Once again we have returned from another few days at Little Duna. As the tittle says, every trip is an adventure, and this time we had an unexpected adventure on the way home no less… but more of that soon.
So, Tuesday afternoon we loaded the car to the brim and once again pointed North up the Hume towards Violet Town. The car was absolutely packed, with no trailer or caravan on the back this time, there was little space to move in the car. I even threw the water bladder on the roof of the car so we could refill the tanks in the van.
Plan for this trip was to spend Wednesday finishing the water tank, adding gutter guard to the shed roof to keep the leaves out and repair the battery in the spare van before heading home with our caravan on the back Thursday. After 3 months at the block, the van was in desperate need of a really good clean!!
We arrived about 7:30pm, and once I had filled the van’s water tanks, I headed off to the shed to get the quad bike and refuel the generator. It was already hot even at this time of night, still 32 degrees with the gentle breeze offering little more relief than a hairdryer!
As I opened the shed I noticed that a new family had moved in… the redbacks! That’s right, about 15 redback spiders had found a new dark place to hang out, and had spread themselves around the bottom of the shed about 1-2 metres apart. Not small ones either!! Each was about the size of a 50 cent piece!
All were females with the signature red stripe along their back, and of those that don’t know they are one of the few spiders in Australia you don’t want to be bitten by… used a good part of a can of fly spray removing them!
By the time I was done, it was almost dark, and it was Zac that first noticed an amazing full moon rising in the east. We tried to capture a good photo of it as it rose, but the photos just don’t do it justice. Fi tried several different setting on her camera, but it was really hard to get a good clear shot. Probably needed a trip-pod and telescopic lens to get a clean photo.
Most of these look more like the sun than the moon!! We did work out by mistake that you can get some cool effects if you move the camera on a long exposure setting…
Almost looks like lightning!!
Anyway, was a hot night in the van only getting down to about 20 degrees, and we slept with the windows open to try to get the breeze moving through.
On Wednesday, I woke early to try to get a few jobs done before the heat of the day. Forecast was for 38 degrees and showers, although we weren’t lucky enough to see any actual rain! Before breakfast, I had managed to blow the leaves out of the back gutter and install the gutter guard to keep any further leaves blowing in. Apart from blocking the rainfall, a gutter full of leaves is not something you want if there is a bushfire nearby.
After breakfast, I installed a new battery into the spare van (Brock ’05), then moved the van back about 3 to 4 metres so that we could at least get some morning sun on the solar panel. While I thought this might be a good time to get the van on some better ground, we realised that it was less about the fall of the ground and more about the twist in the van chassis. While it is nice, straight and level from the inside, it still looks terrible from the outside! I wish I had thought to get a photo. Oh well.
Working in the van was hot work even before I moved it into the sun, and I was a sweaty mess by the time I had finished. I think it would have been cooler if I was working in a sauna!! Man was it hot. I had a quick shower before Zac and I headed into town to get the pipe needed to finish hooking up the water tank.
While in town, we stopped at the cafe so I could get a decent coffee and we snuck in a few of the fried chicken wings we love… shh don’t tell anyone!!
So my afternoon was spent up and down the ladder running a pipe from the front gutter to the water tank and installing gutter guard along the front. It was very hot work and being in direct sunlight, I had to time when the sun went behind a cloud so it wasn’t so hot. Everytime the sun came out I would duck back down the ladder in into the shed until the next cloud came along. All afternoon on Facebook I was getting messages about the wild wet weather in Melbourne and wishing we could get some relief from the stinking 38 degree heat up North!! As I mentioned before even though we had rain forecast we didn’t even see a drop that day 🙁
I did get all my jobs done despite the heat, although I must have drank 15 litres of Powerade, soft drink, water and anything else I could get my hands on to try to stay hydrated!!
Poor Ruby was hot too, so I had to keep taking trips to the dam so she could swim. Dam had dropped about 30cm from the week before after the extreme conditions last weekend.
Kushi just hid under the caravan all day. At one stage feeling sorry for him I filled a powerade bottle and poured it all over him. I think he enjoyed being wet, although as dogs do he immediately ran away and rolled in the dirt… hopeless dog!!
While I was working, Fi finally gave into the nagging kids and agreed to take them into town for a swim.
When they returned, they had obviously been to the cafe as well, and I was thankful to spend a little while eating chips and fried chicken in the cool air-conditioned van.
So Thursday, something amazing happened. We managed to get on the road by 10am!!! That is just unheard of!! I woke about 7:30am to thunder in the distance, so got up and packed up everything outside just in case it rained. Nothing to worry about though as the storm going through Euroa must have missed us by about 1/2 a Kilometre!! No rain for us 🙁
Once everything was packed, I sprayed the last of the red back spiders in the shed and used a surface spray around the walls to make sure they don’t come back. I then locked up and had a shower all done by about 9am.
The family was starting to stir, but I couldn’t motivate them to get out of bed until I mentioned that if we moved, we might make it to breakfast menu at McDonalds!! “Hash Browns and Hotcakes” they cried as they lept from their beds!!
So it was that we left Little Duna at 10am and headed to Euroa for Breakfast.
All good and we were making good time down the freeway, in fact we had just come over the Great Dividing Range and I was thinking to myself how good it would be to be home by lunchtime and that I could spend the afternoon cleaning out the van when it happened…
I was overtaking a truck when suddenly I lost all power?? What the? That’s when I realised that the engine wasn’t running???
I put the hazards on and with some rolling difficulty managed to merge back over the left as impatient people just ignored my hazards and overtook me on the inside lane. Almost hit about 3 cars before it was clear enough to merge! I pulled up on the side of the road just in front of the 1km to Keilor turn off, put the car in park and re-started the car… “How strange” I thought and went to take off again when the car suddenly died. Tried the same again and once again the car died. We were stranded in a very thin emergency lane with cars and trucks whizzing by at 110kph.
So with no other choice, I called for Roadside assist. Was about 45 minutes before he appeared in front of us, and the car was starting to get hot in the 32 degree heat with all the kids and the dogs. I was able to get some small relief by running the car and air conditioner for about 15 to 20 seconds before the engine would conk out again. Roadside assist had a look and diagnosed it as a faulty alternator. Battery wasn’t getting enough juice to keep the engine running. We had no choice but to be towed.
Now, we realised the problem with the level of cover we have on my fleet car. I was told they would tow the car and the caravan (thank god), but we would have to catch and pay for a taxi ourselves!!! We were about 100kms away from home, so that was going to be expensive!!
Luckily, Fi was able to ring Mike and he picked up her car from home and drove out to pick us up. While we were waiting, I was told that I would have to go with the car to sort it out at the other end, leaving Fi, the kids and the dogs on the side of the road until Mike could get to her. Looking at the map, I noticed it was about a 3km walk into Wandong, so I suggested that Fi and the kids walk it out so at least they weren’t stuck on the freeway.
Reluctantly, Fi and the kids grabbed what they needed, put the dogs on their leads and started to walk. Was just as they disappeared around the corner about 100m in front that the tow truck arrived. We had almost finished hooking up the car and caravan when the phone rang… it was Fi. “There is a bridge we have to cross and it is pretty narrow… don’t think we can make it” she said. “Well come on back and you will have to sit” I told her.
They arrived just as we had finished with the car and caravan, and luckily the tow truck driver and his boss felt sorry for them, so Fi and the girls jumped in the back of the boss’s car, I loaded Ruby and Kushi into my car on the back of the tow truck and Zac and I jumped into the truck as they drove us 10km down the road to the Wallen BP.
Luckily Mike arrived just as I was about to take off in the tow truck, so Fi and the kids didn’t have to wait long. They all piled into the Carnival while I jumped in the tow truck for the trip back to Nissan Glen Waverley.
Was an interesting trip to say the least, you see the tow truck driver like to talk, and by liked to talk I mean constantly!!! I think the whole trip, the most I managed to get out was “yea” or “uh-ha” or “mmm”. By the time we arrived at Nissan I felt like I had known this bloke his whole life!!! I got it all, from his broken marriage, to the chooks he had at home, to his recent health scare that ended up being constapation to working as a tow truck driver and the fatalities on the road he had attended.
Was the nicest bloke in the world, but man could he talk!!!!
Anyway, we made it in the end and dropped the car and caravan at Nissan. Luckily they were able to look at it straight away and came to the same conclusion, it was the alternator and I had to leave the car overnight so they could order the part.
As for the caravan, well I didn’t want to leave it in the parking lot at Nissan overnight, so I sent Fi to Super Cheap Auto to buy a hitch coupling lock, then we left it for a few hours until Mark finished work and was able to drive out and rescue it.
What a day!! So much for leaving early, it was 4:30pm by the time I got home, and well after 7pm by the time we got the van!!!
Oh well, at least I was able to finish all my jobs at Little Duna and we did manage to get the caravan home eventually. As I finish writing this, I have just picked up my car from Nissan, so fingers crossed we are all good from here. I think I might look at some additional roadside assistance before the next outing though… at least one that will get us home!!
So now I am just watching the radar and hoping it will rain up north. Could really use some water in the tank given it is all hooked up properly now. There is only about a foot of water in the bottom, so while it should keep the tank down in a wind, it is barley covering the tap!! Not much useable water just yet but… fingers crossed we get some rain this weekend.
Until the next one 😀
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