony too, Plomona Pass actually created a couple of gentle curves in the road. I bought fuel again as I got to Quartzsite, just over a hundred miles from Phoenix.



Into the distance. Although this was snapped just before the little town of Quartzsite it does show how the Interstate just goes off into the distance.

My reasoning for buying fuel at Quartzsite was because of memories of buying fuel in California, where it has generally been the dearest I’ve bought on each trip. I filled right up at the Love’s Travel Stop for the run to Compton and then noticed this truck delivery setup as I left:



Love’s Quartzsite. The International Lonestar with six smaller trucks on its trailer forced me to stop and take another picture.

And as I returned to the Westbound lanes and looked back I was surprised to see this right alongside the Love’s stop:



Jet and caravans. An ‘executive jet’ adorned the Love’s neighbour’s place, where it seems there is a real ‘wheeler and dealer’ operation featuring old cars. Caravan repairs are just up the road.

I had only about twenty miles of Arizona left to go as I drove away from there, the next notable thing I saw was a sign which informed us that all traffic had to stop:



Stop sign. A clear sign that California is just over the next bridge came up as the sun started to shine in my eyes.

Yes, we were at the Colorado River, which forms the border between the two states. No canyons here, we were in very different country to where I’d seen the river in Colorado, Nevada and Northern Arizona.

Here it was a river running its last stretches to the sea, widening, providing opportunities for people to enjoy themselves in the water:



Last sight of the Colorado River. I’d seen it near its source, in three of its canyons and where it was dammed at Boulder. Now it was a source of pleasure for the people of Southern California.

And looking to the South:



South side. Low islands split the flow while there’s a huge natural gas pipeline suspended over the top carrying gas into California.

And the reason for the stop? The California agriculture inspection requires all cars to stop for possible inspection…



California entry. The only place in the US where I struck a point where all traffic had to stop on an Interstate. California’s need to keep its agriculture safe demanded this here, even the Google Earth camera car had to stop.

…something like the inspections entry into Australia requires. That picture came from Google Earth as I didn’t have time to get it set up as I followed the truck to the gates.

Just for the record, I’d snapped a picture of the odometer reading, showing where my mileage stood. The last time I posted one of these was when it rolled over 80,000miles heading into Nebraska on the previous trip, with 77,777 having come up as I crossed Louisiana. I was wishing that I’d done it more often to keep track of my mileage, with the starting point when I set out on the second trip being at about 69,000.



Mileage. I missed the 90,000 rollover, which would have been somewhere between Zion and Boulder, but I got this as I crossed into California.

As the sun was going down I was thinking about getting some food. Blythe was the first town in California, only a short distance from the river, so I took note of this sign…



Blythe 1 mile. The lack of clarity in the picture tells of the low level of the sun, it was time to stop for something to eat.

…and as I’d had a decent meal the previous night, cooked on the picnic setting at Walmart, I headed for McDonalds:



Blythe McDonalds. This was a larger style of McDonalds store and it was fairly well packed when I went in there.

I found it to be a very busy store. There was a lot of people who’d been out enjoying water sports during this hot Sunday and I had a conversation with a few of them as I let the worst of the setting sun go away outside.

The road awaited, however, and I couldn’t afford to be late the next day. My plan was to drive to somewhere within easy distance of Compton (in LA) and that meant driving into the night for some distance. It was definitely dark when I crossed a range and saw the lights of LA (or was it San Bernadino?) in the distance:



City lights. When I saw these lights I knew I didn’t have far to go, it was safe to pull up and sleep for what was left of the night.

There was a Rest Area at Calimesa which provided me with a haven for the night, but it was to be a truncated sleep. I wanted to be up and away very early, not knowing what kind of traffic I’d strike and knowing I still had things to do to prepare for shipping the van and getting myself to the airport.

It was cooler than in Arizona and the sleep came easily…

 

My last travelling day, with a kick in the tail at the end.

A phone call from my friends in Arkansas (two hours ahead of California time) awakened me (as planned) at 5am and I drove towards my goal. The last day in America, the last day of three months away from home.



I hit the road immediately as traffic ahead was a concern to me and I wanted to get into that early if it was going to be a problem. I got this pic as daylight was filtering through, but not quickly enough for photography:



Blurred lights. Still giving the appearance of desert country, the moon in the sky and the lights of an oncoming truck show it was pretty early when I got moving.

It didn’t take long in these conditions to cover the few miles to San Bernadino, just how light the traffic was at this time shows up here:



Mt Vernon Avenue exit. Very light traffic at this early hour pleased me and allowed me to get along quickly towards my destination.

I got a surprise soon afterwards when I saw yet another Peterbilt up in the sky. This was just after the Cherry Avenue, Fontana, underpass and I would have missed the photo if I hadn’t still had my camera switched on from the last shot.

Another thing showing up in this pic is the effort that’s been put into decorating the walls of the on and off-ramps. Just like the bridges I’d seen in New Mexico and Arizona, it’s something we don’t see much of at home.



Peterbilt in the sky. Quickly aimed and shot, this pic shows the Peterbilt at the 3 Sisters Truck Stop in Fontana.

A priority for me at this stage was to find a truck stop not too far from Compton and I finished up in a whole nest of trucking service places just beside the San Bernadino Freeway – as the I10 is named in this section – at Ontario. Making my way off the freeway I got to the T/A Truck Stop just a couple of miles further on.



T/A Truck Stop. This was the place where I called in to get breakfast and a shower. It was huge, with trucks coming and going in large numbers – here captured by Google Earth.

Of course, with the sun coming up quicker and quicker all the time, it was going to be hot soon. So I sought out a bit of shade to keep the van from heating up too much. I parked near these yellow posts so the shade of the tree would cover at least a part of the van, while coincidentally the Google Earth picture shows a RAM van parked nearby on the day they recorded these pics…



Shade and a RAM van. This RAM is, of course, a bit newer than mine, but it’s a conversion van. I always seek shade when I park.

From there I drove on and somehow found the Mills Ontario Outlet Center. This was a shopping centre with a very large carpark where I could settle down for a while and do my final clean-out of the van to ensure that there was nothing left in it to arouse the ire of the various border authorities when it arrived in Sydney.

So I set about getting rid of the last of the things I didn’t need to take home in the van. There was still food, some of which I gave to people sitting at a nearby bus stop. I kept going back with more, actually, one old bloke was pretty happy to take it home.

And there was the final checkover of what had to be packed to take on the plane and what I should leave in the van in the confidence that I wouldn’t need those things for a few months. I did make (yet another) mistake as I was doing this, of course.

And when I found I needed to use a toilet I simply went inside the Outlet Center…



Mills Circle Ontario Outlet Center. Without having made notes of where I was, it took me ages to identify where I’d taken this picture. Snapped because a friend at home loves those old VWs. Note the variation to the symbol at the front. Not 'VW', not a Mercedes badge, but a 'Ban the bomb' symbol.

…where I found this VW lookalike. I don’t know how much is actually Volkswagen, but it’s built as a candy dispenser. Because I’d just gone into the centre to use the toilet I didn’t have my camera and I shot this with my phone, but then I couldn’t remember where I took it. At least photos on the camera come up in order, I use the phone to take pics so rarely that the previous photo was taken in Bari, Italy, and the one after it in Australia.

I found it by chasing up where the US Polo Association shops are located and using Google Earth’s ‘Photo Sphere’ pictures – not to find the VW, but to positively identify the shop. The VW had moved on by the time the Photo Sphere pics were taken.

From Ontario I drove back onto the I10 and followed the Garmin to the address in Compton. Along the way I encountered this huge interchange at Pomona, where the I10 mingles with California Routes 57 and 71:



Pomona interchage. The bridges showing here are just the start of the tangle of tentacles at this interchange.

I thought it might have been the same interchange I’d photographed when coming in to land on my first trip…



Unidentified interchange. Not the same one, but very much the same style of interchange with a huge tangle of roadways going in many directions.

…but it wasn’t. In fact, a bit of time spent searching on Google Earth failed to identify this one, so if anyone can tell me where it is I’d appreciate it.

 

Another thing with which I’d busied myself during the past two days was communicating with the people at home in preparation for my return. Lining up my work, as I wanted to get going with that as soon as I returned, was of particular importance.

I followed the GPS to the address at Compton, I took the van into the huge warehouse where Oceans International would ultimately pack it into a container for shipment via my agents in Sydney. A lot of paperwork has to be completed first and I got to know the people in the office there just behind the personnel door:



Oceans International. Well, maybe the name’s been changed between when I was there and Google Earth got this Street View pic.

Most of what I saw there was out in the back yard, where a number of vehicles were stored, others were arriving and the warehouse was full of them too.



Linr-up. A few Dodge pickups and a Ramcharger were lined up here, presumably to be shipped at some time. Perhaps awaiting documentation to allow them to be sent.

These photos were pretty bad because I’d accidentally altered the setting on the camera before taking them. And in the viewfinder they looked okay, so I never realised when I corrected it. Meanwhile, it will take a fair bit of ‘correction’ to make this one look better:



Dodge pickup 4WD. There are plenty of these around America, I wouldn’t think they’d be a common choice for shipping to other countries.

This transporter was unloading more vehicles while I was there…



Transporters. People who buy their vehicles while they’re not in the country would have them trucked in, so Oceans International see a number of transporters coming and going.

…and I thought, “those wheel nut covers would never be allowed in Australia!”



Too spiky. More evidence that just about anything goes on American roads. Mind you, they might be handy if a kangaroo bolted out and hit the wheel area.

The van had to be driven into the shed. I parked in line with rows of other cars awaiting shipment…



The van in the shed. Having taken the things I was going to carry with me to the airport, the van took its place among all the other vehicles.

…leaving the title papers on the dash, the keys in the van and folding the mirrors back to avoid them getting in the way or damaged, while at the back…



Rear view. Next to a 1960 2-door Chevy, you can see here how the cars are arranged in rows in the warehouse.

…I had removed the spare wheel and its carrier from the back door so it would be a couple of inches shorter for packing into a container.

The next step was to get the girls in the office to phone for a taxi. I had plenty of time as my flight out was scheduled for 10:55pm, but an e.mail alerted me to a ten-hour delay. I had no option, however, but to head for the airport.

This cab ride was shorter than those I’d done from Long Beach and it wasn’t long before the signs of aircraft were in view:



LAX awaits me. The huge airport was just a short cab-ride away as I wondered what I’d do with the many hours I now had to wait to fly out.

It was still fairly early when I got there, not yet dusk, and the scheduled departure time was now set for about 9:00am. At LAX the nice people from Virgin Australia told me they'd booked me into a room in the Crowne Plaza, complete with a meal voucher. I would eat well and sleep well knowing that 24 hours later I would be in Brisbane.



Crowne Plaza at LAX. This was easily the biggest hotel in which I’d stayed during the trip, I was dropped off there by shuttle bus from the Virgin terminal.

Three months and a few hours, 20,243 miles – 32,571kms – driven through 22 countries, I had had a ball.

Now to work out what would be next...

Oh, yes, work. I knew that as soon as I got home I’d be getting into the once-every-three-years major job the company contracts to do and which I rely on for some serious income. And I’d need that to pay for the shipping of the van. That work also involved a lot of travel, so I'll be documenting some of that...

 

Morning came and I was still in the USA!

I hadn’t expected to be, of course, I would have thought I’d be waking up in the 777 somewhere over the Western Pacific Ocean. I looked out the window to the world that was a part of the busy LAX area, the palm trees providing something placid among the hustle and bustle of traffic and people…



Crowne Plaza view. When I awoke I was able to look out at the palm trees and the growing traffic levels.

My room was just over the top of the main entry in the lane off West Century Boulevard. My window looked out over the entry roofing towards Century Boulevard and evident in the photo – the rounded roof in the centre of the building – is the United Airlines cargo depot.

The imposing building that is the Crowne Plaza is on the left here and the traffic in this Google Earth picture is all heading towards the airport…



West Century Boulevard. Traffic rushes towards the LAX terminals past the Crowne Plaza hotel.

…while shuttle buses come and go so that Google Earth can’t miss them. Most hotels have them, a lot of car rental companies have them, tour operators have them and there are a few which work for different places simply rotating around in the circle of roads at and near the airport.



Shuttle buses. Constantly circling the terminal areas to feed thousands of people into and out of the airport, these carry tens of thousands of people every day.

Now it was time to go through the various protocols. The main bags were weighed and checked in, then it was my turn for checking and I did it again!

Realising that I might like to have a 10” ⅜”-drive socket extension, when I was arranging things in the van I put this into one of my carry-on bags. Big mistake. I forfeited the tool and went through to sit on the plane. In time we got airborne and headed off on the non-stop flight across the Pacific.



I just love the thrust of takeoff, the feeling of being lifted into the sky, then the comfort of levelling off as the steepest part of the climb has passed. I looked out the window and started taking photos:



Marina del Rey. As we levelled out we could see this marina, the flight taking us on an arc to the North-West.

That’s the Marina del Rey… I kept the camera ready…



Point Dume and Malibu. We were gaining altitude and seeing more, which I wouldn’t have expected, but possible because we took the long circle to the North.

…and the coastline stayed with us until…



Point Mugu. This was to be the last of the mainland, now we’d be heading out to sea.

It’s a longer flight home than it is heading across, usually about an hour longer depending on the winds at 30,000ft. We’d be, just as we were on the flight from Paris to Toronto, chasing the sun. But with no hope of keeping up. Night would definitely befall us before we reached Brisbane.

There was just a little of the US territory to come into view before it was just open sea:



Santa Cruz Island A National Park called the Channel Islands National Park embraces these two islands, with Santa Rosa Island visible beyond Santa Cruz Island.

The orientation of this picture shows that we were Now heading more towards the South. The two big engines of the Boeing 777 were propelling us strongly along. Like I’ve said before, this aircraft seems to be just drilling a hole in the air. And at altitude you get to look down on a lot of clouds.

Some are dotted over the ocean, some are more full so you can’t see the ocean, and then, as the sun gets lower in the distant sky both the sea and the sky act more as reflectors…



The sunlight bounces. Highlighting the shapes of the tops of the clouds and giving just a hint of motion in the waters below, the lowering angle of the sun gives this scene upon which we can do our own reflecting.

Lowering still further, the sun cuts a distinct line across the scenery:



Line of light. Two things start to stand out here, the curvature of the horizon being very clear and the line the lowering sun cuts towards us.

We were, of course, being treated to some meals and snacks on board. At times we’d get up and wander around to keep the circulation going, I would talk to the stewards and hear their tales of different things they’ve seen, while all the while we were encouraged to drink plenty of water.

As the sun continued to get further away the refraction of the light which occurs at the low angles would start to put colour into the setting:



Refraction. Everyone, I’m sure, enjoys a sunset. It was coming to us here as we sped across the ocean. The banks of clouds and the expanse of ocean were ready to reflect it for us too.

Ultimately we got to the sunset:



Sunset and softness. The sunset came with some high cloud taking the sun away, while in this light the cloud below us took on a look of feather bed softness.

And dark arrived. Of course, we were flying across the International Date Line somewhere along the way here and going forward a day. Or was it losing a night? Our last glimpses of the light were just a glow on that curving horizon:



Final glow. The sun was rushing off to do its stuff elsewhere, I suppose at this time people in Europe were beginning to see the beginnings of their new day. And that seems to be a single and very bright star up high.

In darkness we progressed to our destination, with the lights of Brisbane finally showing we were near the end of our long flight – about 13 hours in the air – and we’d have to get ready for the queues and checks and bustle again.



Brisbane lights. It’s always good to see the signs of the end of such a flight, Brisbane’s tentacle of roads show among the many lights of the city in the evening, with another plane’s lights off to our right in the sky.

The three months of the trip were over. Well, all bar the drive home. The Travelark site provided this map based on my daily stops. Or most of them:



The summary. Adding to the 20,243 miles or 32,571 kilometres I drove was a very similar distance in flights across the world’s two biggest oceans.

I had rearranged things with my nephew, Ben, to pick me up when I got off the train from the airport to the Gold Coast. Soon I would reacquaint myself with the Forester, with right hand drive and with driving on the left side of the road, drove towards home. It wouldn’t be long before I put on a lot of warm clothing as it was now the depths of Winter after living in the extreme heat of Utah, Nevada, Arizona and California in high Summer for the past week.



As I drove I wondered where the big job the company had for me would take me. The further from home the better, of course, as they pay me a mileage allowance, and the longer it lasted was better too as I’d have to pay for the shipping and charges bringing the van back to me. I wondered how long it would take to get the van here. Of course, I was looking forward to seeing Sandra again.

But most of these things would spring up surprises in the coming days, weeks and months. And I would also head into a time of rapid learning about our native peoples, the Aboriginals, as I embarked on a couple of work trips into the ‘Outback’.

No, this isn’t finished yet, there’s still a tale to unfold, please stay with me as I tell you more and show you some of my own huge and sunbaked country…

 

I have mentioned that a lot of my work involves travel. Weekly travel has been a feature of my working life for about 25 years now and I hope it continues that way for a long time to come.

At times my work involves more than just a couple of days away each week, the company for whom I work having periodic contracts with Government Departments to take on specific jobs which give us stints when we can work seven days a week. It’s these jobs which put the icing on the financial cake for me.

In 2014, just after Janet’s passing, there was one which lasted two months. Sometimes these jobs bring ‘perks’ and this one had one such. There is always a training session involved and that took me to Brisbane for two days and the accommodation was in a hotel with spectacular views:


Looking West. From my 34th floor room I could look West towards the range which encompasses Brisbane on that side.


Storey Bridge. Looking over the Storey Bridge, built in the thirties and still a vital link between Brisbane and South Brisbane.


A growing city. Tall buildings continue to spring up in Brisbane. The cranes are still at work today, six years after this pic was taken.


Trees in town. The foreground buildings are offices owned by a church, with open space around them and trees too.

When I saw this view I couldn’t help but think again of Janet and the time she joined me when I went away. She would have spent the days shopping and visiting her sister and generally enjoying a day in the city. And how the balcony to this room would have been an idyllic spot for a romantic dinner and glass or two of wine. Yes, I had a tear as I thought of these things, it was just six weeks since her death. I went downstairs and bought some wine too.

As darkness fell it became even more spectacular:


Night lighting. Lights on the Storey Bridge emphasise its structural shape while the lights of the city extend well to the East.


Lights all around. Looking once again to the North the lights spread out to infinity. A perfect few from the meal table where the wineglasses should have been shared.

Of course, the income from this job really helped out when I was preparing for the trip I took that year. And when I went away in 2016 I knew that the major one that we get each three years would be unfolding to set me up again after the expenditure of the three months I had away that year. It would put the money in the account from which I’d have to draw to cover the shipping of the van, for instance.

But even the weekly jaunts, sometimes not all that far from home, take me into places where tourists never go, places where there are stunning views or very interesting people…


90 in the shade! Out on the farms, one day I interviewed this 90-year-old. Just one of a multitude of very ordinary but very interesting people I meet in the course of my work.

And what point would there be in driving these distances for work if one didn’t take time out to look at other things, visit old friends and see what kind of thing the ‘interesting people’ get up to?

And did I mention distances? The Forester…



…the week I began this job reached this milestone:



So, for those willing to follow along with me now, I’m going to look at some of the more appealing places I’ve been and the things I’ve seen. And there’ll be something about the people I’ve visited or met in doing so. People like race car builder Bob Britton, who keeps on building cars in his retirement to keep himself active:


Bob Britton at the lathe. Bob has built championship-winning cars in the past, today he makes them just for fun.

And there are occasional gatherings of ‘old and bold’ racing drivers to which I get invited…


Sir John Whitmore. A famous British driver who visited Australia about this time. Here he addresses a gathering of racing people, the gentleman at the lower right being Jack Brabham’s partner and designer, Ron Tauranac.

…while some concentration of my energies would go to vehicle maintenance and modification, both of the Foresters I regularly drive…


Gearbox change. I wear them out too, so from time to time it’s necessary to work on them. I do as much as I can myself.

…and preparation of my Dodge B350 to make it comply with Australian road rules:


Dodge van modifications. Different rules in Australia required that I change some things on my van to be able to put it on the road. This sometimes required a bit of dismantling, such as here where I had to go in to access wiring.

This, of course, would culminate in me being able to photograph the van at that most famous of Australian landmarks, Ayers Rock:


Aussie sightseeing. As part of an 8,600-mile drive to Central Australia I got my first sight of Ayers Rock or Uluru.

But it will all begin with the highlights I saw on my regular weekly trips…

 

Immediately I returned to the farmhouse at Dalveen I began getting things sorted for the major job the company gives me once every three years. And working to ensure that they understood that doing that job shouldn’t interfere with my regular weekend work – I was happy to work six or seven days a week as I had shipping bills to pay in a short while!

They did keep me waiting, however, so the first weekend I was home I worked the regular work locally. By the end of the second week they’d sent me materials so I could get started on the ‘training’ for the big job and at the same time I was beginning to see that Sandra wasn’t going to be living in the farmhouse with me. She wanted to rent a house in Toowoomba, 125kms to the North of where I was living in Dalveen. My travel, for the moment, would be in one or the other of my Foresters:



Foresters at home. Ready to go wherever I needed to be, the Foresters wait at the back door of the farmhouse while the pickup used on my first trip awaits attention further down the yard.

When the materials arrived I familiarised myself with it all, but then I was committed to do a more formal training session in Sydney. I arranged for my next weekend’s work to be somewhere on the way to Sydney and also to pick up my old friend and former employer, Max Stahl, to take him to Sydney to visit his daughter. The ‘somewhere on the way’ turned out to be at Manilla, so that determined my path for the trip:



After becoming used to hot days and sunny conditions, I was now back to Winter, with a complete ‘smog-out’ as I rounded the bend which normally gives a full view of the town of Glen Innes:



Smog-bound. Lots of woodfires must have been burning in Glen Innes to mix the smoke with the fog for this thick mix. Temperatures below zero are no strangers at this time of year in this area.

After picking up Max I snapped this shot of a nice sunny day in the upper Hunter Valley:



Crops and cattle. The Hunter Valley has some good fertile land and farms such as this are not hard to find.

A new freeway whisked away the miles between Singleton and the Newcastle area, but stopping at a rest area along that road revealed that not everyone was as sensible as they could be…



Burned out. One car burned out, another tipped on its side, no doubt stolen so the boys could have some fun with them.

After dropping off Max I made my way into the city, where the company had booked a room for me that night too. The briefing on the job was the last to be scheduled as the job had been under way for over a month now. There was only two of us to be trained, my fellow ‘trainee’ was the wife of a long-time employee, but more of her later. After completing the training I headed off to see Bob Britton and find out how he was getting on with his car-building.



From the drawing board. Bob draws up all components he makes and he has files of virtually everything he’s made since he started building cars in 1961.

The fresh project he had going was to be based around the mechanical bits of a Holden Commodore he’d been given. A Buick V6 powered that model, it was an automatic and he’d be making a de Dion rear end to fit in the back of the chassis. That was basically a Lotus 7 chassis lengthened and widened, while the front end would be built with rocker-arm suspension.

But it’s not all work at Bob’s place, he has friends who call around every day…



Feeding the birds. These lorikeets are not the only birds calling in for some seed, but Bob enjoys their company when nobody else is around.

Bob was living alone and spending almost all day in his workshop Three evenings a week he’d be out visiting his wife in the nursing home, taking turns with his daughters to feed her the evening meal. At home he was building up a collection of cars he built to many different specifications:



Museum. Bob calls this shed his ‘museum’ as it accumulates the cars he’s been building.

From left to right they are: The Lotus 7 replica he built to drive to work when he had a ‘real job’, powered by a Toyota 4-valve engine; next is a 500cc formula car, built to emulate what the old Formula 3 was, but with modern parts like disc brakes and a twin-cylinder twin-cam 4-valve Suzuki dirt bike engine and gearbox; then there’s one of three mid-engined coupes he’s built. And in the other end of the shed:



More in the collection. Eccentric, perhaps, but it gives Bob a great deal of satisfaction to put these cars together.

The Lotus 7-style car on the left was an attempt to build such a car with a rear-mounted transaxle, it suffered from vibration problems Bob hasn’t yet resolved; then there’s the single-seat road car, fully equipped for use on the road and powered by a Hyabusa 1300cc engine; finally, a Brabham BT14 replica with a modern Japanese engine. Bob built just one of these during his time building customer-cars, he reckons he should have just kept on building them.



Till next time. With rain coming down and the remains of the stripped Commodore outside the workshop, Bob farewells me as I head back to Queensland.

On the way home, driving the silver Forester, I had the oil light blink on just once as I was heading into Singleton. Whoops! I’d forgotten to keep up my (almost ritualistic) oil level checks and driven it for two weeks without checking. I was just in time to buy a litre of oil at Singleton and pressed on. A few days later, however, it blinked again and I could hear a very faint rattling of the big ends. That car was parked and I drove only the green one as I awaited the opportunity to do something about that.

A couple of weeks later my weekend work took me to Gum Flat, near Inverell. It’s a sparsely occupied area, but I did have a desire to become more closely acquainted with a paddock out there full of old cars. To get there I took some roads quite close to the path I’d taken to Manilla, but off the highways this time:



I was looking for a chassis which might suit a project I have in mind for the future, I saw one which might be okay, but I kept on looking around in case there was anything which caught my eye.



Gum Flat wrecks. Fords and Holdens stretch across the grassy paddock, but there’s more variety in this place to see.

None of that stuff. But the Peugeot in this picture…



More Gum Flat wrecks. There are two Australian-built Valiants the other side of this Peugeot, and again there are many more makes and models stretching off down the hill.

…turned out to have a couple of dismembered gearboxes in the boot. I was looking at the pic I took of those longingly a few years later as I wondered where I might get a mainshaft – until someone else turned up with a complete gearbox for me. As it happens, it was all a bit of a waste of time as the owner of the place wants whole cars gone and wasn't very interested in talking about sensible figures about anything else.

Occasionally people would come and visit me. One such was young Tom Veness, son of Damien Veness from the Lismore area. Damien keeps on winning the ‘top car’ award at the famous Chryslers on the Murray show, insisting all the while that he drive his cars the 800 miles or so to get there and never thinking of taking them on a trailer.

Tom had come up to pick up some bits, but the car in which he arrived was a really nice thing he’s done up for himself:



Tom’s Plymouth. This Plymouth might date back to the forties, but there’s nothing staid about the way it’s been prepared for Tom to use it on the roads of today.

Mopar people through and through, the Veness family have a history of building nice cars. Tom just had to have more power, of course, but without much thought of putting a newer engine in there. Instead he worked on the original:



Edgy head. The finned alloy cylinder head and twin carburettors are a pointer to the effort that’s gone into working this engine over.

I’d been home a month and things were happening quickly. Apart from dashing off most days during the week to work on the big job, at this stage working areas not too far from home, I was taking trips to Toowoomba to spend nights with Sandra and getting my weekend trips away. An interesting one was when I went to Kyogle to work, which entails heading through some very twisty and narrow roads:



This put me close to my good friend, Norm. He lives at Meerschaum Vale and had been doing a lot of improvements to his surroundings on top of a hill which looks down over a small village. This morning, however, there was no chance of seeing the village:



Fogbound. The village of Meerschaum Vale is down there, but completely enshrouded by the fog.

A major effort had gone into making retaining walls for where his home is cut into the hill. Wire cages are the starting point, then put into place and filled with rocks, they are quite effective:



Build-your-own rock walls. Galvanised wire frames to contain the rocks make this job effective and easy.

The earthworks going on around his place had disturbed some of the locals, too. We went up above the house to find out why the dog was going crazy and encountered this fellow:



King Brown. About eight feet long, this ‘King Brown’ snake had come out of his hiding place to sun himself.

Not all native visitors are so aggressive, though. Back at home we had some bird feeders hanging in a branch of a tree near the kitchen window which usually attracted King Parrots. This was not such a common visitor…



Redwing Parrot. Quite shy, so it’s hard to get a good shot of the Redwing Parrot, but they are really beautiful.

Not that I was spending much time at home to get such pictures. By now I was making daily runs along these roads:



This work involved finding people home, then asking if they’d fill out a questionnaire, leaving that with them for a week or so and then trying to catch them home again to pick it up. I had areas to cover in Warwick, Tannymorel, Mount Colliery, Glengallan and Yangan, then after dropping all of them I put them out in four different areas in the vicinity of Boonah. The miles were rolling up on the Forester…



Rain in the distance. Heading off to see Sandra one evening after working in Yangan, the setting sun highlighted showers off towards the West at the Freestone intersection.

…but I was being paid for almost every kilometre.

There’s a Rest Area at Dalveen, just two miles from the farmhouse where I was living, and from time to time some interesting vehicles would pull up there. This day it was a very old Buick…



Buick. This Buick would be from the period from 1918 to 1920, one of a lot of Vintage cars visiting our area on this weekend.

The almost-daily drives to the Boonah area saw me regularly going over Cunningham’s Gap, a tortured stretch of road carrying a lot of traffic. But it also affords you views if you have time to catch a glimpse:



Cunningham’s Gap view. Looking off to the North, many of the hills and valleys are covered in gum trees.

I was racking up the miles and the front driveshafts were keen to be replaced, so one day I had to take time out to do that. Back on the road again and down to Boonah, one surprise I got was to see this bloke:



Meter reader. Usually the electricity meters are read by someone driving a car, but this reader was a bit more individualistic.

As I came closer to winding up the Boonah areas I was given more areas to cover further away, starting at Yelarbon and heading further to the West. Bungunyah and Tallwood North were places I’d never heard of, but I was to come to know them fairly well over the next few weeks.



Most of the time I’d make a trip out each day, but a couple of nights they saved me the trouble by putting me into a motel at Goondiwindi. That saved me 420kms each day and saved them more than my mileage allowance for driving that distance. One morning at Goondiwindi I went to the bank and deposited a nice payment towards shipping the van home, but mostly my job out this way was to find the people on the farms and leave the questionnaire for them to work on. The farms were all different…



Green crop. This crop was green the first time I drove in here, by the time I made my last trip it had browned right off. I think it’s barley.

I still made trips home, of course, but the path via Stanthorpe and Coolmunda, while a lot shorter, carried a higher kangaroo-strike risk. So one night I was on the road heading from Goondiwindi to Warwick when I noticed smoke coming from beneath a semi-trailer. I got closer and saw that there was a little fire starting in one of the wheels right at the back. I raced up past the truck and waved the driver down…



Truck on fire. The driver wasted no time getting an extinguisher under the trailer and working on putting out the fire in the wheel bearing.

He was, as you’d understand, very grateful to me, just as I was glad I spotted it and was able to help him out.



From the outside. Where there’s smoke… a burned out trailer and load was certainly not what the driver wanted to have this night.

Car clubs often visit our area on runs, gathering at different places and happily showing off their cars. One day there was a notice at the Post Office that a Dodge Club was going to put their cars on display in Warwick, so I couldn’t miss that…



Dodges on display. Lots of the cars were pre-1930 and the owners clearly lavished attention on them.

…even if it meant getting up very early one morning to go there before heading off to work.



Old roadster. This roadster was the oldest among them, I think, being from the early twenties and still running strong.

I had now been home three months and the van had left Compton and was in a container braving the crossing of the world’s biggest ocean. It’s a 28-day trip, so it wouldn’t be long before I’d be paying out more money for it to be cleared for importation.

Making that money took me to places like this:



Back to work. This is in the Mount Colliery area, where steep hills abound and some lonely homes are hidden in those hills. The views make it all worthwhile, I guess.

It was full-on for me as I enjoyed myself meeting people, seeing places and doing things. A busy life for the moment, even busier when I stretched the mileage to spend an odd night with Sandra. Though she did surprise me one day as I was wrapping up with work, phoning me.

“What time do you want dinner?” she asked. I wasn’t slated to go to Toowoomba that night, I was taken aback by the question. “I’m at Dalveen,” she told me.

So I went home to dinner with my wife...