Stranded At A Roadhouse In The Middle Of Nowhere - Is There Any Escape?

In my previous video, you'll see how an adventure down a remote track in one of the most isolated places in the country to one of the most inaccessible beaches in the country can turn into a survival situation when things go terribly wrong. I'd first gotten a flat tire before I ever reached the beach, and I was on sand so that I couldn't jack the van up to change the tire. Thankfully, three four-wheel drive guys just happened to come along and help me. to get on my way again not five miles farther along and the spare that was put on unseated itself from the rim again in soft deep sand i had to spend days hauling rocks to build a platform for the car jack and to hold up the vehicle's frame once i managed to jack the car up I was finally able to change the tire and barely made it back out to Cocklebiddy Roadhouse on a sidewall damaged tire being held together by a few plugs and some glue. But the nightmare wasn't over, as I was going to learn. I was only part way through it, with two bad tires and no tire repair or tire sale shops for at least a six hour drive in any direction. How was I ever going to get back on the road? After the ordeal of escaping from the beach, I now had to try and escape Cocklebiddy Roadhouse. Out of the two bad tires only the sidewall damaged, one was any good to drive, but it was also illegal to drive on that tire. Tyson was going to try and assist me in finding someone who could get me a tire or two so I could be on my way again. As I walked into the roadhouse, the European women said, You're still here? Yes, I was. I was stranded at the roadhouse for days. Tyson saw me around, but went quiet. Maybe he felt he'd done all he could. I'd made numerous phone calls to the van's owner to see if his insurance would cover the cost of the tire or a tow. Tyson had made some calls, but hadn't been able to connect me with anyone. I was stranded again, at a roadhouse in the middle of nowhere. How was I ever going to get out of here? Scott Jorgensen, the van's owner, said his insurance wouldn't pay for a new tire, and it would be too expensive to have the van towed. I would have to pay the excess, he said, over $1,000. It wasn't even my car. Scott was basically leaving me to find a way out of this situation I was in. I was on my own, alone again, just not on a remote beach this time. Remember, it's not my vehicle, and I paid a lot of money to rent it. There was no one who could repair tires anywhere. As I was on my computer using the roadhouse Wi-Fi, I got a message from Connie and Marco, the German couple I'd met at Pelga Pottery near the start of my journey. They asked me where I was and how I was doing. I said I was stranded in the middle of nowhere with two bad tires and at a roadhouse. They asked if there was anything I needed. They said they were coming into Kalgoorlie and there were several tire shops there. They could pick me up a couple tires and would also have to get a couple of rims as there was no way to change the tires. I called in my card number and they got two used tires on two used Delica rims. Since they were heading my way anyway, it was no problem for them to bring me the tires, they said. Still stranded here on Cocklebiddy. Didn't get anywhere yesterday. Not going anywhere today. But there is a glimmer of hope on the horizon. So, we'll see how that pans out. This is Kirill, and he's going to tell us about some serious issues he had on a trip to the beach with his car. Yeah, it was a very hot day. It was on Christmas, also. Yeah, and we drive with my old Jeep Cherokee 2005 down to the beach. The problem was we came to the beach and my radiator exploded. We tried to refuel green water, like cool water, with some normal water and after we don't have it anymore we put some mineral water to make it cool because we don't have it anymore. Sparkling water? Yeah, sparkling water. And how did you get back out? They pulled us out with a Nissan. We have the luck because some people, they was with us. We drive with them to the beach town and they pull me out all the way. This was three hours back home. Yeah. Okay, how did anybody know that you were in trouble down there, though? No one knows. We have nothing. There is no signal, nothing. But we have the luck that we drive with the people down. Okay, so you had somebody else driving with you. Yeah, they drive with us. And their car held up and pulled you back out. Yeah, they pulled us out. If not for them, you would have just been stuck there. Yeah, yeah. That's the problem. Oh yeah, look who's here. It's Connie and Marco and they've got my tires. Yes, we have your tires. Excellent. And you can go further. So hopefully these tires work, huh? I think so. I don't know, but we will see. Let's try, let's try. Run to the universe. Okay. Okay. Okay. So they carried them in the back of their van here. And we've got them right here, one there. I'm changing this one out first. This is the damaged tire with the sidewall damage. And there's Marco right there. Good man. Brought the tires. Him and Connie. So they're gonna try and rescue me here out in the desert in the outback of Australia. Alright, fingers crossed. Taking off the wheel. Hopefully the other one's fit. We'll see what happens. Look at that. It actually does fit. It's a good fit. And I think I've got wheels again. Yes, you can go further. Yes, and hopefully this doesn't happen again. One can always hope, right? But that doesn't mean it won't happen again. So now putting on the other tire, I'm going to have two front tires. And they're both used tires, I think, used rims. But, you know, hey, I'll get on the road again, right? The air hose doesn't work here at Cockle Pity, so... I have to borrow a guy's inflator. This inflator clips right onto the battery so it takes a long time though with this one. It's pretty slow. Special thanks to Connie and Marco. They have rescued me. I now have tires that can get on my way. These are wonderful German people. Germany rocks! I love Germany! I love my people! Yay! Yay! Good! All right, we're having lunch. I'm treating these guys because they certainly have saved me, haven't they? So enjoying our little lunch here in the roadhouse right now. Kakelbidi. Finally, after being stranded at the roadhouse for four and a half days, I was on my way again. I thought everything was good now, and I would be well on my way without any more problems or drama. I thought wrong. Just when I hoped all the hardship was behind me, I was still going to find that I was living the nightmare that was to continue. I just didn't know it yet. On the road again. Thank you, Connie and Marco. The Germans rock. It took a couple of Germans, we became friends in Pelican Pottery, to get me out of my situation. Well, I called the card number in, but they basically went to the tire shop and purchased the tires on my behalf. And all of them from Cowboy all the way to Cotton Bitty, so I could get back on the road. Thank you, thank you, thank you. The vehicle's owner was Scott Jorgensen, who goes by the nickname Utah, because he grew up there. I hired the car from him at Summit Caravan Park in Guyra, where he works as manager. Scott didn't seem too eager to reimburse me for the money I'd just spent on the rims and tires. Would he assist me financially in this situation? After all, he's the van's owner. I just spent $340. Would he compensate me at all? Even if the spare had held and had any tread left on it, it would have been the incorrect size, larger than all the other tires, and not good to use. It was 65 kilometers to the next roadhouse, Kaiguna. It was busy as roadhouses usually are. Road trains were side by side, and the lone shop. was a flurry of activity. I managed to use their air hose and inflate the tires a bit more, and could use their water hose to thoroughly rinse off the van and any salt residue that may have stuck to the vehicle. About to drive the longest piece of straight road in Australia. Yes, I was about to drive the longest straight stretch of road in the country, straight as an arrow, a swath of sealed road heading straight west. The surrounding land was flat, the road straight, and the sun illuminated the sealed road, making it look like I was driving through a strange dream on a road that had no end. As I looked in every direction, I saw a landscape of long horizons, a land of emptiness, a lonely realm of unseen creatures hidden from view. Distant horizons divided the land from the sky. Speeding road trains, pedal to the metal, roared past, and as they did, were swallowed by the sun. When I pulled off the highway to look for a place to camp, that's when I met these two fierce-looking friends. Check these dudes out. Two of them. Praying mantises. There's one, and there's the other right there. There they go. Zoom, zoom. Maybe he would catch some of the 10 trillion flies in the country. If someone says I love you more than there are flies in Australia, you're with someone who loves you as much as anyone possibly could. I went a couple kilometers down a dirt track that looked like it was once an access road for a cell tower that was now defunct. I set the billy on the fire and boiled up some tucker. When darkness fell, the moon shone brightly and illuminated the bushlands surrounding me. While I was stranded at Cocklebiddy I ended up getting a bit of a sore throat, a little bit raw. I don't know if it's because I was drinking some of that water which seemed to be kind of salty there and maybe it wasn't really for drinking, or if I was just sensitive from all the cigarette smoke. I think everybody at Cocklebiddy smoked cigarettes, or maybe just my immune system has dropped a bit and you know something's going on. So I had a sore throat for like a day and a half maybe. Hopefully it's nothing and it'll go away. When I was stranded on the beach and hauling all those rocks and everything, I was doing it in boots that had blown out heels. And that wasn't helping. And the ball of my foot at the side here got all red and purple. Denali boots, I think more like denial. Drove down a lonely track last night. This goes to a defunct tower and then I parked it right over here for the evening. Had a campfire so I enjoyed just being able to go out into the bush on a track wherever I pretty much wanted to go. I left camp and got back on the highway. It can be bad and dangerous out here especially when road train drivers fall asleep and go off the road. That's when I saw this. What appeared to be a wrecked road train laying on its side. Road trains passing road trains. They passed me too. I was in no hurry, just cruising along, although there really wasn't much to see. It looked like the next roadhouse would be Balladonia. On the way there would look to be an abandoned homestead caught my eye and gave me something to look at. Time to stop the car. He's so horny. I look like a viking now. Well, a lopsided viking with only one horn. A mummified lizard, and it's an interesting Interesting construction, you've got metal. They placed over what looks to be kind of maybe like an adobe sort of thing and some plaster over rock adobe plaster quite a large house with many rooms and many fireplaces throughout a cool place of refuge from the searing outback and the insects The road becomes the airstrip for the flying doctors out here. Big distances out here, almost 200 kilometers from one roadhouse to the next. The drive across the desolation continued. Occasionally there was an offshoot road heading to what probably was a remote station somewhere out in the vastness. I pulled into Balladonia Roadhouse to have a look and get some Wi-Fi. This roadhouse's claim to fame was that it housed a piece of the Skylab space station that crashed back to Earth in 1979, scattering debris across the land and sea in this region. Balladonia Roadhouse, where there's a piece of the Skylab. Here at Balladonia Roadhouse you can get budget rooms and Sleep in a closet, I guess. Roadhouses are a hub of activity since they are the only thing around. They serve tourists and travelers, and particularly road trains. But bring your own water, and plenty of it. Skylab Space Station. No, but I haven't done that. After having a look at the interesting items in the roadhouse, I got back to driving, heading west. Toward day's end, I pulled off the highway and drove down a small track about a kilometer into the bush. All of the sudden, the car felt a bit strange. I also heard what sounded like a hiss. Oh my god, not again. You can't be serious. And look, it's sidewall damage with a stick! A wooden damn stick! You gotta be kidding me! It's... ah! I don't even know how that's possible that that could have happened. I was going like It's like two k's an hour down basically a sandy road. Somehow. A stick, a wood stick, gets lodged in the side wall. What? The tire lasted one and a half days, probably about 10 hours worth of driving. I seriously can't believe all this stuff has happened. I mean this is crazy and I can't even cook dinner hardly because I've got flies buzzing around my eyes and face constantly. And if you go to the ground and look where I'm trying to prepare my dinner, there's ants. And they're crawling up my hands and biting my arm and everything. This place is kind of a miserable place. I have to wonder if this is God's way of saying if you ever get out of here, don't ever come back. Yeah, this is not the place where I belong. And to top it all off, I've got some kind of weird cold or something. I've got runny sinuses, a bit of a cough, and my eyes are kind of watery. Where'd that come from? Once again, going to change out the tire. How many times have I done this? Like four or five times in the past, maybe five days. And once again, dealing with sand, so I'm having to get something like this discarded piece of metal to brace things up a bit, put under the jack. That piece of metal was too skinny so I had to find something a bit better, little piece of plywood discarded. Took a bit of doing, couldn't quite get the jack up as high as I needed it, but I thought to dig From underneath the tire, some of the sand so I can get the spare on there. Having dozens of these flies buzzing around my eyes and face wasn't exactly helping my concentration either. How a little piece of wooden stick could jump up and go through the sidewall while I'm only doing... A very slow walking speed. It almost defies the laws of physics. Kirill at Cocklebiddy, who had some vehicle problems down on the beach himself, strongly suggested I take this air compressor with me, as did his girlfriend, and they're both German. Germans rock, because it already has come in handy. I only had about 17 pounds of air pressure in that spare tire, so luckily. I have this with me, thank you Kirill. Unlike the other one I have this one clips on to the battery of the car and you can run the car and get the power and the pump going. They told me they didn't need this air compressor anymore because they have a newer better one and this one's a little slow but hey that's all right it works. The air compressor that Kirill gave me has already earned its keep. It's already being used here on this latest flat. This is Norseman, the first real town after the Nullarbor and all that. The first real town since Ceduna. I motored around Norseman. I found a place where I could take a coin-operated hot shower, but the weather was plenty warm, so I took a free cold shower. Norseman, population about 570, whose aboriginal name for the area is Jimberlana, is a historic outback mining town, and it marks the western starting point of the air highway across the Nullarbor Plain and is the last major town before the South Australian border. It was founded during the gold rush of 1894 and became Western Australia's second richest gold field. Today, it's one of the country's longest continuously running gold projects. You might think, judging by the name, that the town was named after a Scandinavian. But it was named after a horse, Hardy Norseman, who scraped his hoof against the dirt. An unearthed gold. Camels played a vital historical role in the region by hauling freight to and from the goldfield's town during its early settlement. Camel trains navigated harsh outback terrain, and Norseman area roads were built wide to accommodate the large turning radius of camel transport trains, which often traveled in linked teams of up to 70 animals. Lake Cowan, any water you think you see there is just a mirage or the light. Lake Cowan is unique. 100 kilometers long and 40 kilometers wide. It's one of the biggest lakes in Western Australia and is in the top 10 for size in the country. This is Lake Cowan. It's a massive dry lake bed. A bit of a salt flat going on out here. It's saltier than the ocean. It was formed during the Pleistocene. and supports a niche of flora and fauna such as salt-tolerant plants and brine shrimp and is home to several bird species. I left Norseman and I'm heading to Kalgoorlie to get this entire thing resolved. I didn't realize it at the time, but this eucalypt forest I'm going through is the largest intact temperate woodland in the world. Road hazards! Wandering stock crossing the highway. Yeah, you! There's a dinosaur in Kambalda. I have a serious problem. Not just with tires, but made it to Tirepower in Kalgoorlie, but now the wheel feels like it's really messed up. Something is going on. More bad news. First off, this is not the place where the Germans got the tire. I think it's at Bridgestone. But there's some problem with the differential now. It got super hot. It looks like there's some problems, and I probably shouldn't even drive the car anymore. Now what am I going to do? It was just one thing after another. It seemed like most of the trip had been that way. I went to Bridgestone, where the tires were purchased. I thought there might be some kind of warranty on the tires that were just purchased here. And a rather gruff, stocky woman said unsympathetically that there's no warranty on the tires. Now there was the added worry that something else was wrong. And there would be. Just not what I thought it was. I was going to be stuck for a lengthy period in what some considered at one time the most dangerous town in Australia, a city where bikie gangs once burned down pubs just for fun and women went missing and were never seen again. I would be stuck, not just due to vehicle problems that needed to be addressed, but also major problems with the vehicle's owner. Make sure you watch the upcoming video to see what happens.