On the first day of February we arrived in Melbourne bright and early after spending the night on the Spirit returning from Tasmania. WOW, Tasmania was an experience and a half and already we can’t wait for our next visit.

So after three nights, from what was originally only intended to be one, we finally left Melbourne.

The beauty of travelling anywhere and everywhere around Australia with no timeframe or expectations is that you can decide where you are going and for how long at the drop of a hat.

It was a difficult decision deciding where to go after Melbourne. The High Country was so close and inviting, whilst The Great Ocean Road heading to South Australia offered some beach side camping and places we had only dreamt of ever experiencing.  At the time, the High Country was blaze prone while South Australia would be desert filled with extreme heat! What a time to be exploring these areas.

After much umming and aaahing we decided on the High Country.

Pineapple Flat, a one and a half hour drive from the town  of Mansfield, was going to be our home for a few nights.

Craigs Hut is situated about 45 minute drive on a rough dirt track south east of Pineapple flats on a mountain ridge with a spectacular view that makes you feel minuscule in this universe!

 

Craigs Hut is famous as it was built for and showcased in the movie “Man from Snowy River”. I’ve never seen the movie before but Matt filled me in on the details and I plan to watch it soon. Get your hands on it if you can, says Matt.

As most of our family and close friends know, Matt and I have dreaded the day something was to go wrong with the big Troll that we cant fix or don’t understand. As we left Craigs Hut we noticed the dash lights not working. Nothing. Not a flicker, no glow plug indication, no fuel gage reading, no speedo, nothing!

“Okay” we both think. No big deal, it’s probably just a fuse and … WE HAVE SPARES! We have spares for nearly every occurrence; we just don’t know what to do with most of them!! In this instance though, we undoubtedly knew where the fuses were and how to change them. We made our way down the hill to a flat clearing and proceeding to test and replace every fuse that seemed reasonable to change. NO LUCK! It isn’t a fuse!

Again, after thinking about it for a few moments we both agreed that it was no big deal as we could still drive the car –what’s the issue right?! It’s not immobilized! We made our way back to camp and assessed the situation. We decided to leave base camp and headed towards the nearest main road to get phone reception and make a call to Roadside Assist the very next day, Friday. Friday morning wasn’t as much of an early start as planned. The Bundy’s and Chardonney the night before might have had something to do with that. We made our way to the main road by about 10am and called Roadside Assist. Not a drama in the world – they will have someone out to check the vehicle out within the hour.

Holy shit didn’t we feel like idiots!!! Old mate from RAVC (contracted by Nissan Roadside Assist) arrived within 30 minutes, took a 2 minute look at the fuses and assessed that the “Meter” fuse had blown! Typically, that was one of the fuses we hadn’t checked. But that wasn’t the end of it!!

We filled up at the nearby Petrol station and within 50 meters of leaving the station, we noticed the dash lights disappeared again. Bugger, old mate had just left and we were on our own again. He did happen to mention that if it happened again, it might be an electrical wiring issue after all and that we should call Nissan or an Auto-leckie for help.

Matt made the call to Nissan Roadside Assist. I got the drift of the conversation from listening in on Matt’s end within the car.

After a few moments of Matt explaining the situation, Sheila from Nissan explained that “technically” the car is deemed immobilized, as it cannot safely be driven to the nearest town without a speedo.

 

      From my end, all I heard was “tow-truck”. Oh shit!

Of course, Matt had to explain the situation entirely. We have an off road camper some 20km’s and 1 hour drive into the hills from our current location that we needed to collect…AND…..we have a boat on the roof of our car. “A boat…what do you mean a boat?” said Sheila from Nissan.

I was giggling in the background mainly from anxiety rather than thinking the matter is funny.

……………

So in a mad rush we headed back to Pineapple flats, packed the camper in record time and made our way to the Petrol station before the tow truck arrived.

Matt and I jump in the front of the truck after the same “old mate” that came out as RACV arrived as the truck driver. We looked at each other as we were driving down the road and I knew Matt was thinking the same as me “what on earth is going on and how did we get to be in this situation”.  The Patrol was bouncing around on the back of the tow truck when about 15km from the town of Mansfield I hear Matt say to ‘Old Mate’ “the strap over the left tyre has come undone. Maybe we should pull over and strap it down again”. Old mate, without a moments pause says “NA, we’re almost there”. I grabbed Matt’s leg and squeezed hard as to say, “is he for real???” It must have been his beer-o-clock.

Thank heavens we made it to the Mansfield Nissan dealership with the Patrol still on the truck, and thanks to Roadside Assist we used an old Rodeo rental car to drag the camper to the Arlzberg Hotel  where we spent  a lovely 2 nights with an actual room, with a Pool, Tennis Court and some Austar Channels. We really couldn’t complain seeing as we have been on the road living out of the camper for nearly 2 months.

The problem ended up being the reverse light cable shorting out causing the fuse to continually blow!

My dear friend Andrea Williams would understand the next paragraph of my reasoning. I often wonder if everything in life doesn’t happen for a reason. As we were packing up at pineapple flat, the thought crossed our mind that perhaps this had happened for a reason and we have to look on the bright side. Arriving in Mansfield we learned that the entire state had been declared a total fire ban for the weekend and the region was on high alert (we had no phone, internet or radio reception at Pineapple Flat). The weather conditions were expected to be worse than those that existed during the exact same weekend five years ago (07.02.2009) on Black Saturday!!