Up at 7, drove to pick up the van (it’s a 4 berth motor home but from now on it’s the van).
Turned out it’s brand new, 50km on the clock, so don’t have to worry about previous people having used it.
Got a quick tour of how to plug it in, empty the water and toilet etc then I sat in the driver’s seat and tried to figure out all the buttons.
I’ve never driven something this big so it’s a bit daunting, but looked ok, remembered that most of the driving is going to be on the freeway and small towns so I’ll keep away from narrow roads and city traffic till I’m more used to it.
Plugged in home into the gps and headed off.
10 minutes later realised the gps was directing me onto the toll road which I didn’t want to take, so ended up driving through the city.
Luckily it was actually pretty easy to drive, it was a Mercedes Sprinter base so was really good.
Got home and put it in the driveway, a tight fit through the gate, only to realise there wasn’t enough room to load it so with the help of a neighbour backed it out.
Whereupon I caught the wing mirror on the gate post and broke it. Must be a record, I’m not looking forward to giving it back.
In my defence, the bit that broke off was actually the indicator behind the main mirror and can’t be seen from the driver seat, the bit that I could see cleared the post.
Not a good start.
It could have been worse – it could have been one we bought, and also there is no excess so it won’t cost me anything.
Still pretty pissed off with myself though.
We’d packed the night before but had to load up all the gear of a friend who had moved to Sydney to study; we stored her stuff and said we would hire the van and take it to her to save her having to hire removalists.
Little did we know her stuff took up most of the room.
We have also decided to take our cat, she took a bit of persuading to get in her bag, then when she was in the van we let her have a poke around for 10 minutes and then decided to leave. She liked a shelf in a cupboard and we thought she’d found her place but she soon left and spent most of the trip under Song’s feet.
So we left a bit later than we expected but we were finally on our way, but hadn’t eaten so decided to stop somewhere once we got out of Melbourne.
After a couple of hours turned off at Seymour and found a sushi place but they were cooking more rice and there was a 20 minute wait so we decided to go to Woolworths and grab some sandwiches. Couldn’t find any so went to coles, voila, something to keep us going.
Cracked on, van comfortable to drive but when a large truck overtakes it wobbles with the disturbed air, a bit scary the first time it happened but I was prepared after.
Got to Albury at just after 18:00, our first time out of Victoria for 2 years and 10 months.
Song found a French Bistro on Google so we parked the van and walked around the corner only to be told they were fully booked. Found another one and walked to that, also fully booked. Eventually found a nice cafe and had some tapas; a banh-mi thing, pork belly and calamari. Nice, but not too filling and a bit pricey.
Back to the van, it was dark now and we had another 80k or so to get to Holbrook where we’d booked a powered site. The cat had found a spot on all of the boxes and seemed a bit more comfortable about the whole thing.
Drove along, a bit wary in the dark, and seeing quite a few dead kangaroos made me slow down a bit.
Eventually arrived at the site, couldn’t find ours so had to drive around a bit but finally found it and plugged in, turned on the AC and I went for a shower – very clean, water hot and pressure great, but I made the mistake of looking up and seeing the myriad of multi-legged insects that could drop on me at any moment so headed back.
Had a cup of tea, then set up the bed and settled in for our first night of sleeping in a campervan.