On our way to Coober Pedy, the plan was to stop here at the Glendambo Roadhouse for lunch…

…and top up “fuel” for the car.

Glendambo seems to consist of three main buildings: on the left, an old run down, decommissioned service station. In the middle, a roadhouse/pub, with access to motel rooms and camp ground behind. On the right, a newer service station with simple hot food options.

I heard the service station staff saying that they had run out of diesel fuel, awaiting a delivery in an hour or two. A truckie reported to say he had thousands of litres parked outside, but he couldn’t give it up, since it was bound for Coober Pedy. If there’s no fuel, there’s no plan B. You just have to wait and hope.

We chatted to one of the guys towing the rally car with skulls, appropriately named “Numb Skulls”. They’re headed from home in Katherine, NT south for the Variety Bash near Adelaide, then back home. That’s a lot of towing.

See our stop here a week later, on our return trip:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/178rweHEce/

Charging:

The Chargefox app and PlugShare app showed a 20 or 7kW RAA/Chargefox EV charger here. We found it in front of an old service station, that was obviously no longer operational. This wasn’t a good sign. When I tried to use the charger, it showed only one green light and no other signs of life. The screen was blank. I looked at my ChargeFox app. No cellular Internet. I thought of calling ChargeFox, but the phone showed “SOS”, so no voice calls. I later realised that there’s a Telstra phone booth nearby, so I could have used that.

I looked for a plan B. Any power point will do, right? I found 15A (3.6kW) powered sites around the back of the roadhouse, so I figured I could ask to use them, though at half the speed of the dedicated already slow EV charger. I walked into reception and first asked “Do you happen to know anything about the EV charger next door?” Chris said he had keys to it. I asked him to never give up those keys, for the sake of future EV travellers. Fifteen minutes later, he wandered over and reset the charger.

Still nothing on the screen. I tapped the blank screen, and then it came to life. We plugged in, and I tapped the card. First couple of attempts showed an error, but third time it worked. I was very glad that I had previously entered the ID of my Evie RFID card into the ChargeFox app, so I could tap to pay, since connecting through the app now was not possible.

Unfortunately, the delay meant that we started charging an hour after we arrived. I had planned to charge while we had lunch. We really need a fast charger here.

Now we had dead time to fill. Although our phones (which use the Telstra/Belong network) had no service, somehow the car (which I think also uses Telstra) had Internet. So, we watched YouTube and an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond, while we topped up. When the car said we had enough to reach Coober Pedy with 8% battery, we disconnected and drove onward.