We asked for an adventure, but weren't prepared for this!

I’m not sure if we just had really bad luck or if we really needed to be taught a lesson….but, it’s been quite an adventure the last couple of days. It all started when we were leaving Melbourne on Tuesday morning to drive up to Canberra (about an 8 hour drive). Soon after we got outside of Melbourne, our lovely new wagon started smoking out of the exhaust pipe. This was not just a small amount of exhaust smoke, but huge clouds of constant smoke. Great we thought, this never happened when we were test driving and checking out the car. What did we forget to check? Our first stop was about 45 minutes out of town to drop off some motorcycle parts to a friend of the Milner’s. We talked to Simon about the car problem and he said to make sure to keep the oil full since he thought the valve seals were hardened up and it would take a mechanic a day’s work to fix. We decided to keep going anyways and cross our fingers that we would make it in one piece. We kept driving and the smoke actually got better and stopped for a while. We checked the oil level at the next gas station and it was completely empty and we had filled it before we left! So we bought about $60 worth of oil to make sure we kept it full along the way since the car was just leaking out oil and burning it up, hence all the smoke. So we kept going since we were out in the middle of nowhere and about 30 minutes later, got pulled over by the police. He was nice but basically said we had two options. We could drive it to the next town and get the problem fixed or leave the car where we were and have the it towed somewhere else. We decided to drive about 20 kms to the next town, pulling into a Toyota service station completely smoking. The guys there said the car was pretty much shot and the engine was done for and possibly had a blown piston. The only thing that could be done was to replace the entire engine, which he directed us to go down to the salvage/junkyard to see if they could install a used engine.

So...we thought well, we'll first call the guy we bought the car from and see if there was anything he could do. Zach called him and he told him to call him back in about 45 minutes. We had no idea if he would be willing to work with us. So, we set out to find a hotel for the night (since we're still about 5 hours from Canberra). Zach and I walked about a mile to find a pay phone and called Joe (the car dealer) and the pay phone kept cutting out and we couldn't really talk to him. Go figure - our luck! We walked back to the hotel and decided to just pay the outrageous long distance fee from the room and we got ahold of Joe and just had him call us back to avoid the long distance. And here is where the day finally got better - Joe offered to buy back the car for close to the same price! We couldn't believe it. We thought we would have to sell it to the junkyard for $200 and just take the loss. But, he said he would send a driver up the next day and tow it back down to Melbourne so he could fix it and probably re-sell it some other dumb traveler who doesn't know better! :) So, we were extremely relieved that we weren’t out all our money and very glad to find a bus station near the small town we were in. We caught a bus up to Canberra and got in just a day late. We are staying at a wonderful family’s house outside of the city – Vic and Rosie and they have 2 grown sons. They are very sweet and are taking care of us after a long 2 days of being stranded without a car!

We will take the bus up to Sydney on Saturday and hopefully it will be smooth sailing!