We almost didn't make it back!

Well, I’m going to tell you about the last day at the Red Centre.
As I’ve said before, we went to the Olgas (it has another name, but it’s very strange and I can’t write it) on our last day.
As a result we kind of got tight on time. We had to go back to Alice Springs that night, sleep there, and take the flight back to Melbourne the next morning (at 9:00 am), so not too much slack to get stranded anywhere. At the time is seemed extremely idiot not to visit the Olgas. We were already there, and God only knows when are we coming back to this place, right?
So at 18:00 we were still in Uluru – notice that everything in Australia is measured in thousands of Kilometers, and not in hundreds or tenths as it is in Europe – filling up the tank of our vehicle/accommodation.
At the gas station I asked the guy if it was ok for us to reach Alice Springs still that day, because there aren’t that many gas stations along the way from Uluru to Alice, and these people have the nasty habit of going to sleep at around 21:30 every day. The guy said “sure! In this place in the middle of the way you have a big station that is always open.
My mind was set to rest.
We got on our way, and about 85km after Uluru we came to this gas station that had free camping grounds for people like us, so we decided to stop. Have a nice dinner and a well deserved shower.
With all this we spent one hour and a half, but now our stomach were full and we were felling cleaner. It was 21:30 and the gas station the other guy had mentioned was still over 100km away, so we got on the road again (not filling the tank by the way).
At the same time a huge thunder storm started. Lots of rain, lots of lightning all around us on the road.
We kept going and finally we arrived at mid way to the said gas station that would provide us with enough fuel to reach Alice Springs. As you can guess, it was closed. It was 22:30, and the f****** place was closed until 7:00am…
Now, we had maybe a bit over 1/4 of a tank, and 200 more km to go to Alice Springs. The alternatives were to stay at this place and sleep until 7:00, fill the thing up and try to make it to Alice on time for our flight, try to make it to Alice anyway (it seemed at the time that the fuel could be just enough) or try to reach the next gas station (we’ve determined that this one was about 108km away), hope it was open the next morning at 7:00 and then we could be on our way.
We decided for the second option. So we went on our way.
As it happens on many 20 year old vehicles, the last half of the tank tends to go faster than the first half, and immediately became evident that reaching Alice was out of the question, and that probably it would be kind of hard to reach the next gas station…
Remember that it is pouring outside, and that there was a huge lightning storm. Roads tend to fill up with water around here in these circumstances, so if we stopped on the side of the road there was a 50/50 chance that we’d be in a floodway…
I reduced the speed to approximately 50kph and so it took us nearly 2 hours, but we’ve reached the next station, running on fumes I’m sure.
Lucky enough the place had a free camping site as well, and it opened at 7:00am. We managed to get some gas and reach Alice Springs at around 8:20.
We had only time to drop off the van at the rental place and call a cab.
This was as close as I ever got to losing a plane!