After a weekend of problems with Ethel not starting, we took her to a garage today to get it seen to once and for all. Every time we have had a problem we've phoned the RACQ up and they've sent someone out who has given us an opinion and tried to get us going, but the problem is this - we still haven't got to the root of the problem. Why were the electrical problems reoccuring?
Nevertheless, I had to call out the RACQ again - this time not to ask them to get us started but to ask them to send a tow truck. I wanted to ring around a few garages but got stuck waiting behind a German couple who obviously had big problems; 30 minutes later I decided to walk up the road and ask the nearest garage how busy they were. The guy running the place seemed to know what he was talking about and one of the mechanics knew kombis very well, so I settled for this place. So much for the ringing around, eh? So in the end, the tow truck had to take us out of the caravan park, 30 yards up the road, across a busy intersection and straight on to the garage forecourt. It seemed daft towing it such a short distance, but it was the only way we were going to shift Ethel's big old metal butt over there.
At lunch we met up with a guy called Tony whom neither of us had met before but who'd got in contact with us through this site. Sound weird to you? Well, yes and no. Before coming out here I posted to one of my other sites, Accessify, about the trip and said if I'm in your general area and you feel like meeting up, drop me a line. Accessify gets a fair number of visitors and I thought it would be good to have a chinwag with people who also have a passion for web development (and in particular web accessibility).
Tony was one of these people, and had built various tools such as the CSS Creator site. He had left a comment on this site saying he "couldn't help with the van but if we're in Brisbane he could shout us a beer". He did more than that, buying both of us lunch in one of Brisbane centre's many food courts, excellent! Tony had done the travelling thing before (across Europe and China) and had also worked at a backpackers in Brisbane, so he knew that the offer of a free lunch would be appreciated. And it was!
We left Tony at Adelaide Street and made tentative arrangements to meet up again - no, we weren't after another free lunch, for all you cynics out there. Although if anyone else feels like obliging, hey, who are we to argue ;-)
We took the customary 'look who we bumped into' photo and then made our way to an Internet Café to carry out the latest batch of updates.
Tony and Ian in Queen Street mall.
No news yet on Ethel's condition, so in the meantime here's a picture of a galah, one of the camp residents (and by that I mean living at the camp site, not that it's camp itself, even if it is wearing pink feathers around the neck).
Ever wondered what a flamin' galah looks like? Wonder no more.
