13^TH LEG

Another Step Towards Home

We left Canberra on a clear day at about 630am. We were to be met and escorted out of the town by a group of Vintage car enthusiasts at a little town called Hall which is just on the perimeter of Canberra. At the last moment someone had word that the highway was closed because of a truck accident and so the arrangements were changed in a hurry. As it happened the closure would not have affected us but we had erred on the side of caution, not a bad thing to do in many instances.

And so we set off on what was to prove a very long day. The car was only averaging thirty Kilometers per hour and we had some 350kms or nearly 12hours travel time in front of us. Slowly, ever so slowly, we traveled towards Albury. The traffic was reasonably heavy but the roads were on the whole quite good. We both really enjoyed seeing ‘the dog sits on the tucker box five miles from Gundagi’. Tom took the opportunity at this point to have a doze at this point whilst I made a bit of lunch. It’s very difficult to have a bit of a rest when you obviously belong to Matilda and it was not long before a small group gathered around to chat about her and her exploits.

We did eventually mange to get on the road again after making some new acquaintances that promised to keep in touch via the Internet. If Laurie and Co read this note we are really hoping that we do indeed keep in touch. This has been one of our greatest pleasures on this trip, the meeting of new, potential friends.

After leaving Gundagi were kept heading towards Albury. We drove through Tarcutta. and about 5kms of road works with new wet tar and soft stones being rained up over the car. Both the car and ourselves were covered in spots of black tar and stones and I was pulling stones out of my hair for ages afterwards.

The evening approached and we neared Albury. There was one hair-raising moment just out of Albury on a single laned bridge when a truck decided to ignore the oncoming traffic and pass us regardless. Given the fact that it took just a few seconds to cross the bridge we both feel that more than bad manners he put lives at risk for nothing.

We finally arrived at Annette and Leigh Mason’s house and were warmly welcomed into their home.

It was a lovely evening of just relaxing and chatting and set us up well for the next day. We thought that the trip from Albury to Melbourne would be an easy one but nothing could be further from the truth.

We decided to set off at 8am, but I hadn’t allowed ‘Tom Time’ and so it was 8:30 when we drove out. We had, had a phone call from a French gentleman named Lucien at Chiltern and so we stopped about an hour and a half out of Albury. He had sold his Citroen 5cv to Ian Turner in Wangaratta. So leaving Lucien standing by the road with the RAC man (he was so excited that we were coming that he forgot to put petrol in his car) we set off for Wangarratta to meet Ian. Tom was thrilled to see another 5cv and especially one that was so original. We spent about one and a half hours chatting with Ian and then finally we set off again.

It was on this stretch that we passed a speed check point. We were all excited and Tom ‘gunned’ the motor to get up speed as we approached the checkpoint. It didn’t register! We were going too slow for the machine to recognise that we were traveling on the highway. To say that we were upset didn’t exactly cover our reaction. We could not drive for laughing. It was the funniest thing ever. We were averaging about 37kms/hr at this stage so obviously that is below the bottom of their range.

After a long afternoon we arrived at the Caltex service station about 25kms from Melbourne at 7:15pm. It then took us until 10:10 to get to our friends Both and Ilona Booth’s home in Noble Park. I think we were at the end of our tether by then and I’m sure that Bob and Ilona had almost given up on us.

We have spent a lovely two days here in Melbourne catching up with old friends and meeting new ones and fixing cars trying to give the poor old girl a bit more umph!.

Tomorrow we will be off again on our way west at last. See you all again soon!

Lois and Tom

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