A snippet from the Blue Arsed Fly…

Hello there Ladies and Germs, long time no hear.

This is a short story as we’re only on the road for about ten days, you see it started out like this…

The wife and I went to the caravan and camping show in Melbourne last month and we bought ourselves another caravan, our third ROMA caravan by the way. You see it’s like this me friends, over time the missus being disabled finds it hard to get around and in the old van the shower has a six inch lip that requires her to use a step to get in. Also she finds it very hard to get up off the seats without my help so we decided let’s get another van better suited to her needs. This time the van will have no lip to the shower and we will put in two swivel reclining chairs that she can manoeuvre around to get up. It will also have bars in the shower, en-suite and around the van to help her walk.

But here’s the rub boyo’s, we have to take the electric lift off the old van to put it on the new van. So being a bright intelligent (even though I barrack for Collingwood) ex-matelot I get on the phone to the mob that we bought the lift from Aussie Lifts and no they don’t have agents in any city. Now we need an authorised person to remove the lift and wiring and also to put the lift on the new van. So if we want to remove the lift we need to drive the van to Brisbane get them to remove it, store it for 5 months until we get the other van. Then we’ll drive up to Brisbane early September and get them to put it on the new van. Quick as a flash and getting a headache because I had a bright idea I says to the missus let’s take the van right now, it’ll take four days to get there a 2 hour turn around and four days home.

Now be a sly old codger I says to mother, “Look it’s only eight days why don’t you stay home and I’ll be back in a flash.” Thinking that an eight-day boy’s own would be just what the doctor ordered, but alas matey’s it was not to be as mother replies, “No dear I’ll come too.” “Bugger it” I said, under my breath of course, and as it’s only a short haul we only took the essentials and believe it or not mother doesn’t even bring the kitchen sink or one of her three sewing machines. Now we had leant the van to our DIL’s (daughter-in-law)  parents and when we got it back everything wasn’t in the places we left them and we had to go searching for everything. But we’re now on the road heading north when mother wants a pit stop and we find that they have broken the toilet vent and we now have our first catastrophe. But we soldier on and folks believe it or not that’s the only thing that went wrong this time.

That is until we hit Sydney!

Thinking that it would be better travelling up the Hume highway as apart from an eight-kilometre stretch through the suburbs of sin city it’s a divided hwy all the way up past Port Macquarie. So we travelling very nicely until we hit Sydney and at the end on the F7 freeway there’s a hold up getting off the freeway at the northern end due to road works. So for half an hour its stop start to get off, then that bitch fate took a hand and as we were just off the freeway in the middle of the peak drive home traffic, the temperature gauge goes into the red and the car loses all power. We have just enough power to do a left turn and get into a small layaway and stop the car. Steam’s coming from under the bonnet and when I open it the coolant is spraying everywhere. Now this happen last October if you remember when we were heading out of Adelaide pulling the van. I thought the problem had been fixed but I was wrong wasn’t I.

I had a five litre jerry can of water and that wasn’t enough but where we stopped there was a school or church or whatever and I was able to pinch I mean borrow some more water. It took two loads of water to fill up the reservoir and we were on the way again. But as it was peak hour go home time there was still a lot of stop start and soon enough the temperature gauge rose and again we were lucky as we stopped in a bus layaway. This time I put enough water in and decided to wait until the temp went down, I also knocked on the door of the house we were next too and again was able to borrow some water.

By this time it had began to rain heavily and as we were going north we decided to find the next caravan park and stay the night. One hundred and fifty kilometres later the other side of Newcastle we finally found a park. We could have got off the highway but I didn’t want to get lost trying to find a park as it was night-time and pouring with rain. The first park was full up and so I had to do a u-turn to get out and in the pouring rain and dark I hit a low retaining wall and the next day I found I had buckled the checker plate on the side of the van.

The BAF luck had struck again!

So we get to Brisbane making sure every time I filled up with fuel that the cooling system had water in it we did not have any trouble. So we spend an hour getting the lift taken off and we on the way south heading for home.

We had decided to stop on the Gold Coast so we could get the car looked at by a Land Rover dealership but when we got there they wouldn’t be able to look at the car for another five days so we had two choices go to a dealer back in Brisbane or go to a dealer in Coffs Harbour four hours drive away. As it was on the way home we chose CH and when I took the car to the dealer the prognosis was the radiator fan is RS and not turning at all. On the highway travelling at speed the air being forced around the radiator was enough to cool the coolant. But in the stop start of peak hour traffic with no fan we were buggered so we were stuck in Coffs while they sent for another fan and $1600 dollars later we were on the way home again.

So my friends you’ll be pleased to know that life’s little quirks and hiccups are still with the BAF. So stay tuned for when we get the new van and head for Brisbane and then travel slowly down the east coast taking two months to get home.

Bye for now!

What road trips have you done over your lifetime? Tell us in the comments below…