Well it is finally here, the next adventure in the caravan, and the first time the Waldron’s get to try out their new van 🙂
The plan was simple…
Vans were packed, straight after work we would hitch up and head to Taggerty around 5pm. It is only and hour and half away, so we would be there and setup around 7pm.
Fi had to work until 6pm, so she would head up afterwards in her car… what could go wrong….
Well…
First of all, I got a distress call from Mark around 4pm. Where Mark stores his Van is a little challenging to drive in and out of, so he invested in a ratchet jockey wheel to drag the van out and around a couple of meters to allow him to hitch it to the car. Problem was, as the van hit the lip of the concrete, it got stuck and wouldn’t move.
No problem, I raced around and after a bit of curseing and swearing, we used the original jockey wheel to drag the van around enough to hitch up to Mark’s new Prado. Too easy eh?
Well that was when we realized problem number 2. The brake controller in the Prado indicated that the brakes where shorted!! So I left Mark to check his wireing and headed home to load up the kids.
About 5:15pm with no word from Mark I said a “see ya up there” to Fi and drove around to Mark’s. He still hadn’t solved the problem, so we got the test light put and started tracing the wires. About 30 mins later, Mark cracked it and said stuff it, he will just tow with out electric brakes.
That was about the time we realized that the problem was the electric brakes were stuck on!!! We were not going anywhere!
Luckily, Kate’s car was also able to tow, so we quickly switched cars, and rang Fi (who was due to finish work) to join us and go in the same car. All good, and only an hour and half behind schedule.
We stopped at KFC for a quick feed and finally we were on the road 🙂
Now long time readers will remember that I had a little car trouble as we were heading across the Nullabour a few years back. Car’s all good in first gear, then zero power as we hit second.
It was just as we were coming up of Healsville into the Black Spur that it happened…. No power!!! Was a very slow crawl through Spur at 40km per hour, but what could we do? Normally coming through the spur I am getting frustrated at slow drivers, but this time I had to keep pulling over to allow the 20 or 30 cars behind me past!! How embarrassing!!!
Any how, we finally arrived about 8:30ish and set our vans up in the dark. Put the exhausted kids to bed just after 9 and settled down for a few long over due Bourbons.
The park is pretty much as we remember it, and is more or less empty, so the kids can go where they want. As I write (after a great B & E breakfast on the BBQ), the girls are on the playground and jumping pillow while the boys collect wood for tonight’s fire and explore the river… how long until one of hem falls in?
Doesn’t look like we will get out 4WD’ing given my car is in poor condition, and Mark’s car in stuck in Vermont, but I’m sure we will have a good relaxing weekend anyway.
As long as nothing else goes wrong!!!
Pic’s of the camp will follow soon….
