Too hot to handle…

Driving along the Coolgardie-Esperance Highway my attention was caught by a glimpse of shiny white something through the trees. I knew that shiny white something would be a salt lake - the region is strewn with them -  and so with a teeny bit of glee I turned off the road onto the dirt track heading towards the salt lake.

It was a sunny afternoon, I was ahead of my schedule and had no particular place to be anytime soon so going off track looked pretty good to me.

Up went my drone, again and again as I explored from the air, capturing the golden hues and cracked lake surfaces beneath my drone’s lens.

Feeling pretty happy with my new lake finds, I continued driving along the track and began noticing that where vegetation had been sparse there were now patches of long white dried grasses, becoming thicker as I drove. Glancing at the temperature gauge on my dash I saw it was reading 40°C (104F).

Shit! I thought, I need to stop! The car was hot, the grass was dry, the day was hot, all the right ingredients for a potential bushfire, and I didn’t want to be the cause of that.

Just a little ahead was a bare patch of dirt, handily for me under a shady tree. I pulled up and turned the car off and opened all the doors and windows.

I wandered back along the way I’d come, checking that all was as it should be; returning to the Jeep I settled in and made myself comfortable.

I had downloaded a couple of books on my phone before my trip, I had plenty of food and drink and wasn’t going to risk continuing on until the car had cooled and the day had hopefully cooled a little too. I’d been driving for most of the day and it was mid afternoon so I was likely well overdue to just sit and chill out for a bit.

Not having grown up in this kind of environment, I had no idea whether I was overthinking it or not but I knew I didn’t want to be responsible for something destructive and all consuming.

So I sat…. and waited.

The next night was when I got a little too close to a bushfire, around 100km down the road. It was then that I thought while I probably erred on the side of caution, it was probably a wise move.

#roadtrips #jeeplife #toohot