Sunday, 5 February 2017

SUNDAY 5TH - ON THE ROAD AGAIN




The blog is back, this time for our Tasmanian adventure.

I was expecting to be telling you that we arrived at South West Rocks this afternoon and, after setting up camp, went for a lovely surf but alas, that was not to be.

About 20 klms from the turnoff to South West Rocks, I heard a peculiar noise so I stopped to investigate. The left wheel of the caravan had sheared off all but two of its wheel studs and I strongly suspect that the last two were about to go. We were very lucky that we didn't lose the wheel while travelling down the highway at 110k. Being a prudent person, I got the van serviced before the trip and it seems that Carafix left us with untightened wheel nuts. I will have that conversation with them tomorrow.

So, after all these years of paying for RACQ ultra, we finally got to use it.

When the tow truck man was attempting to winch the van on to his truck, he managed to rip out one of the plumbing lines causing the floor of the van and everything stored in cupboards on the floor to be flooded. Hence the photo. What is not hanging off the van is on the nearby clothes line.

So. We are not at South West Rocks. We are (almost) comfortably settled at the Sundowner Caravan Park in Kempsey with no running water in the van and no ability to tow it anywhere. Fortunately, we have made contact with a caravan repair man who confidently expects that he can fix the wheel studs and the plumbing tomorrow. The tow truck man is paying for the plumbing but we have a residual concern in that, did the water flooding the floor of the van do any long term damage to the floor, cupboards etc? Everything now looks superficially dry but what will the future hold. We might need to trade it in on a new one earlier than intended.

Hopefully, we will be at South West Rocks tomorrow night. What a great start to our adventure!

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