Weipa & The Roofrack

Still holding on over the rough rds.

After our long drive straight from Varillia point to Weipa, and a couple days with out beer we went straight to the  Bottleo in Weipa, realised it was after 5pm on Friday, good time to buy goon, but everything else in Weipa is closed for weekend, so we did a bit of shopping and found a nice spot out at the beach to camp for the weekend, didn't wana pay $36+ per night for caravan park. We will spend that on drinks and camp for free at the beach. We did however pay $7 to store our frozens in the caravan park freezer.

Chilled out for weekend, had a go at fishing with no luck, that's OK we still got fish in fridge to eat.  Monday rolled around and it was time to go to work, doing the roof rack. 

Nice spot for it, shady roof and concrete, spoiled. 

All the required parts where waiting for us at Weipa Smash Repairs, along with my kayak guarded by the most confident vicious Jack Russel you've ever seen, leader of the pack of bigger guard dogs. The nice guys there lent us the tools we needed.

Redy to add new track mount system

 While they cranked some heavy death metal we went across the road to the car wash to do the rack undercover. It took all day, unloaded what we could off the basket, then proped it up with a couple blocks of wood, leaving all the dual battery cables in place. The new rack is attached to the outer shoulder of the roof using 10 rivets on each side and aluminium uni strut cross bars. 

It looks a lot stronger and professional than the other one that broke.  Borrowed a few extra rivets and a beer off bazza who was fixing a roof next      door and finally finished as the sun was settinmg.            

New Roof Rack-choice

                                                                                                                                                 

Metal roof lug ripped out. 

Yeah! roof racks done after 3 weeks of creaking, moaning and groaning, oh and the roof rack making noise too. There was no way of nursing it along the rough roads and tracks, give it heaps and hope it's still up on roof when u stop for the night, the jandals and ratchet straps held on the whole way round the top end.

Ahh finally got my head space back with the ratchet strap gone, and I got my jandals back, they are still good, not bad for a free pair from Trinity Beach in Cairns, only 7000kms of corrugated dirt roads on the clock.

We had a celebration that night at the beach, stayed up late listening to music with a bonfire and drinks down the beach. The next day it was back to Weipa Smash Repairs in morning to pick up kayak and other things that we unloaded to save weight. Now to fit it all in and on somewhere. Picked up our freezer stuff from caravan park ( charged us $7 a night for 3 nights in the freezer but I only paid for one),  and off out of town, south to somewhere....

Controlled (I hope) burn across the road from camp. 

The only lights in weipa, give way to giant trucks

Main bauxite port wiepa.