March 20 - Australia: Grafton, New South Wales
Bus Trip Back to Brissie
We caught the 7:20AM Kirkland bus to Brisbane, which was fairly uneventful. The bus driver had the radio on, and we heard all about the postponement of the World Surfing Championships on the Gold Coast. I'm not sure if I wrote about this before, but swarms of sharks have been seen off the Gold Coast (Eastern Coast, just north of Byron Bay) of Australia. It seems that the wind or the currents or something have driven the feeder fish, and hence the larger game fish (trevaly, tuna, snapper) close to the coast. So the sharks have followed. We've seen footage on the news, and what it looks like is a large dark cloud in the water with sharks charging in. Some of the shark packs have been as large as twenty sharks. This includes all different sharks, not a school of one type. (Remember that sharks usually travel alone.) Naturally, the beaches have closed down. I looked online for news articles to post to the website, but couldn't find anything. Anyway, the World Surfing Championships were postponed for a few hours as they waited for one of the shark swarms to move further away.
It was a 3-hour trip to Brissie, which put us in at 10:30 but was really 9:30 because of the time difference. We rang Bruce from the bus terminal and he told us the truck was ready so we caught a taxi and headed over to Kelvin Grove.
Bruce at Kelvin Grove
Bruce had the truck outside and ready to go. He showed us the bill right away, which came to around AUS $1200 (USD $600). Ouch, but it's what we expected. If we'd opted not to fix it and to sell it in Sydney "as-is", then some used car dealer would take us for well more than $1200. The problem wasn't something they would miss.
Bruce saved the old front differential for us to see, so we went in the back to have a look. The front diff evenly distributes power between the front and rear axels when the truck is in four-wheel-drive. It's a series of gears with teeth. Long story short, at some point, one to two of the teeth got mangled and were caught up in the other gears. Of course, when these teeth hit the other gears, the teeth of the other gears got mangled too. So the problem perpetuates itself and gets worse and worse. Bruce said that when they took the diff off the truck, little pieces of gears rained out. Woops.
The Front Diff of our Toyota Surf
I'm not sure if you can tell with this picture, but the teeth of the large gear are terribly chewed up. Jon saved one of them for our scrapbook.
Bruce also fixed the CV joins as well, which we asked him to do. The CV covers had ripped and sand had entered into the joint. (The CV controls the steering). So Bruce ripped off the covers and cleaned and re-greased the CV joints. Since the state of the CV joints is part of the Road-Worthy test in Australia, we would have been dinged on this as well when we tried to sell the truck. Good ol' Bruce! After we'd paid the bill, we hung out and chatted with him for a while. He had heaps of suggestions for places to visit on our drive south. So he wrote everything down for us and sent us off.
Michelle and Darren's Storage Unit
Our next stop was Michelle and Darren's house where all our supplies were stored. We loaded up the truck and re-arranged everything for easier access. Then we sat and talked with Michelle and Darren for a while before hitting the road.
On the Road Again
We are so happy to have our truck back, that it didn't even matter that we were back-tracking on the same road we drove up this morning. We were just pleased to be in control of our own destiny again. Yes, we've become spoiled the past few months. I'm not ashamed to admit it, either. Jon was so happy to be behind the wheel that he drove the entire day.
When we neared the outskirts of Byron Bay, Jon pulled over at the Mad Dog Surf Board Factory. Mad Dog is owned by a guy named John, who is the brother of Gary, our surfing instructor. Gary told us that we should stop by the shop and ask for a tour of the factory. So we did. It was a cool tour and pretty informative. We sort of recorded the process on the camera, and you can see it here.
MadDog Surf Shop
Continue the Drive South
The rest of the day's drive was pretty standard. The sun was strong enough to render the truck's air conditioner pretty useless. So I spent the day melting as the sun was usually on my side of the truck. Here are some important Australian landmarks:
Giant Avocadoes on Highway 1
A Giant Prawn. Very stylish.
A Gorgeous View
Grafton
We decided to stay in Grafton for the night. Grafton is a smallish town on the bank of the Clarence River. It's still too hot outside to camp, so we drove around looking for a motel with a kitchenette. As usual, the cheaper places were on the fringes of town. After trying a few too-pricey places, we found the Summerlands Motel. The Summerlands ("We'll Put You Up Without Letting You Down") was run by a very kind couple named Mal and Val. They were very excited that we were from New York and talked to me at length about their four-day trip to New York City. Very sweet.
Tim Tams
For dinner, we made Red Curry Chicken and watched The Simpsons. We had Tim Tams for dessert. I don't think I've written a manifesto on Tim Tams yet, but I've been meaning to. Tim Tams are Australia's answer for better-than-sex chocolate. They can be found in the cookie section of the grocery store, but far surpass the potential of a "regular cookie". Tim Tams are two chocolate biscuits with a fudge on the outside and a mushy moussey center. Umm.... Yum! Jon bought "The Indulgence Pack" which has twice as many Tim Tams as a normal package. He then proceeded to eat five of them, which is the equivalent of snorting uncut cocaine. (Or so I've heard). I might emigrate to Australia just for the Tim Tams. The rest of the world is at a serious disadvantage without these things.