An early drive towards our destination of Albany found us in the midst of a large storm cell. As the cloud cover fell and the rain thickened we slowed to a safe crawl and looked for somewhere to pull over.

Just a few kilometres further on was the tiny town of Wellstead. We pulled up outside their local community buildings to wait out the worst of it.

The cloud was low and dense and frequent slabs of deafening thunder fell around us. It must have been quite a lightning show but filtered by the pendulous clouds we instead watched as a strobe of sheets and snow and ghosts jumped in and out of the gloom.

There was nothing much to do but sit and enjoy it. Except for Juno who was pretty much convinced that the end of the world was nigh. We couldn’t even interest him in his favourite chicken treat.

On the plus side, the heavy needling rain gave Ripley a well-deserved wash. She has been wearing an increasing wardrobe of red. A patina of the fine sticky dust that gets in just about everywhere despite our best efforts.

After about half an hour the body of the storm had passed. A quick recon to see if there might be a coffee shop that was open (nope) and we rolled back onto the highway.