Day 19 Sunday 15th February
Well today turned out to be rather undesirable. We pulled over on the side of the road for a quick toilet break. On moving off I drove over a rock (didn’t see it) which scarped a little underneath. It didn’t seem to be an issue so I drove on. 50m down the road the oil light came on indicating some problem. I stopped, checked the oil and water, looked underneath and all seemed ok, and the car sounded ok. There was a little town, Flintstone, not more than 400m away so I headed for it to gain a phone or a mechanic. After driving down the main street (the only street) the car had stopped and wouldn’t start again. So I used the public phone up the street a ways to call the NRMA. The nearest agent was 1 ½ hours away. I called at 8.20 and he arrived a bit after 10. The initial diagnosis wasn’t good and we were towed down to Oatlands to Ollie’s Mechanical repairs, by this time it was about 1pm and we bid Paul farewell and waited for David (his brother in law) to arrive. David arrived, opened up his workshop, and began his diagnosis. A couple of hours hence we had the news. The rock I had driven over had dinted the sump. In so doing it had jammed the oil pick-ups so no oil was circulating in the motor. This caused the drive shaft to cease, shear a pin of the timing chain, and the reason the motor did not want to go. Anyway to cut a long story and a holiday short it will take approximately 2 weeks and $4000 to fix. We decided to leave it in the capable hands of David and organise to pick it up in a few weeks time. David’s wife gave us a lift into Oatlands town and we bid the Robson’s goodbye. We organised the next available bus to an airport city which was Launceston and strolled the town while we waited for the connection. While we were looking about we began talking to a man at one of the tourist attractions telling our story when another gentleman and his wife who was from Port Macquarie heard and offered us a lift to Hobart as they were about to leave. We accepted their kind offer and they dropped us of at the Hobart airport. The next available flight that we could find was with Virgin on Tuesday morning at 0655, to arrive back in Coffs at 1550. With the help of a security guard at the airport we found a motel that was close to the airport, less than 2km, and we boarded the airport shuttle to our home for the next two nights. We arrived at the motel around 7pm and were glad for a hot shower and a comfy room.