Living in the city there is much to like about LPG. It turns a fuel hungry beast like my GQ Patrol into a reasonably economical car. But once you hit the road things change especially in the north of WA.

In the city petrol is approximately 2.5 times the price of LPG whereas up here is is a much smaller difference. Think 99c/l for LPG in Port Hedland and $1.50 for petrol.

And that’s assuming you can get gas! We are currently on the road from Hedland to Broome and had a planned stop at Sandfire to refill on LPG being right on empty… only to discover the one and only LPG pump in Sandfire had died.

It is 250km to Roebuck and we get about 266km to a tank of petrol. With Jerry cans $55.00 just to buy we thought we would take a gamble and drive carefully. Hopefully with Mrs Backyard driving rather than my lead foot, we will get to Roebuck without any embarrassing stops.

It’s hard to champion LPG when this sort of stuff happens. Until it becomes more prevalent as a fuel I imagine we will always be running the gauntlet on these longer stretches… or we could just get the whole Jerry can thing happening a little more efficiently…

Normally we ring ahead to check on availability but with the crappy mobile service in the NW we were out of range before you could fart and that option evaporated.

Let’s hope we make it…

(Update – ok Mrs BYM managed to get to Roebuck with over a quarter of a tank left. What a legend!)