15^TH LEG

Tom telephoned in a quick update.

They left early from Tailem Bend and as the day got hotter the engine got less powerfull. The heat was searing and dreadfull, comparible with the heat at Aski, probably due to the fact that both Tom and Lois are physically less able to deal with extremes.

I have certainly taken my time to get to this page haven’t I? All the fun, adventures and trauma that we have had, paled in the light of achievement and it has been difficult to discipline myself to complete the saga. However now to the end.

I left you all at Tailem Bend where we booked into a motel (paid top dollar or so we thought at the time) and had a good nights rest. Early Thursday morning we set off for Adelaide, a mere ??? kilometres down the road (or so it seemed looking at the map. Now I knew that Adelaide was surrounded by hills, but I didn’t really appreciate the size of said hills. Poor Matilda! After all we had asked her to do and now we were asking her to climb these enormous great hills. She struggled. We dropped in speed from about 35 kilometres per hour to something closer to 20 (and that was dependent upon including the occasional down hill runs). But hill after hill she did climb them and we grew slowly ever closer to the beautiful city of Adelaide. As we topped the final hill there was only the tunnel (how I hate tunnels) and then down into the city. DOWN being the operative word. Tom has always been fond of brake jokes, but Matilda proved that she did have some brakes, somewhere and Tom is an excellent driver because that hill is steep. I mean really steep! And it goes on forever. I was a wreck when we finally reached the bottom and the city traffic. Tom pulled into a café and we relaxed over a cup of coffee before driving on to our friends Bruce and Nell Williams home. We were so happy to have reached our final interim stop before Perth.

We had a wonderful time with Nell and Bruce and they had even invited some old friends around for drinks etc on Friday evening, which was extremely enjoyable. Tom fiddled with the car (always dangerous I have found) while I relaxed, washed clothing and generally tried to prepare for the final leg of the trip. One little job that I did do was to divide up the remaining distance by our remaining time and try to factor in appropriate available motels (on the Nullabor they are often a couple of hundred kilometres apart) and set some realistic daily distance goals. When I did this I came up with a plan, which allowed for either two final days (not counting our arrival day) of 200 odd kilometres or a complete days rest in Kalgoorlie. Either way it seemed pretty attractive at the time. But the best laid plans of mice and men (or for that matter Lois) do not fit in with those of a feisty old lady of 80, as you will soon see.

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