Melbourne to Adelaide

If you ask an Australian how long it takes to get from Melbourne to Adelaide, they'll tell you it's an 8 hour drive. They're wrong. It's taken us a week.

Of course, we're taking it nice and slow. We came down along the Great Ocean Road, which was absolutely spectacular, and hugged the coast pretty much the whole way. Each night we'd drive as much as we felt like and then find a nice spot and camp out. After checking the oil and water, we crossed the Victoria/South Australia border on the morning of our third day and we were all amazed by how suddenly and drastically the country changed.

In Victoria everything is relatively lush and green, but the moment you cross that line, it changes to the brown of heatblasted earth and dry grass. There are trees here and there, but nothing like what I was used to. From what I understand, the Nullarbor Desert (which we'll be driving across) is more barren, but it's hard to imagine how that's possible.

After we crossed the border we drove into town and got some lunch. Then we piled back in the van, three across in the front seat, and barreled on through the heat of the day.

Now, there's one thing about driving in Oz that takes some getting used to. In America, when you look at a map and see Washington DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, New Haven, Hartford, and Boston, you assume that there's all kinds of towns in between. Not so in Australia. When the map says there's 200 km between towns, there is NOTHING in between them except for scorched earth and deadly animals.

So you can imagine our state of mind when our van started filling with smoke 100 km after Mt. Gambier and 60 km outside of Kingston.

We pulled over, and the entire underbelly of Michael and Laetitia's Mitsubishi 300L Express (Gigi, for short) was seething with intimidating blue smoke. I said, "That looks like oil smoke, guys." And they both said, "Uh, oh, what does that mean?"

When I'm the one who knows the most about cars you know you're in trouble. The day suddenly seemed much hotter.

We lifted up the front seats to look at the engine and wouldn't you know it? Someone, and I'm not pointing any fingers, forgot to tighten the engine cap when he added the oil a few hours earlier. It looked like oil had spilled out over the entire car. Not to mention it was about 50C (100F) outside and we were running on a bone-dry engine.

We added all the oil we had left and flagged down a car because none of us had a clue what to do. This Australian guy took a look at it and said we'd probably be fine until Kingston, but we should definitely get some more oil when we pulled through. So we piled back into the car and took the next 60km nice and slow.

When we pulled into the BP station in Kingston we shut the car off and went to talk to the mechanic. He came round and asked us to start the car, and when we started it up it started making all kinds of weird automotive farting noises while it shot water up out of the radiator. This was a new development, and we stood around watching in awe and fear.

He told us it was probably the head gasket, and Michael, Laetitia and I looked at each other and silently wondered if any of us knew what a head gasket was. The mechanic told us they couldn't know unless they took it apart, but if it was the head gasket then it could cost up to $500. Worst of all, he told us we weren't going ANYWHERE until it was fixed.

There we were stuck in Kingston, home of 1600 people, a giant lobster, and The Sundial of Human Involvement. We did the only logical thing - we gave the mechanic the keys and headed straight for the pub.

In all honesty though, it could have been much worse. We could have blown this so-called "head gasket" in the middle of the Nullarbor and then we would have been well and truly fucked.

Of course, in the end it all wound up working out amazingly well. While we sat drunkenly wondering if we'd ever get to see Perth with our own eyes, we got to talking with a 23-year old Aussie guy named Cameron whose family owned a farm just outside of Kingston. He offered to take us out the next day and show us his farm and tell us about what his normal day was like.

It was incredible. He owns a 4500 acre farm that streches out as far as you can see with 700 head of cattle and around 10,000 sheep on it. We drove his tractor, and then hopped in the back of his truck and chased kangaroos across the paddocks at 40 km/hour. Then he showed us his lamb-castrating machine.

For me, it was an amazing thing to see. The life of a farmer is so inconceivably far away from anything I know that I spent the entire afternoon in a state of constant awe. It was great, and because of Cameron I can honestly say I'm happy our car broke down in Kingston.

I'm running out of time in this internet cafe, but suffice it to say we got our van back after three days and $350 dollars. It seems to be running fine, and we made it the next 300 k to Adelaide with no problems. We'll probably spend another day here and then take off tomorrow morning. If I had to guess I'd say we'll probably be in the desert by Sunday and hopefully in Perth by Wednesday or Thursday.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 26, 2005 at 09:36 PM in Australia | Permalink