Day 5 - First day on the dirt ( 477kms to Warrakurna Roadhouse)

Ok woke with an enormous hangover - "Self inflicted" I hear you say and you would be completely correct..

Thankfully we had a slow start and did not leave until midday!

Packed up camp and suitably dosed with Barroca and Neurofen

The rally now changes from a nice cruise along some great sealed roads to unsealed roads and the Great Central Road.

Dirt roads are great fun to drive BUT they are also very much more dangerous with a number of points to consider:-

1) Road Trains - these massive lorries with 4 trailers storm around the remote interior of Australia. They go very fast at least 120kms and do not stop for anyone. The best advice we have had is if you see a road train pull over and stop, wait for them to pass.

2) Dips - many unsealed roads have dips due to rain washouts which means you can be comfortably trucking along at 80 and suddenly you are heading down a faily steep slope, unless you slow you end up damaging your car and leaving your exhaust behind

3) Bull Dust - ridges of this dust build along the road as the tyres rip up the dirt.. if you hit one of these ridges at speed you end up with car slewing sideways - fun if you know what you are doing :-)

4) Rocks - I am amazed by the size of rocks lying in middle of the road, some can be very large i.e. size of a mans head! Not good to hit these at any kind of speed.

5) Dust clouds - Every car produces a huge plume of dust, when driving in convoy you need at least 100metres between before you can have a clear road. Overtaking gets interesting as you have to drive through the dust cloud with little or no vision. Top tip not to overtake on a bend! 

The food on the rally has been ok - many people are very fussy and they do not seem to realise that catering for 400 people in a remote area is very difficult. The only issue Tim and I have is that there is not enough food so today we ate breakfast and lunch together and stopped at a IGA to pick up more food :-)

On the Shitbox rally, we have an area in each stop called "Triage" - this is where all the unwell shitbox cars go to be fixed by the amazing mechanics we have on this rally. As an example we have a Mini Clubman on the rally and tonight they stripped the engine down to replace the head gasket in the middle of the bush - bloody amazing!

Finally, this stop has been dry to protect the aboriginal community here so everyone made campfires and sat around and talked about the rally, the cars and the people without saying MINE