Day 6 Barossa to Port Augusta

Had a great day’s rallying today.  The roads used here in South Australia are mainly shire roads and are wide and smooth.  Stage lengths today were 27, 9, 71 and 23km.  

Turbine Row stage

The 9.1km section was called Turbine Row because it’s the access road to an AGL wind farm and there are dozens of huge wind turbines along the ridge.
AGL provided lunch, drinks and other goodies as a promotion at the nearby village of Mount Bryan.
The stage itself climbed a ridge line then ran along the ridge line with the wind turbines, before  descending to the village of Mount Bryan.  
It featured  steep ascents and descents, blind crests and many off camber corners, so everyone was being very cautious.  
I didn’t actually talk to anyone who really loved it.

Not so the other stages - they were a blast.  Nothing much to worry, about just “go for it” type roads. The 77km stage saw the Callinan Escort  fastest, with Joost’s Porsch second,  Geoff Olholm third and us fourth.

The Escort of Keith and Mary Anne Callinan at the start
of the Turbine Row stage. (Photos by Alan Vaughan).

Geoff Olholm is stretching his lead on us, while Ondrej Coufal (the Czech in the 240Z) lost time to us today.  Joost is nearly always quickest and may claw back the time he has lost when he was bogged two days ago.  The Callinans are occasionally taking fastest time but they are a long way back.  They had more trouble today on the first stage and we actually passed them in the stage.

Today’s biggest problem was that one of our service vehicles, the Transit van, broke down at the start of the day. The engine stopped and wouldn’t restart.  They had it towed to a Ford dealer who diagnosed its problem as terminal.  They then set about hiring another van which had to come from Adelaide.  Hopefully Jamie and Logan will get here tonight.

Mike Cotter/David Stevens had trouble with a broken gearbox last night.  They were able to get another gearbox from Gary Kirk (one of Geoff Olholms’s service crew ) who lives nearby.  Tonight, that gearbox is leaking oil from the front oil seal and the service boys will likely have a late night again.

We get to stay two nights in Port Augusta.  Woo-hoo

We do three stages in the Flinders Ranges tomorrow.  So that should be good.