Day 73 Tuesday 4th Sept HV8

Leanne and the girls got up early and packed up the van as Jason was expecting to have the car fixed and ready to go first thing.  He finally arrived around lunchtime. In the meantime the girls and Leanne had their own drama as the door handle to the van broke and the key alone would not work!! They managed to lock themselves out of the van a couple of times in between using a rope to pull the lever up,  but found by hoisting one of the little girls  through one of the high canvas windows up the top they could get in eventually !!!  Luckily while Jason was still in Kununurra he bought a replacement. Once Jason arrived back we packed up the few remaining things and left at 2pm for Drysdale station . 30kms into our 237km  trip  on a very hard, rocky and corrugated dirt road Jason stopped to check how the car was handling it to find a leak in one of the rear tyres. He set about changing it while Leanne checked out the van. The van did not cope well on this part of the road, as the fridge door had come open despite being wedged shut and a milk carton had leaked all over the floor. As well as this a cupboard door had totally come off its hinges from the sheer shaking caused by the corrugations.!!  Once the van was ready to go, While Jason was changing the wheel he started to tighten the nut on the wheel stud. When he had completed all six then went to tighten them all, (one of the nuts would not move. He then tried to loosen and restart it and the wheel stud snapped off!!! We decided go back to HV8 as the next station was about 100kms and it did not offer tyre repairs. Once back at HV8 the mechanics phoned  Kununurra to see what parts they had in stock, luckily the Toyota dealer had some wheel nuts in stock, so it was decided the mechanics would pick them up tomorrow when they were in town. There was not much else to do but go back to our van and set up for another night back here!