One last treat for me was to visit Chambers Pillar, a very large chunk of rock about 150k south of Alice Springs.
It is recommended to see it just before sun set, and just after sunrise.
Unfortunately at sun set, the place was swarming with sticky little flies. The black blob in the sun set photo is one of them. Sunrise was much more pleasant before the flies congregate.
The day was all downhill after that.
While driving back from Chambers Pillar,
I suddenly lost all electrical power to the Hilux, and there was a burning smell from the engine. I whipped open the bonnet, and saw that metal bracket that was supposed to hold the battery in place, had lost one support, and was shorting directly to the positive battery terminal.
The battery terminal was so hot, that it just wiggled in the battery case.
The battery was totally stuffed.
I did have a spare battery with me, but as luck would have it, the terminals were transposed, so to fit it I had to juggle the cables considerably. One good thing was of the three people who passed, all stopped to offer assistance.
One chap, who had actually been at the same camp the previous night, actually got stuck into it, and said if it wouldn't go, he would drive the 100k still to go to Alice, and bring back a tandem trailer to float my ute back to Alice.
Anyway luckily the lash up worked, and I drove very slowly the 100 k of road corrugations to a battery shop in Alice. The have fitted a new battery, and in hindsight my old battery was over 4 years old.
The battery man did say, that I was very lucky not to have lost the whole car to fire. It seems it is not uncommon for vehicles to be total write offs with my type of battery short.
I do still have some problems though. The fuel gauge no longer works properly, and I don't trust the odometer any more.
Hopefully I can nurse it home to Melbourne.
