Day 127 – Escape From Perth

I intentionally skipped yesterday’s blog (Day 126) as it would have just been me whinging about us waiting all day for the car, then finding out that it won’t be ready until tomorrow… We were certain that we were going to leave, too. We washed the sheets and towels, packed our bags, and said our goodbyes… and was laughed at again when we were still there when the boys returned from work at 5PM… At least it meant we had the chance to have an awesome roast dinner.

We said goodbye to AJ and Matt again, as we have done almost every day for the last week. I was serious that today would be the day, they just laughed.

I started the day by calling the mechanic early, but they were still investigating the oil leaks and didn’t have a time for me, but were confident that today would be the day (though, we’d heard that more than once before…). Recently I have been feeling nervous when I call them, scared to hear some more bad (expensive) news.

Called again just after lunch chasing a status update and was told that the car had just come back from the test drive, and we could come and pick it up! I was nervous, we’d become settled here in Perth. It felt like we’d already finished our holiday, had to believe that we were about to head off again for at least another two months.

I’d anticipated the bill, so it wasn’t that much of a shock when it ended up being just over $4,000. There ended up being a few other components that required replacing, including the glow plugs ($450) and a few other hoses/pipes/sensors/switches that all added to the total materials bill. Fortunately, they capped the labour cost at 12 hours, which he’d quoted the second time around. I had a look at the old head, just to see how bad the damage actually was… They weren’t exaggerating that there were significant cracks in the head. I thought it was going to be difficult to see. It was only cylinder 4 that didn’t have any obvious signs of cracking.

I got to drive home following Deli-chan, which was a little bit of a treat, as I really haven’t seen much of her on the road. I hadn’t noticed at the mechanic, but they’d actually washed our car! I think it was the second time since I bought it nearly 12 months ago… We returned back to Bayswater and packed the van. Much easier this time as we only had a few bags (what we could carry on the coach).

It was just before 4PM when we finally rolled out of town. Several kilometres of roadwork traffic before we were up in the hills to the east of Perth. Light was fading, but I wanted to get as far from Perth as possible. We drove until 7:30PM stopping just past a small town, Corrigin, on the way to Wave Rock. It felt weird driving again, but I’m sure it’ll only be a day or two until we’re right back into the swing of things.