As we drove through Melbourne again our van failed …
It would suddenly loose every bit of power and would only work in first and second gear (on the highway!). We tried to make some more kilometers by switching between LPG and Petrol mode, which helped a little bit but as we continued our journey we had to use the emergency lane more and more frequently to let the faster cars pass by.
Breakdown, checking what’s gone wrong. |
Suddenly there was a loud bang and a few moments later the car started drifting a bit. As i stopped i saw the reason right away: A flat on the highway! I switched to our spare wheel as fast as possible, because I did neither have a breakdown triangle nor a reflective west and did not know the consequences if catched by the police. The job was done fast and right at the next highway exit we parked at a gazstation where we boiled a cup of coffe and took a break.
Reataching the air filter |
Soon after, the big campervan of my parents returned to us, they had not noticed our struggles and continued for another 20km. With our sparewheel we drove back a couple of kilometers to a KMart Brake and Tyre Service. Luckily they told us the flat wheel is repairable … but not today … (As usually in such a situation is was friday evening …). We had more luck at a Beaurepair Shop closeby and 30$ later the flat was fixed. The first half of the disaster was solved!
Regarding our powerless van problem we had to wait til the morning. Using Google’s help we found one single garage in the whole area, which would be open saturdays. We woke up early to be the very first customers and had luck after the boss saw Finja smiling. He changed his position and started to look after our car. He cleaned the air filter which was not broken, but pretty dirty and after an unsuccessfull testdrive he changed all four ignition plugs. We paid him a fair price and our car was ready to hit the road once again.
The big and the little one |
The next few days we did a lot of driving. We took the scenic costal route from Melbourne to Sydney, visited Philipps Island and had many stops at beautiful beaches. We saw many warning signs, not to go swimming, due to big waves and dirty water and indeed, the sea was not as beautiful and clear as it used to be in the beginning of our trip. A lot of brown dirt, big and uneasy waves made the sea impressive to watch, but calmed down our motivation to go for a swim.
Halfway in between Melbourne and Sydney (around Sale) we met some egrets |
Finjas grandpa on a photo hunt |
After 5 days of driving we had another 1100km on the odometer and finally arrived in the Blue Mountains. Here we’ll spend a couple of days before my parents trip will come to an end in Sydney. On Wednesday they will return the campervan, check in in one of the CBD’s hotels and after another two seightseeing days in the city they are ready to return back home to germany.