Category: The Fractured Trip

Friday 21 – Tuesday 25 September 2018

You may have perceived a little tardiness by this blogger.  Well it’s actually not tardiness as I trust you will come to realise.  After posting the last blog on Friday, reporting the aromas of Di’s chicken curry on the outdoor stove and our expectations of Stefanos famed Mildura restaurant for lunch the next day, we took a stroll beside the lovely Murray river and sat admiring the beauty of the spot we had chosen for the night.  Just before sitting down to dinner, I headed for the rubbish bins.  This is when it happened.  When I tripped and fell on garden edging.  Immediately I knew I had broken my ankle,  With Cherrie and Di by my side, Garry called the ambulance and waited at the gate for it.  He watched the whole episode of Gardening Australia on his phone while he waited.  The ambos arrived after about an hour (thoughtfully just long enough for Garry to finish with Costa) administered morphine and got me to Swan Hill Hospital.  The rest of the story is too gory for me to go into in its entirety but suffice to say that I was not seen by a doctor until after midnight and she was too young to be up that late.  She diagnosed what blind Freddie could see, that I had a broken ankle but the radiologist could not come in until tomorrow so just lie there and relax.  With a plethora of pain killers.  Cherrie, of course, stayed with me until about 1am when she got a taxi back to the park.  Tomorrow didn’t produce the radiologist before a nurse, this one with some training, discerned that my right foot had no pulse.  Apparently this is serious enough to warrant emergency treatment and a doctor with a degree appeared and I was whisked away with a flurry and an entourage to the plaster room.  I was anaesthetised with a hallucinogenic while they manipulated the ankle into a more acceptable position and set it in plaster.  This revived the pulse.  I was coming down from the terrifying high of the ketamine when Cherrie, Garry and Di came back to witness the whole confusion.  An X-ray revealed a fracture in the left ankle too and a less than satisfactory reduction of the right ankle, so more anaesthetic.  I put down  my proverbial foot (for that is all I have now) and the nice and good nurse arranged for a proper general anaesthetic, from which I awoke with two plaster casts.  A transfer later that day to St John of God Hospital in Bendigo (this is when my private health insurance becomes a blessing) and emergency surgery on Sunday night gives me plates and screws in my right ankle and a relocation and set of my left ankle.  I will be able to weight bear eventually on my left, not on my right for many weeks.  I will be in rehab in Bendigo for at least 2 weeks and then hopefully home in wheelchair and on crutches.

By mutual agreement the camper adventure to Perth is aborted.  The McDonalds, all three of them, are on their way home now.  Cherrie will return the camper van in Sydney tomorrow, ably assisted by yet another wonderful neighbour Bryan, and we await news of when she can come back to Bendigo to transfer me home.  That will be a slow transfer over some days.

Here endeth the blog.

Until next time.

 

Thursday 20 & Friday 21 September 2018

We are up at 5.30am to double check the van, which we loaded last night with all our wares.  Cherrie watered her precious vegetable garden and attended to last minute garden chores.  As planned, at 9.30am we took off

and met our travelling companions at the bottom of the driveway.  Off we go in convoy, down Wattamolla Road and up through Kangaroo Valley.  In a sign of things to come, we stop after 50 minutes for coffee, at the excellent Exeter General Store.  We meet up again at Jugiong for lunch and then make our way to

which of course means TOWN OF MANY CROWS TOWN OF MANY CROWS in the local indigenous language.  But to get to the town of many crows we had to pass through

which means town of few teeth.

We check into the caravan park at

which of course means beach of many crows, and is apparently a famous inland beach.  At least amongst the crows.  Perhaps not the most saloubrious caravan park but the check in woman offered some very good culinary advice when we asked about a butcher who might provide us with some tasty hand made sausages for dinner.  “Try the Vegemite and Cheese sausages” she said.  Without even a hint of irony.  In a stroke of luck the butcher was closed and so Woolworths Pork & Fennel sausos did the trick.

The camp site was cosy

but we were all exhausted and retired at 8.30pm.  Cherrie and I slept quite well considering, but suffice to say a dash to KMart as we departed the Crows to purchase a mattrass topper will, we hope, ensure that we sleep even better tonight.

An early morning walk revealed the aforementioned beach in all its glory

We head towards SWAN Hill in a leisurely manner and have an uneventful drive.  The amount of road kill is troubling – more than any of us have ever seen and we can only assume that the drought may have something to do with this.  Either that, or perhaps Tony Abbott is to blame?  It is heartening to see a number of large hay trucks on the road,  delivering to the stricken farmers.

We do spot lots of emus

and a goanna to rival a croc

We stop in Jerilderie for a wander and spy a wonderful water tower

and a mixed business

We are now by the mighty Murray in

with sweet little house boats passing by

Di’s cooking up a curry on the camp (and I mean offence to my friends by that term) stove so I’d better make tracks.  As it were.  Tomorrow to Mildura and lunch at Stefanos.  Yum.

Wednesday 19 September 2018

So today we pick up the van.  We arrive at the Sydney depot 30 minutes early and are attended to immediately.  Our first assignment is to watch a video which clearly shows us how everything in the van works.  So clearly that it makes no sense to us at all, but we’re not defeated because we have Garry and Di on the road with us and they are old hands at this campervan business.  The lovely Brigette, our French check in person, having first established that we have not only viewed the video but made perfect sense of it then starts a second video which explains that in Australia we are to drive on the left hand side of the road.  In our best Shady Gully accents we quickly advise her that this video is wasted on us and so we move up the ladder to the check in process.  She delights in telling us that we have been upgraded, at no cost to us, and we now have a very new van, with only 8000kms on the clock, which is shorter, higher and with more storage space.  Viva La France!

The paperwork takes about an hour, during which time we dream of beyond this trip.

Eventually we are allowed outside to view our home for the next month.  We paid for this

but instead have got this

She’s a beauty.  And no trouble at all to get to know. Or work.  But, hey, she’s new so there are always teething troubles, right?  The bed just electrically drops from the ceiling.  But first the table must be lowered.  How does that happen again?  Uh oh, Brigette thought she knew, but she can’t remember.  Or perhaps she never knew.  Cherrie suggests that perhaps the big black button on the floor might hold the cue, but Brigette knows that’s not it.  Hang on, she’ll go and ask.  A little (well not too little) time later she returns with a colleague in alarming dreadlocks who depresses the big black button on the floor which lowers the bed.  He smiles and departs.  She presses the bed lowering button.  Nothing happens.  Again and again.  Never mind, we’ll continue the tour and the bed will magically work next time.  “See that switch there?  Don’t touch that.  It doesn’t do anything”.  Memories of the Canal du Midi boat tour…but that’s another story.  Let’s check out the simple control panel, as explained in before mentioned video

Those eagle eyed amongst you may note that I have had a haircut.  The primary reason for our visit to Perth is to attend a wedding in 4 1/2 weeks time and I don’t want to risk anyone cutting my hair except the man who has been doing so for 40+ years.  So today he style-shaved my head so that it would look glorious by the wedding day.  I trust him.  Thousands might not, seeing this photo.

We are shown the gas bottle, the BBQ, the waste water tank, the other waste tank, etc etc.  The bed still doesn’t descend, so Brigette heads off to find dreadlocks while we explore the rest.  We noted that the crockery/cutlery allocation was 2 of everything.  2 knives, 2 forks, 2 plates etc.  Our implores of ‘more please’ bore fruit and so now we have an extravagance of 3 of everything.

Dreadlox returns to show us how to lower the bed.  But he can’t make it work either

Perhaps a closer look will throw some light on the problem

But it’s not to be.  In some desperation Brigette pushes her biro into the reset hole and voila!  The bed lowers.

Dreadlox departs with slightly less smile this time and Brigette heads off to top up the crockery cutlery.  We take this opportunity to make the bed before it descends into the heavens again

 

 

Still no one has returned and so I decide to wind out the awning, which proves simple enough until it doesn’t stop and the mechanism ends up on the ground.

Dreadlox and a mate spend 30 minutes fixing it

 

Eventually, we are signed off and we drive off.

We arrive home shortly after 3pm and spend the next 3 hours loading the van, finding the right hidey holes for everything and generally settling in.  Without actually being in.  We will sleep in our own bed tonight and take off tomorrow.  Who knows, the bed might not descend, the awning might bite the dust, the table might not move.  Let the adventure begin!

In the hair department, one of us is blonde(ish), one brown(ish), one bald (no ish there) and then there’s me.  We’re off to Perth in our campervans next week.  My email advice a short time ago told you that we would be back late November.  Already I’m in seniors territory.  Truth be told, we’re back in late October.  We’ve had a meeting today, the four of us, to discuss what we should take and to compare pantries so that we are not doubling up.  Garry has provided us with walkie talkies, so we can do the truckie thing as we go.  Anyway, 9 more sleeps before we head off but there’s a lot to be said for pre-production.  As tour manager, I have already provided a draft itinerary but anything can happen……stay tuned.