Murphy’s Law in action

One of the advantages of living in a house in Melbourne for a bit was the chance to get things fixed when we didn’t need to be using the things. Of course, the disadvantage of that was that we didn’t know what was going to break next…

The first thing to go (and luckily it did it just before we left Melbourne) was the air conditioning in the car. I did a bit of Youtubing and found some possible reasons for it, so we went through those, finally settling on a busted blower fan. Just in case I was wrong (there’s a first time for everything), we had a zoom call with the family mechanic (brother in the UK) to confirm it was the fan, and what to do about it. The next day being a Sunday added to the complexity of it, so off Jim went to the one place that was open and might have it in stock. They didn’t, but they did suggest the world’s largest wrecker’s yard which happened to be just down the road. Despite it’s size, there were limited numbers of utes sitting in their yard with blower fans intact, but luckily we just needed one, and one is what they had. First drama fixed, and it actually wasn’t too hard or expensive for once.

So we happily departed Melbourne for the six hour drive due east to Mallacoota, which is almost back at the NSW/Vic border. Years ago, when we did a six-week trip down the NSW coast, Mallacoota was the furthest spot we got to (and even then only for lunch), so we were keen to get back to that point to start working our way back westwards again. Everything is crazy-busy being summer and school holidays so the only place I could find a spot was the Wallagaraugh River Caravan Park which turned out to be a pearler of a spot with hardly anyone in it. Much better than the campgrounds of Mallacoota, where there were thousands of people packed in like sardines and many of the sites were on quite a slope too. I actually don’t think I’ve seen a bigger campground than the main one in Mallacoota. Anyway, at our spot, we were enjoying a prime riverfront site where we couldn’t see a single other camper. We watched the fish jumping in the water, chatted to the two resident llamas, and to the cockatoo (who surprisingly, actually chatted back!). There were also around 30 kangaroos that visited each night to munch on the grass.

What we did discover when we pulled up however, was that one of the hinges on the back of the trailer (which is also holding up the kitchen) was hanging on by a thread. Lose the back door of the trailer, and all our stuff would come tumbling out…Of course it would have been much more convenient if that had happened BEFORE we got to Melbourne and didn’t need the trailer for three weeks rather than AFTER when we need it all the time, but there you go.

So the next day it was off to Mallacoota to see what we could do about it. The guy at the information centre was very helpful, pointing out the couple of options in town where we might get some welding done, and if that failed, he mentioned he had a welder himself that we might be able to borrow. Luckily the guy in town that works on boats was happy to look at our trailer, and conveniently he was free on Saturday morning, which was the day we were moving on, so no need to find alternative accommodation while it was away somewhere getting fixed. For what is quite a dire problem, that one was actually quite easy to sort out, assuming that it all came together as promised.

Back at camp, our dual 80 litre fridge/freezer decided it had had enough and no longer wanted to keep our food cold. Of course, Murphy’s Law in action again, it was fully stocked with frozen meat and food because we’d just left a big city… That made finding a solution fairly time-critical. Our first step is always to repair rather than replace, but with the only auto-electrician in town fully booked for two weeks and even then skeptical about whether he’d be able to get any parts, going straight for the new option was the only way to go. Had it happened a few days before when we were in Melbourne, there would have been camping fridges for sale on every corner, but here, in the middle of nowhere, the nearest option was a five-hour round trip to BCF in Bairnsdale to get a new one. So that’s what we did. Good thing we had that air con working for all these extra hours in the car, and we’re also way ahead in the latest audio book (working our way through the Harry Potter series).

One bonus was that the new fridge came in a massive box which the kids turned into a car and played in for hours – how old do kids have to be when they lose the joy of playing with boxes? Clearly older than eight and nine…

Given the remote location of our current camp, I had had high hopes of just sitting around doing nothing for a few days, but so far, we’d spent all our time driving around trying to get things fixed. Plus, it was the first place with no internet or phone at all, so to find out how to get things fixed we first had to drive somewhere to do our googling.

Anyway, one by one we were fixing all the problems. We did have to actually break something (the water pipes from the tank to the kitchen) in order for the welder to do his stuff, just an extra thing to fix down the line…The welding was supposed to be a quick job – 45 minutes tops, so while Jim was sorting that, I wandered around Mallacoota with the kids, the mobs of other people from aforementioned campgrounds, and their 1000 dogs. It was hot too, so when 45 minutes turned into over five hours we were all pretty much over it. Finally, finally, we were done though and could leave what was an expensive week of repairs behind us and move on to the next spot.

We almost didn’t get there unscathed though, hitting a hail storm halfway there. Somehow, even living in Brisbane all these years I’ve managed to never be in the car driving during a hailstorm. It’s very loud, and we really thought we were going to lose the windscreen. But Murphy’s Law has (fingers crossed) moved on to some other hapless campers and cut us a break. We arrived at our new spot at Banksia Bluff and set up in the rain, with a fair bit of thunder and lightening around, but that didn’t matter as we were just glad to be there after all the drama.

We’re here for a week, right on the beach which looks ideal for fishing. It’s a bit more crowded than we’re used to but given that it is still school holidays and we’re in a prime spot we can’t complain too much. We even had a wombat visit us on our first night alerting us to the fact that sturdy plastic food boxes are no match for some wildlife as he helped himself to a packet of pasta. It was actually pretty cool to be up close and personal with a wombat, especially after they’d proved quite elusive in Tasmania!  So long Murphy – we’re lining up for an easy week where all our stuff just works as it should…