After driving for a while, I have to make a decision either continue on and hope for a petrol station on the freeway seeing as we hadn’t seen one since leaving Holbrook or leave the freeway and go through a town to get petrol. Watching the road signs and it seems that I can exit at Wangaratta and get back on the freeway by driving through Wangaratta. We make our next stop at Wangaratta mainly for petrol; we go to a petrol station which was different in that it also had a Laundromat inside the shop. Back on the road and we finally get back to the freeway and discover that just past the on ramp there is a petrol station on the freeway just near Glenrowan. I said to mick we should have stop here instead and gone to a famous pub, he says why is it famous? Me shocked at his reply said well its where Ned Kelly made his last stand… so any way we continue on and get a bit further up the freeway just near Seymour and make a quick pit stop (Maccas strikes again), back on the road and I get the shits with the GPS I borrowed from Skye’s mum it continually told me to turn around so instead of throwing it out the window I take it off the cradle and give it to mick.
We finally make it to outer Melbourne and off the Hume freeway which kind of sucked because the ring roads were extremely confusing. Oh and FYI don’t speed once you cross the border, speed cameras are everywhere and they point in both directions from the one point meaning if your speeding towards it you get booked and if you speed off after it you get booked. So we make our way to Essendon to the closest Bank of Queensland, mick isn’t the best at reading a map and was getting frustrated especially cause it was on his phone and he couldn’t work out the direction we came from. So I pull over and get him set, we then spend close to half hour travelling down through Brunswick trying to make our way over to Essendon, finally I get the shits and turn off the main road and cut across to the main road into Essendon. We finally find the BOQ and withdraw the money to pay for the van. Back on the road and following some signs we head towards Tullamarine and end up driving back towards the Hume freeway… oops… well at least we were on the right ring road just in the wrong direction, plus in our defence all the major roads are sign posted as m80 or another number but our map shows them as being a name.
So any way we manage to turn around and head back in the right direction and we finally get to Myrniong. We inspect the van and are happy with it, with one slight problem the trailer plug is 7 pin round and the pin on my car is 7pin flat… off to find an auto parts shop because we also have to get to a tyre shop seeing as the tyres don’t look like they will make the trip back home. We drive into Bacchus marsh 10 – 15 minutes back in the direction we had just come and after going to the local auto electrician and local servo we find an auto parts shop and get a trailer adaptor. Mick decides to stay in Bacchus marsh while I go back to get the van… the van is finally connected and back to Bacchus marsh to get a new set of tyres. It’s now 5pm and the tyres are fitted and we are back on the freeway and then on the ring road in peak hour traffic and Melbourne drivers are just as bad as Sydney drivers in peak hour. I finally get on the Hume freeway and we make a petrol and coffee stop at Seymour. We then head back over the border and continue on to Holbrook, for our next petrol stop… there isn’t much happening seeing as its nearing on 10pm and we can only drive at about 95kph otherwise the car chews the petrol like nothing else.
So we stop for a toilet break at Gundagai and then we got just near Yass when I finally stopped for a power nap. Half hour later and we are back on the road and I am full of red bull and V and coffee… had quite a few of them, we make our last petrol stop at Marulan and from there its straight back home… we get to Narellan road and mick wakes up again and was like it’s going to feel like forever to get home… I was like at least we are here and not still in victoria…I pull up on the nature strip and walk straight inside and hit the sack… I was so tired at work on the Friday, but at least I had got our Caraban home. Almost 24 hours straight on the road, crazy… spent way too much time stuffing around in Melb i.e. Essendon for the bank and driving round Bacchus Marsh and back n forth to Myrniong…
Cheers till next time,
Benj.
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