I can't believe I really did this.
We bought a second hand Subaru from Sydney - so I volunteered to take the train to Sydney (with Eb) and collect it.
I put Eb to bed and then at 9.30pm we woke her up and piled her in the car to head into
Albury to catch the 11.15pm train. She slept all the way from home to
Albury - but the price I paid was that she then didn't go to sleep until about 2.30am! We tried everything, but even though we paid the small amount extra for a first class seat - we were right at the front, near the opening door and the lights. Anyway, she finally fell asleep.....
and stayed that way until I had to wake her to get her ready for some breakfast before we got off the train.
Breakfast was, of course, lots of fun! I had slept for one lot of about 45
mins and another of about 35
mins. I was exhausted to say the least.
The story got much worse though! I had to get of the
XPT train and then get on a local train to meet the guy with the car. When I got off the local train I found myself with 3 flights of stairs to get up. Now picture me with 1
lge suitcase (with all Eb's sleeping gear inside), a back pack, a child with a trolley bag and a car seat! Thankfully a couple of very kind people helped me get it all up the stairs.
Then the next difficult thing happened.
We had paid a deposit on the car and thought we had all our bases covered.
Nothing prepared me for the car! It was far, far less than I had expected it to be but I just didn't know what to do. I called Graham and he could only go by what I was trying to say.
I felt totally trapped. What else could I do but take it!?!
In retrospect I should never have taken it. I could see mould on the back seat, the rear head rests were missing, the centre console is shattered inside.....gosh! The owner offered me $100 off to compensate - even that is a bit of a joke now that I have the clear head to think about it.
Anyway, I took it. Paid him the money and left. Went straight to a petrol station to put fuel in it and found a terrible mould inside the petrol tank lid! Once again I was left thinking 'what have I done?'.
We made our way home, but with so little sleep I decided I needed to stop somewhere overnight. Made it to
Yass where it was one disaster after another!...but not to do with the car. I went out a bought a few things for breakfast (remember I was operating on less than 2 hours sleep in some 36 hours by this stage). Had read the menu in the room and had decided on a healthy sounding dinner for us. Got back to the Motel and stopped in at reception to enquire about dinner/breakfast only to find that there were no dinners being offered at this time because they didn't have a chef! I reminded them that menu's were still in the rooms but it fell on deaf ears. They did suggest a place that would do delivery for a very reasonable charge so I headed back to our room satisfied that at least I wouldn't need to go out again.
Rang the said restaurant only to find that you needed to place a minimum order (that was far more than I wanted to part with). So, out I headed again. I couldn't
believe my luck. It was then almost impossible to get anything that resembled healthy (I ended up at the place I tried to order from and what I wanted wasn't available anyway!!!!!!). So, junk it was.
Then it was back to our room and off to sleep....an exhausted sleep at that.
Next morning I got up and thought I better check oil etc....only to find that I couldn't get ANY oil to register on the dip stick. How much worse was this going to get???
I went straight to a service station and put more oil in than I wanted to....and still couldn't get it to register.
I just had to keep going. I was planning to get to
Wodonga for Eb to do her swimming lesson.
Well, after all the mucking around I didn't get to swimming.
I did get home though. Still exhausted and very, very disappointed that it had all worked out the way it did.
Thankfully the car did drive well!
Now we'll see what the next chapter of the Subaru Forrester's life with us involves :)
