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| Finally... the road is ours |
You bet we were excited leaving Perth to find adventures and
new places for us to explore. We had a vague plan to catch the rear end of the wild
flower season in the wheat belt, North of Perth. All was going great. I got
over my nerves towing such a big monster van out of a busy place like Perth,
music was playing loud and a last minute
balancing bar straightened the caravan beautifully for a smooth ride.
We stopped at the town of Bindoon, which proudly displays the
large sausage that we thought looked more like a giant colon or a “turd on a
truck” Never the less 15 metres down the
road, our first coffee of the life style change, was still tasting great.
Driving towards New Norcia we came across our first set of
hills and we noticed our wonderful newly
purchased used Ford Ranger was struggling to get up the hills carting a large
load. In fact, she was slowing down to a disappointing 60kms on the upward
slopes. In a zone, clearly meant for driving one hundred, we were blocking a
string of 10 tail-gating cars. It seemed like they were trying to commit hara-kiri
on the back end of our van or wiping themselves and everyone else out with
perilous overtaking moves. This contributed to the uncomfortable paranoid, self-conscious
state slow-going caravanners feel. I will never, ever complain again (or worse)
when sitting behind a wobbly van on the road.
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| Our wobbly van |
Chuffing up one of these hills, all of a sudden the engine kicked out of whatever it was I was
telling it to do. Several lights started flashing on the dashboard like a glow-worm party on a dark night. One second we are surging forward, the next we
dropped lamely to wet rag status. Our car had developed a severe case of turrets
syndrome.
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| Our car close to the edge |
This is when the need arises to have that discussion about
staying calm and enjoying every moment of the trip. Even if our car has turned
into ‘Kevin Bloody Wilson’.
We check the manual and adding all glow-worms together we
come to the conclusion that we have to stop. At a convulsing 30 kilometres per
hour we cuss into New Norcia and pull up at the roadhouse. We realised we have
to stay overnight and find ourselves lucky that the roadhouse provides camp
spots on the other side of the highway only three hundred metres away. Timidly,
and as not to offend our car any further, we gently encourage her to stumble
onto the oval and temporarily laid her to rest.
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| The New Norcia monastery |
The roadside assistance came only two hours later and the
jovial mechanic fixed the apparently common problem for this make of car within
15 minutes, by chucking a bit of tape around some melted wires underneath the driver’s
seat. “Good to go around Australia mate” he pronounced, to our disbelieving
ears.
We stayed four more days in New Norcia which turned out to
be a great place to visit. We shared a fire with two sets of hilarious grey
nomads that owned the same vehicle as us. Sometime later we spotted them laying
underneath their own cars checking for melted wires.
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| The view from the old bakery |
The bakery sold us with some beautiful fruit bread and more
discussion took place on how not to blow the budget next time. New Norcia was
also the place when this stingy Dutchman asked the lady behind the tourist counter for
a semi grey nomad discount. Bewildered, but surprisingly she gave us $5 off the
price of entree for the town tour. The monasteries and church were interesting
places to visit. Breaking down in New Norcia must have been divine intervention.
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| The church at New Norcia |
Grey Bits
It may pay to check if the hand break of the caravan you are
towing is in the off position. I will deny profusely that I
may have possibly caused those cables to melt over the exhaust by leaving the
break lever locked in.
Learn to drive your car properly before your journey. We
found out five months into our trip that we had something called a “sports”
mode. This appears to be the automatic setting for when you are towing. Our brilliant
car also has something called a “six speed” shift. This great, little,
important feature allows you to gear down before a hill manually but without a
clutch. A nifty invention that prevents your car from overheating when towing a
caravan that may or may not have the breaks on.
I was told by a
reliable source that ladies like to drive clutch-less not clueless or crotch
less.
Get yourselves a membership with some cool roadside assistance, especially
when travelling beyond the black stump. We were lucky that New Norcia is near
civilization.
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| A Camino shell. Maybe we should have walked |
Be prepared to spend a long time waiting for assistance. We
could have become grey nomads by the time help arrived.
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