Day 32: Change of plans – back to Mansfield 29/12/19

Well, our plans for the final three days of our adventure were significantly altered with a car accident this morning on the way to my starting point. I’ll start by saying everyone is ok. The only casualty was the Jubbie-mobile which copped some serious damage. After stocking up on snacks and beers for the last two nights camping, we had unfortunately (fortunately?) got stuck behind a fairly slow car along a dirt road which was kicking up a lot of dust. By consequence, we were driving slowly. We came into a corner and a car was coming towards us pretty fast. He obviously tried to brake into the corner (never brake in the corner on a dirt road) because he locked up, lost control and smashed straight into our side, impacting all four panels down the driver side and shattering the driver’s window. My husband did an amazing job of controlling our car and I’m convinced without his skill the accident would have been much worse – like over the edge of the side worse or head on collision worse (picture Jubble with a hero’s cape billowing in the wind behind him). The driver was very apologetic and unfortunately also very uninsured. Most importantly no one was injured. Second most importantly the Jubbie-mobile was still drivable, particularly given we had no mobile coverage where we were.

We messaged my sister via our Garmin GPS to help find the biggest closest town and then headed off for Warburton and mobile coverage to work out our next steps. It was a long, slow drive along gravel road for the 50kms to reach town!

In Warburton we had some lunch and tried to see if we could hire a 4WD to finish the last three days. We couldn’t have risked taking the Jubbie-mobile along the gravelly, bumpy roads we’ve had to drive along to the meeting points – the shattered but in-tact window likely would have given way completely. The window tinting film probably isn’t rated to hold together shattered glass in those bumpy conditions! We would have had to drive closer to Melbourne and therefore extend our trip by several days even if we could find an available 4WD, so we made the tough call to call it quits and drive home to Sydney.

We started repairs to the Jubbie-mobile with a roll of carefully applied sticky tape to the window, the driver’s door kept closed with a strap affixed to the steering wheel column and we set off.  En route we decided to stay the night in Mansfield (silver lining – delicious vegan risotto for the second time) and get back to Sydney tomorrow. Second silver lining – with the strap holding the driver’s door shut in just the right place, the doors locked so we could keep all our stuff secure overnight. Third silver lining (but actually biggest one) – one more sleep til I see Miss Kat again. Fourth silver lining – there’s now an extra bit of ventilation on the driver’s side.

Whilst it’s not what we planned and we’re both disappointed to not have finished, it could have been much, much worse. We’ll come back another time to do the bits I’ve missed this time and probably next time in a 4WD so we’ve got more options. Stay tuned…