Day 507 | Wirrabara Forest: didn't quite make it to the official campsite
40 km | zzOz total: 16, 427 km
I’m running out of nibbles.
Perhaps this hints that I should be eating a little less but there was an expectation you could pick up some fruitcake in Quorn, or some Gingernuts which were also sold out. The general store in Wilmington had shut down since I last passed through three years ago and there was the curious case of the only shop in Melrose, the service station, not having any fuel or much in the way of food even. No cake and I ain’t paying $4 for the one packet of Gingernuts on the bare shelves.
Tomorrow’s locality Laura didn’t have much from recollection, I’m wondering if I need to take a break from the roller coaster white clay roadlets of today and just zoom along the valley floor to Jamestown to stock up.
The deciding issue may be that I’ve had some issues with my MSR Whisperlite, there’s been no Shellite, white gas, available since I found some in the latter section of my Queensland trip. When that came close to running out I switched to kero, ie, kerosine.
Shellite is a great fuel because it burns hot and has very little smoke. Once upon a time, like 10 years ago, it was available everywhere, the old lighter fluid, but it’s almost disappeared except for big specialised camping shops in larger towns and even then it’s not guaranteed.
The kero is a different story: you need a match to light it, my longstanding solution to firelighting, a flint, is ineffective, then it smokes like a steam train and while it works well when it’s cranked up, it leaves soot everywhere and when it leaks, as it certainly does, it doesn’t simply evaporate quickly like Shellite, it stays around, somewhat greasy and stinking up the trailer bag hugely.
Maybe I should have just filled up with carcinogenic unleaded petrol and positioned myself upwind.
OK, so kero stinks, is hard to light and everything gets covered in impossible to remove soot but it’s worked well in what it’s supposed to do: cooking.
Except somehow at Warren Gorge I misplaced the short plastic fuel filter and feeder pipe that takes the fuel under pressure into the pump and now I just can’t get the fuel to flow. I swapped the nozzle to the wide kero jet, it worked a few days and now it doesn’t. I’ve disassembled, cleaned, pumped, repeated procedure a few times, then again, but the fuel for some reason is not squirting out as it should.
Not enough pressure? Pump 50, 100 times.
Hold the fuel bottle in various configurations, it’s been all somewhat frustrating.
Just have to get rid of all that soot from my hands then I’ll set fire to something.