Last Day in Broome

We finally got our car back at 1.00pm on Friday! I had the repairers give us the broken part. This showed some very interesting things.

The part has been half broken for some time, before it broke all the way through when we were on the Cape Leveque Road. Half the crack is old, it’s covered in dirt. Whereas the other half is nice and shiny.

We are certain we didn’t hit anything under the car at all during this trip and in fact we haven’t hit bottom ever since we’ve had the bigger diameter tyres on. Which means it was broken before we left Sydney. I asked Volkswagen to give the car a good inspection before we left, but this Control Arm is somewhat hidden up in the wheel well. It’s nowhere near the lowest arm on the rear axles. So it could be missed if they weren’t thorough.

I actually don’t know how it would have been hit, but there are two spots on it which show it’s had a couple of large knocks upwards. And one of these has cracked it half way through. The other half come apart on Cape Leveque Road in the corrugations. Luckily it didn’t give way when we were cruising at 100kms/hour on a freeway with the van on. The car going 20⁰ all of a sudden was a surprise at 40kms/hour, let alone faster.

So when did we hit this arm and crack the 1^st part of it? The worst the car has ever been stuck was in January 2010. We had the smaller diameter tyres on then and both rear wheels were stuck, but looking at our photos it was more on the driver’s side, yet there is absolutely no damage underneath the car on the driver’s side and the only damage on the passenger’s side was this arm.

I don’t think a rock could be flicked up from the tyres to cause this damage. So my money is on it happening in January 2010. Its survived 17 months with a half broken control arm! Not bad when you think of it.

My faith in the VW Touareg has been re-established. Whew, this means I don’t have to get one of those dreaded Landcruisers for my next car!

While I was waiting for the car to be finalised on Friday I received a message from Roy and Marg, they were in Broome as well also with car trouble.

So we arranged to meet them later in the day and head down to Cable Beach for sun downers on the beach. Jayne packed the Galliano, Vodka and juice for Harvey Wallbangers and we headed down there just after 4pm.

What a hoot of an afternoon it was, we all had a wow of a time and we were the last ones to leave the beach after 8pm.

Roy and Marg have bought a Toyota Prado in Broome to complete their journey in sending back their Hyundai Santa Fe on road transport to Perth to be sold on their return. We’ll catch up with them again sometime soon I'm sure. They’ve already done the Gibb River Rd, so they’ll be heading to Darwin via the tarred road.

With all this partying we decided to stay in Broome yet another day, and will leave Sunday to Derby, stay there 2 nights and stock the van and head up the Gibb River Road on Tuesday next week.