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Western Australia by Landcruiser

Anneli Knight tames an ancient vehicle called Old Mango in search of bush poets, campfires and the heart of Western Australia.

To enable my adventures across the Kimberley, in the top corner of Western Australia, I bought myself a second hand (or more likely 8th hand) early ‘80s Landcruiser.

Let me introduce you. His name is Old Mango. That’s his name because he’s mushy and mangled on the outside (dare I suggest over-ripe) but he’s super tough at his core – where it counts – as every children’s fable will tell you.

Most importantly, he is beige and has his original early 80s silver, red and orange stripes grooving up each side panel.

I bought him from a local guy in Broome for $3500 on the condition that I’d get one basic lesson on the mechanics of the beast, before I hit the Kimberley’s red, dusty roads on my own.

I took pen and paper and drew diagrams about where to fill the oil and the water. And some rather confused sketches referring to brake and clutch fluid.

Easy.

Before my first bush trip, I had Old Mango parked out on the nature strip in Broome and lifted his bonnet, which in itself required muscle strength and got my hands dirty. Before I had even had a chance to done anything an old man shuffled over to me and enquired, ‘What’s wrong with your car, girl?’

‘Nothing,’ I chirped, as I pulled out the oil stick and wiped it down with toilet paper to check its levels. ‘I’m just getting ready for a bush trip.’

‘Strong woman,’ he muttered, patting one of his own flexed biceps and nodding his head, shuffling away in awe of my mechanical prowess.

Ah. Ignorance is bliss.

4WDs have a few extra gauges that I hadn’t yet grown accustomed to at this stage of my journey. My first big lesson was in understanding the oil monitor. It had a marker with an “H” and an “L” at each end of the spectrum. My indicator hovered about a third of the way closer to L.

Once I’d done this initial oil check on the nature strip, the indicator stayed at this comfortable level, so I didn’t feel the need to continue to check my oil. I still had a third of a tank of the stuff, so I thought.

This first bush trip took me away from the sprinkler-fed green lawns of Broome out along the searing red pindan roads. I didn’t think to check road access in the middle of the ‘dry’ so was confronted by an unexpected road closure – due to the previous week’s unseasonal rain.

This resulted in two unscheduled days camping on a riverbed and a chance meeting with two enchanting, drifting poets. By day three, I was finally given a special day pass to take the closed road to Windjana Gorge. This meant a whoop-whoop-out-loud adventurous journey, filled with mud-flying, water-spraying, wind-screen blinding river crossings and dips and turns in the road. It was a blessed day at the virtually isolated gorge, then back on the highway through Fitzroy Crossing and on to Bohemia Downs Station – a cattle station run by an Aboriginal family, where I spent some time last year. I arrived just in time in time to join the cattle mustering stock camps.

But this is a story about my oil gauge.

After this three day pause of Old Mango at Bohemia Downs, it was time to roar back along the highway to Broome.

To cut a long story short, the clutch didn’t work so I couldn’t get the car into gear. There was a leak in the clutch fluid container. The mob in the community are hardy bush mechanics so it didn’t take them long to bleed the clutch and get it started. It was then they discovered, amid back-slapping laughter – that I wouldn’t have made it onto the main road without blowing up my engine.

I had virtually no water and no oil in my Mango. Lesson one: the oil gauge on the dash records pressure and not volume of oil (!) and Lesson Two: you need to check the level of water in the front of the radiator not the wash back basin where I’d been checking (!).

My self-image as ‘strong woman’ wilted quicker than a daisy in mid-day desert heat.

A couple of weeks later, and so much wiser, the next bush trip was up along another unsealed pindan road out of Broome, this time north to Cape Leveque. Old Mango is brimming with oil and water at this point, no worries there.

This road can be tough, you have to navigate your way to find the best path along the road, zig-zagging along either side to avoid the sand, sometimes wrestling the steering wheel to keep the car steady.

Mango had a bit of rest as my travel companion and I camped out on the cliffs by the ocean, inhaled the explosion of colours that splashed against the sandstone at sunrise and sunset, slept in our swags under the stars and cooked on our billy over the campfire.

One night Old Mango was converted to emergency overnight shelter as we heard an unusual water splashing sound in the mangroves near our campsite then saw two beady eyes shining back when we shone our torch – crocodile!

After some otherwise peaceful days, we decided to take Old Mango out along a soft sand track for eight kilometres to Hunters Creek. We had to deflate his tyres in preparation for the mission. Driving on deep sand is almost like playing a computer game or riding dodgem cars – it requires all your concentration and energy just trying to keep the car stable and moving forward – and that’s exactly what makes it so much fun.

We were almost there when I learnt the importance of another 4WD monitor: the temperature gauge. Even my little city Mazda has a temperature gauge, but as a desert-driving novice I hadn’t yet tuned myself to keep an eye on it. But when Mango started blowing steam out of his ears (through his bonnet), I noticed the indicator was on red hot. Oops – we’d split a radiator hose.

This is where the magic of Toyota Landcruiser comes in. It is just about the only car that is currency for conversation and credibility in these parts. As amazing chance would have it, there was a discarded Landcruiser engine in the tip at Cape Leveque for exactly the same model as Old Mango so – voila – three hours along a dirt road to anywhere – and we’d landed a spare hose. And then all it took then was the mechanical wiles of my travel companion to replace the part as I looked on, wide-eyed, over his shoulder. Strong-Woman-in-Training.

I now understand what connects to what under that bonnet – and what gauge measures what – and why that is important. I guess that’s Landcruiser 101. And perhaps the bare minimum every girl should know before taking off solo in an old truck in the West Australian desert.

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