Torquay – 1/11/13
Jan 13th, 2013 by admin
The appointment to fix the brakes is at 8:30 somewhere south of the Central Business District so we head out at 7:30 to find it. I go to put in the address for the ABS shop and the address an intersection of two streets one of which isn’t in the GPS index. There are times when I just love GPS. This is not one of those times. I put in the street that it does know and we head that way.
It’s still early so there isn’t much traffic but the GPS is giving us turn after turn. The GPS is programmable for either shortest route or quickest route but not for neither. There are times when it gets down right creative with the routes that it calculates. We’ve learned to ignore it on occasion and just follow our best guess.
The GPS shop gets us to the shop at just about 8:30. We must have done the “shortest” route – certainly not the “quickest”. We park and walk in.
John tells the manager (you can always tell the manager at a brake shop – he’s the one with clean hands – brakes are the filthiest part of the car to work on) at the counter that we have an appointment to have our car brakes repaired. “Sorry, mate. You have an appointment to have the car problem ‘evaluated’.” “I talked to a woman and she said to bring the car in for repair.” The woman, of course, is not there to referee. “I might be able to get to it today but I’ve got a man out on vacation…” A “man out” seems to be the scourge of the trades here.
Shortly, though, the woman in question arrives and tells the manager that she did commit them to repairing the car today. The plan becomes “evaluate, get parts, repair” today. And even as they speak, a mechanic comes out to get the keys. He asks for the symptoms. We tell him. He takes the car, puts on the lift and is back in about five minutes with the diagnosis: bad right wheel cylinder (the small hydraulic cylinder that moves the brake shoes). It’s sticking and the springs that should retract it can’t. It has to be replaced.
They start looking for the parts (they’ll change both right and left cylinders) which they don’t have. But they can get them. Great. They’ll be here about 2PM. Not so great. Car should be ready about 4. Really ungreat.
“Can we get a train or a tram to the city?” “Well, let’s see. You can get a bus up the street and take that to the train station and ask them there how to get to the city. No – wait. No, go down to the other bus station… No, uh…” “Anything else to do here?” ‘You can go to the mall up the road here and see a movie.” We travel 14,000 kilometers and we’re going to a cineplex movie in a mall? Whatever.
Up the road to the mall which turns out to be surrounded by a parking garage. Well hidden. We must have entered from the back. At any rate, inside the mall, I find the cineplex and the only movies showing until late in the afternoon are children’s movies, ie. Wreck-it Ralph. Of course, this is the middle of the school’s summer break and parents are already trying to figure out what to do with their children. Let’s go to the movies.
Movies out, we’re reduced to browsing the shops. But that runs out soon. Buy a book, find a comfy seat in the food court and read to pass the time. Patience in not a virtue but a little would help a lot today. The time slowly passes.
We leave the mall and head back to the brake shop. When we get there, the car is not in the lot in front. Either it’s not done or there is a problem, probably (hopefully) not done.
It is just being finished and after just enough time to check and clear my email, It’s done. We pay, chat a bit more and get back on the road in a newly repaired car. Yahoo! No brake clunk when we pull away from a stop. Next stop Torquay (pronounced (“tor key” with the accent on the “key”.)
There are a few reasons for going to Torquay: first, it’s the start of the Great Ocean Road. Second, it’s the name of the town that our Brit friends, Clemo and his merry band of pranksters) come from in the UK. And third, it has one of the most famous surfing beaches in the world: Bells.
We head back into Melbourne and join up with the motorway heading south. With everyone else in Melbourne heading to the beaches. In a couple of hours, we’re coming into Torquay. We’re looking for (and finally find) a big sign announcing Torquay. We want to take a picture of us in front of the sign and post it on Facebook for Clemo et al. We find the sign and there’s even a runner going by that we ask to take the picture. Everything works out great. On to the town center to find someplace for the night.
We turn off the main road and stop at the first motel. They don’t have any rooms but they do have an apartment. But the price (even after a AUD100 discount) is still too high. We try the campground across the street from the motel and they do have tent sites. “Great, well take one.” “Good, we’ll take AUD65.” I just know I can get a suite in Minnesota tonight for that amount of money with free internet and a free continental breakfast. Of course, that’s there and who wants to be in Minnesota in January. Even Garrison Keillor is touring somewhere else.
After some confusion (an old camp trailer is parked in our camp site), we set up camp and John starts chatting up some people across the road from our site.
They have what is the usual Aussie camping structure: a trailer with an attached tent and a further attached shelter with a table and chairs under it. These structures usually take up the entire site that they are built on. They have electricity and water but, since they’ve used nearly all the space on the site, cars are parked willy-nilly around the sites. That gives a very crowded look to the whole area. It makes our site look rather spacious with only the car and two tents.
John has moved right in and I go over to say hello some time later. They pull up another chair for me. This is the first of the usual “what are you guys up to?” questions. They are a group of five: a husband and wife, and three assorted sisters. They conversation is very pleasant and along the way we find out that one of the sisters works at customs and thinks she may know Ivan. After she hears the police stop story, she confirms that the carnet is, in fact, our exemption.
Later, we head down the street looking for a place to have dinner. We settle on a small but very busy Italian restaurant and have the best pasta I’ve had in a long time. Pasta, wine, capuccino. A walk down by the beach.
Back to the campground. Before we can call it a night, another young Aussie stops by to chat. Another “what are you up to?” chat. He had lived in the States for a year. Working as an apartment super in the Bronx! Loved it but had to come back to Oz for more pay. Now, he has a fiance and he really needs to have a real job. Whatever that is. A nice chat but off to the tent.
Tomorrow, the Great Ocean Road.
Obi-wan