On To Melbourne -1/10/2013
Jan 12th, 2013 by admin
It’s less than 200 kilometers from San Remo, across the bridge from Philip Island, to Melbourne and there’s not much to see. The road is first two lane and then soon turns into 4 lane and then to motorway. We’ll be in Melbourne is just a couple of hours.
We have a hotel reservation in the Central Business District of Melbourne that probably won’t have a room ready for us this early so we dawdle about on our way up the road. We have a meeting at 5:30 with Ivan Smoljko who imported our car into Australia and we’re using him to export the car to South America.
We have a lot of questions about where we should ship to (Chile or Argentina), where we should have the car back (Sidney, that much we do know) for export, when should we be back, when with the ship leave, when will it arrive in which country. The answers to a lot of these questions will depend on cost. We’re meeting to make sure that wer’re all on the same plan before we get back to Sidney.
But first we have to get to Melbourne. We’ll drop the luggage at the hotel. Park the car. And do some sightseeing.
We stop along the way for a sausage roll lunch and then head out of town again, headed for Princes Highway. (Just how long is Princes Highway. I’ve been bumping into all the way from Brisbane. I’ll have to wiki that.)
We pass a police check point on the other side of the road but they are dealing with cars going in the opposite direction. The checks are officially document checks but when you are stopped the officer practically climbs in the car with you sniffing for alcohol or other prohibited substances (if you get my drift.) It’s a poorly disguised DUI checkpoint. But not for us.
Just another kilometer and there’s a checkpoint on our side but the police ignore us. They already have a victim. But there’s a truck stopped to make a right turn (here right turns take you across the other lane of traffic.) We stop behind him and while we’re waiting one of the officers suddenly does a double take at our California license plate. He points at the car and orders another officer to pull us over. No problem. Just soft drinks for lunch.
The officer is a woman and she comes up the car and notices that the car is lefthand drive. A look of worried confusion starts to cover her face. She very friendly. “Where are you going? How long have you been in Australia? Do you have an exemption for the car?” “A what?” “An exemption.” “What’s an exemption?” Time to act as dumb as possible. The “old-dumb-American” approach always seems to work.
We find out later from Ivan that we do, in fact, have an exemption. It’s the carnet that we have for the car that allowed us to temporarily import the car into Oz. But, at the time, we didn’t know that that was the exemption. She didn’t know that either. But we did tell her that we didn’t need one because the car was imported temporarily, we had a carnet and the car was legally registered in California. Therefore, we didn’t need one. (All true.) But she wasn’t buying that. “I have to call someone to check.” “Please pull the car out of the lane and up on the grass.” This is developing an air of permancy.
We wait and after maybe 5 minutes she returns. Apparently, the roadside brain trust had no idea what to do and the officer couldn’t get anyone on the phone who could resolve the problem for her so she did what any good police officer would do in Oz. She told us that since she didn’t want to ruin our holiday she wasn’t going to do anything. Great.
“Now, about your trip.” That lead to the usual astonishment that these two old guys in the old car we’re actually driving around the world. Without adult supervision. That usually leads to a rising sense of “I-must-help-these-old-men” syndrome. Not so much this time. She just started chuckling and shaking her head. (The other common response to hearing our story.) In the end, she wished us well and sent us on our way.
Back on the road to Melbourne with even more questions than we had before the stop. The questions will be more or less answered by Ivan but as we drive off we don’t know that and all we want is to not be stopped again. We have a feeling that we may have dodged a bullet here.
As we’re entering Melbourne, we start hitting traffic lights and after every stop, the car gives off a resunding thunk as we pull away. Not an encouraging sound. And it seems to be getting louder as we go farther into the city. John is driving and he says that he thinks that a brake is dragging or sticking. The sound seems to be coming from the right rear where I recently had the brake problem leaving Brisbane. At a stop I check the brake drums. The right side is very hot. The left one is cool. Looks like a stuck brake. If we’re going to have a rproblem this is a good place to have it.
Soon we decide a brake shop is more important than checking into the hotel or sightseeing. I google “brake repair Melbourne” and Google returns a number of addresses including a few Midas shops. They helped on the way down so we head for the nearest Midas shop which isn’t far from our current location.
We find the shop, park and walk in to see if they can squeeze us in. A not-so-short answer: “we’re swamped, I have a man out. Earliest is Monday.” “Thanks anyways. Can you suggest another shop?” “Try the one right around the corner.” “Thanks, again.”
The shop is a different chain, ABS. We walk in and they have exctly the same problem. While John talks to the manager, I go out to talk to the mechanic working on a car. He’s from Seattle and he just strated working here. He’s been traveling the world for about 4 years and he ran out of money while in Oz. So he got a job here until he gets enough cash to move again.
He asks what we’re doing and, when I tell him, he has a million questions about the technical details of our trip. He most wants to know about temporary imports and getting around the Darrian Gap in Panama. We chat until John comes out. He has an appointment at another ABS shop at 8:30 in the morning.
We head to the hotel and we were right: we’re too early for mour oom. They store our luggage and sent us off to a parking lot to leave the car for the night. We can’t usually use the parking garages because the rack on the roof of he Cherokee is too high and won’t allow the car to clear the low ceilings in the garages. Park the car and head off sightseeing.
We work our way back the Flinders Street which is the center of the Central Business District. We get on a free visitors shuttle bus that gives a guided tour of Melbourne. It hits most of the sights and takes about 2 hours. It’s an enjoyable ride and, when it’s over, we finally checkin to the hotel.
We have a 5:30 appointment with Ivan and have a taxi ordered for 4:30. We have about 45 minutes til we have to leave so John goes out for a bit more exploring and I catch up on the blog and email.
We get to the restaurant that Ivan has set up for our meeting about a half hour early. The restaurant is along a small river and is appropriately named the Boat House. We have a beer and enjoy the peaceful setting.
Ivan arrives and picks us out the still small crowd. He’s young and energetic. We guess that he’s Ivan just about the same time that guesses who we are. Actually, it’s not much of a guess – we’re the only two old men in the place and he’s the only youngish man coming in alone.
We immediately hit it off. Another round of beers and he starts asking about our trip. He’s never done a trip like ours and he’s excited to plan one and go. He’s a motorcycle guy and shipping bikes all over the world for other people has really gotten him to a point where he has to try to do a trip himself.
We have pizza and beer and finally get to discussing exporting our car to SA. John has a contact in Buenas Aires and who may be able to hadle the SA import. Our job is to get Ivan and the Buenas Aires guy together. John says he’ll forward the contact info Ivan so that he can get started.
Another round of beers and we have to go. Ivan brings us to a tram stoop and gives us instructions on how to get back to the CBD. In a few minutes, a tram stops, we get on and head for the city. This train stops part way in to the city and the driver tells us which tram to take to finish the trip.
Finally, back at the hotel and up to the room. It’s been a long day inspite of the short distance we had to drive.
Tomorrow, the brake shop.
Obi-wan
One Response to “On To Melbourne -1/10/2013”
Carnet. New word.
I really look forward to, and enjoy, your blog. Great stuff.
D.