I remember receiving an email from one of my friends a couple of months ago saying something along the lines of "your blog is making me jealous, you seem to be having such a good time, SURELY something bad must have happened to you over all the months you've been away?!". Well, after thinking hard, I really couldn't think of anything even remotely bad....infact, until a couple of weeks ago, the worst thing that had happened to me was that I played the lottery once and didn't win!! However, it turns out I had been saving up all my bad luck for one week......
After visiting the amazing Bald Rock National Park, we headed for a place called Stanthorpe. It’s nothing special but it was late and we wanted to find a place to stay before it got dark. Unfortunately, half way to Stanthorpe the road went from tar-mac to dirt track, which my 1988 2-wheel-drive station-wagon doesn't tend to handle very well. Nevertheless, after a very bumpy few kilometres, we hit a good sealed road and thought we'd made it without any problems.....
We arrived in Stanthorpe at about 4:30pm, just before it got dark, and were amazed to find that all the hostels were closed (apparently this was because the fruit picking season for the area was over and that’s the only reason anyone goes to Stanthorpe). Not letting it bother us too much we started the 100km drive to Warwick, the next town towards the coast. Between us we had three lonely planet books and a rough guide to Australia, but still couldn't find a hostel open or with beds for the night, so decided to drive another 200km to the coast and stay at one of the hostels in Brisbane/Surfers/Coolangatta. About half way there I stopped to get petrol. As soon as the car door was opened I could hear that the engine didn't sound right. There was a rattling sound coming from the engine so we checked the car over but couldn't find the problem. Brisbane was the closest city so I carefully drove that way. By the time we got there it was 11pm and we didn't have a hope in hell of finding a place to stay so spent a cramped night sleeping in the car.
We woke up early and started the car. It didn't seem to be making any strange noises, yay! Thinking that it had magically fixed itself we drove off to find a hostel to stay in. We got about 30 meters down the road before the engine warmed up and started making the noise again, boo. Annoyingly, it was a Saturday so virtually all of the mechanics were closed. When we finally found one, he told me he thought it was the bearings in the alternator and to come back on Monday when he'd have a proper look and fit a new one. This was good news cos I thought the noise was coming from inside the engine (and that would have been game over for the car!). After chilling in Brisbane for the weekend we were well up for getting it sorted and continuing our travels so got up early and left the car with the mechanic. After a few hours he confirmed it was the alternator and said he'd have a new one fitted in an hour. We went back, paid him, and drove off...we only got about 20 meters before the noise started again... We turned the car around and showed the guy, who said maybe this alternator was broken and come back tomorrow and he'd fit another one free of charge... By now I was starting to lose faith in this bloke’s ability to fix cars so we took it to another garage for a second opinion. After about 1 minute he said he thought it was the cam chain and it was only a matter of time before it went....i.e. bye bye car! His advice was not to bother trying to get it fixed as it would be much more than the car was worth.....great!
Unfortunately for me, the car was a big chunk of the money I had left for my travels. The guy had said that it could break tomorrow; it could break next year, so I decided to try and sell it. The first thing I did the next day was go to the rubbish mechanic. After a long "discussion", he agreed to give me the $55 labour he'd charged for replacing the alternator. The rest of the morning was spent making signs to put up in all the hostels around Brisbane. We then spent the afternoon driving around sticking these signs up all over the place. After putting up the last sign in the last hostel we went back to the car. We got in and I turned the key. The car started, made a funny noise, exploded slightly and then went quiet. AAAAAAAAAAAHHH!! Numerous attempts to restart the car proved fruitless....I then proceeded to exit the car, mainly to kick it, when the heavens opened and the torrential rain started.
So, there we were, miles away from the hostel we were staying at, with everything we owned in a car that wouldn't move, in the pouring rain....and that’s when the calls started flooding through from people who wanted to buy the car! After the third "hi, your car is just what we're looking for...." type call I was just about ready to slit my wrists. Instead we called a taxi with the aim of moving all the stuff to the hostel and dumping the car on the side of the road. Just to annoy me further, the 10 minute taxi took over an hour to arrive, by which time I was in the latter stages of hypothermia.... Anyway, we got back and unloaded the stuff and called it a night.
The next day I decided I'd had enough of the car saga and decided to sell it to the wreckers, so I went to meet the guy at the car and pick up the last of the stuff that was still there. My luck hadn't changed as I found that, in the 15 hours I'd left the car - most of which were night, I'd got a parking ticket for breaking down on a single yellow line.... So anyway, the guy came and gave me $150 for the car by cheque, which he said I could cash and towed the car. It turned out that I couldn't cash the cheque so I spent a tense 3 days hoping the cheque wouldn't bounce, which luckily it didn't.
So, that was the car sorted. Unfortunately I was now stuck in Brisbane, with more stuff than 3 of me could carry and no money! Annoyingly we had to move rooms a couple of times over the next few days as people had booked into the one we were staying in. This involved about 15 trips back and forth each time. Over the next few days I slowly got rid of all the stuff I had accumulated while having the car, for as much money as possible. The only pain in the ass was my surfboard, which I could sell in a minute if I was anywhere by the sea....but no, I was in Brisbane. In the end my friends, who were driving up the coast in their own car, managed to sell it for me in Noosa, very cheaply :(
So that was my very bad week! It's quite funny thinking about it now, but at the time I was definitely not laughting. Anyhow! The upshot of it all is that I can't really afford to go to Canada (actually it’s so expensive to go there at the moment that I wouldn't have been able to go anyway!). So last week I had two choices:
Work in Brisbane til it gets hot in New Zealand (3 months) and do NZ-Thailand-home
OR
do Thailand-home right away.
I chose the second option for two reasons. Firstly, I've been in Aus a long time and am longing to visit a new country NOW. Secondly (and more importantly), I never paid the $250 speeding fine I picked up driving down from Airlie beach....according to the cop I asked, this will make it difficult to get back into the country for the next 3 years....oops! It’s very expensive to fly out of NZ without stopping in Sydney, so that’s that!
So there we go! That was a week ago and I've now booked a flight to London, with a stopover in Thailand for 1+ months (I can change the date of my Bangkok-London flight to whenever I like). I am flying to Thailand in 2 days from writing this and I really can't wait! Will be excellent to see something completely different!
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