Someone was asking me how we were going because they hadn't heard much from us!
I'll do a quick recap here:
In September we started our trek down
from Queensland to Victoria for a few appointments. Sickness hit us
at Millmerran so we stopped for a few days at the showgrounds ($20 a
night) so we could have power to run a heater. We made a break for
Goondiwindi where we stayed at the showgrounds ($25 a night) and the
next morning we had two new tyres fitted at TyrePower (highly
recommend this crowd, who came into work on a Saturday morning
because when we made the appointment they'd forgotten it was going to
be Saturday!)
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| Millmerran Showgrounds, QLD |
Next stop was Narrabri (18/night at
showgrounds) where we hunkered down while the driver recovered from
the flu! As we drove through Moree where we always stop at the
awesome playground, no one wanted to stop.
A few days later as we were travelling
between Gunnedah and Dunedoo the bus started to splutter and was
really struggling on the hills. We pushed on to the next “town”
of Coolah. It was dark so we stopped the night opposite the servo.
Next morning Mike and some of the girls walked into town to find
someone who could fix our problem which we'd identified as a crack in
the injector line. The local hay contractor and also mechanic came
out, spent several hours including taking the injector line away to
braise, and put it all back together and only charged us $120 and was
worried he'd charged us too much! So without further ado we headed
off. We met him on the outskirts of town and he told us to come
round to his shop and he'd clean up the engine from the diesel leak.
Certainly a top bloke!
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| Our engine getting a clean! |
Bus was still running a bit rough but
had much more power!
Had a good trip from there, stopped at
Ariah Park ($10/night) and met another bus family. Always good to meet others
living the same or similar lifestyle to you.
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| Ariah Park, QLD. Camping with friends |
Somewhere along the way the alternator
started rattling! We made it to Narrandera and called into a place
where we hoped they'd be able to fix it at least temporarily as it
was starting to sound like it was going to self destruct! They
called in the mobile machining guy who took the fan and pully off and
machined it down. It sounded much better!
A couple of days later we made it to
Victoria! We stayed with some friends and helped them move. It made
us all realise how fortunate we were living in a bus and when we want
to move it's no drama, just put stuff away and get rolling!
After we left Benalla (a great town and
really worth exploring) we headed south, after driving about an hour
or so the alternator light came on! As it was getting dark we pulled
in to the next truck stop! As we were driving a day or two later,
Jireh said, “The bus sounds like a train!” When we stopped at
camp we looked underneath only to find that we were missing two
alternator belts! We now wished we done some heavy vehicle mechanic
work in our past life! We charged our starter batteries overnight as
we had to make the train the next morning as it was now obvious we
were not going to drive the bus to the appointments in Melbourne!
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| Charging starter batteries roadside! |
After making some enquires we found out
that it was safe to drive the bus without the alternator as long as
we didn't do any night driving! This is a challenge for us as we
love to drive at night!
We finally made it to Geelong where we
parked in a friends driveway while we decided what we were going to
do. A guy came a took out the alternator and after taking it apart
gave us the prognosis; it was beyond stuffed! On a positive note:
the bearing was near new!
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Our royally stuffed alternator.
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We spent the next few days ringing
round and driving round (in a friends car) to see if we could locate
a new or reconditioned alternator. The only one we found was on ebay
– for $1000 – and all the way from England!
We decided we needed to pick up some
work to enable us to pay for it and get our home on wheels back on
the road.
The jobs we were looking for were
temporary, part time jobs. We ended up with a (more than) full time
job managing a 380 cow dairy farm! We told the boss we could give
him three months work to see him though a tough time.
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| Feeding the Jersey calves |
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| Jasmine feeding hay to the cows. |
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| Jessica milking in the rotary cowshed. |
The older girls have gained some
valuable work experience and we have be able to get a new (or
reconditioned) alternator, solar panels, a fridge and a satellite
vehicle!
Our time here is coming to an end. We
are all more than ready to have our life back and not be ruled by the
dreaded alarm clock!
We plan of spending the first few weeks after we finish here installing solar, and fitting the new alternator! The job has been so busy that we've had no time to work on the bus so we've just bought the things we need and will fit them on the bus when we have time.
On the 1
st of February we
had our 7
th anniversary of living on the road! There have
been good times and there have been the not so good times and there
have been the downright awful times! Living on the road doesn't mean
that life is always good, life happens where ever you live.
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| Seven years on the road! |
