Our "New to Us" Winnie

[T1 Terry]

Have you left yet?

Yeah, but only to go to the shops ....

T1 Terry

[Greynomad]

More farewells than Dame Nellie Melba!

[jon_d]

Its such a coincidence that she has the same name as the highway.

[Dot]

Has the rig left the yard yet?

[T1 Terry]

Has the rig left the yard yet?

I thought Brian was gunna post that the house on wheels has left the yard .... 1:45pm or 13:45 Ray time

We are parked up on the nature strip at our friend's place Horsham, we arrive some where in the 7:30 pm area, or 19:30 Ray time .... and the only hiccup was the continuing problem with the LPG .... at Murray Bridge Shell, it simply refused to put any LPG into the tanks this time, it all ended up in a rapidly evaporating pool under the Winnie. Too hard to get repositioned to fill with petrol, we barely scrapped in under the 3.2mtr awning clearance, so on to the OTR heading towards the highway and it had 4.3 mtr clearance .... getting around traffic islands designed for car in a 10 mtr rigid dragging a 6 mtr trailer was kinda interesting, but 6.8 ltrs of V10 grunt allows you climb over most things

A mere $420 worth of the cheapest petrol they had to download 240 ltrs, and off we went. I gotta say, it's a bit like flushing $$ down the toilet, but the feeling of smoothing out every hill with 16 mtrs and 12 plus tonne of vehicle as aerodynamic as a block of flats .... does feel good .... including rounding up a B double in one of those mega short overtaking sections along the Duke Hwy the speedo winding up well past where it should have been ..... was a tad unnerving, expecting the party lights to appear from the side of the road or coming the other way .... but managed to avoid that happening ..... a stop at Bruce and Wendys old servo ... like a ghost of it's former glory days now, under new management yet again, for coffee chips and gravy ..... sometimes it might be easier to have an English to Indian translator app when trying to order anything ..... but we have enough gravy for a mth of Sundays and chips for snacks .... via the air fryer, for a few days yet .... should have made our own coffee, but we say that every time and never learn

I can't tell you just how good it feels to have finally escaped the workshop yard ... it's like it had a hold on us or something ..... but we are free

T1 Terry

[Keith Morris]

Has the rig left the yard yet? ;)

I thought Brian was gunna post that the house on wheels has left the yard .... 1:45pm or 13:45 Ray time ;) :lol:

We are parked up on the nature strip at our friend's place Horsham, we arrive some where in the 7:30 pm area, or 19:30 Ray time .... and the only hiccup was the continuing problem with the LPG .... at Murray Bridge Shell, it simply refused to put any LPG into the tanks this time, it all ended up in a rapidly evaporating pool under the Winnie. Too hard to get repositioned to fill with petrol, we barely scrapped in under the 3.2mtr awning clearance, so on to the OTR heading towards the highway and it had 4.3 mtr clearance .... getting around traffic islands designed for car in a 10 mtr rigid dragging a 6 mtr trailer was kinda interesting, but 6.8 ltrs of V10 grunt allows you climb over most things 8-)

A mere $420 worth of the cheapest petrol they had :o :o to download 240 ltrs, and off we went. I gotta say, it's a bit like flushing $$ down the toilet, but the feeling of smoothing out every hill with 16 mtrs and 12 plus tonne of vehicle as aerodynamic as a block of flats .... does feel good .... including rounding up a B double in one of those mega short overtaking sections along the Duke Hwy :D the speedo winding up well past where it should have been ..... was a tad unnerving, expecting the party lights to appear from the side of the road or coming the other way .... but managed to avoid that happening ..... a stop at Bruce and Wendys old servo ... like a ghost of it's former glory days now, under new management yet again, for coffee chips and gravy ..... sometimes it might be easier to have an English to Indian translator app when trying to order anything ..... but we have enough gravy for a mth of Sundays and chips for snacks .... via the air fryer, for a few days yet .... should have made our own coffee, but we say that every time and never learn :roll:

I can't tell you just how good it feels to have finally escaped the workshop yard ... it's like it had a hold on us or something ..... but we are free ;) :lol:

T1 Terry

"tanks" here---T-1 & Margaret
Good to hear that you are out and on the road to wherever.
Enjoy the winter.
Keith

[jon_d]

Terry,

Petrol spy is a great app to help find the cheapest fuel about. It's crowd updated and quite accurate.

Also, to track fuel and economy, I (and Dave now) use FillUp. (the screen shot shows a summary screen)

petrol spy.jpg

fillup.jpg

[T1 Terry]

Terry,

Petrol spy is a great app to help find the cheapest fuel about. It's crowd updated and quite accurate.

Also, to track fuel and economy, I (and Dave now) use FillUp. (the screen shot shows a summary screen)

petrol spy.jpg

fillup.jpg

Thank you Jon, Margaret already uses both of those apps. We are in Echuca now and fuel at the moment is $1.54/ltr due to a price war .... we will fill up when we leave tomorrow morning.

The trip from Horsham to Echuca is one I wouldn't want to repeat. Via the normal short cut roads Google seems to imagine you are in a vehicle the width of a motorbike, we had multiple roads where the tar strip wasn't much more than a G String width up absolute a*sehole roads. Then the sun fell out of the sky, and I found we were sharing this strip of bitumen with B double trucks and 3 trailer cattle and grain road trains .... then the fog settled in ..... 30km/h, lights suddenly appearing to the left that turned out to be house patio lights, balls of light suddenly appearing to the right that turned out to be sheds and flood light areas, but they weren't visible until we were passing them ..... then there were the balls of light that seemed to appear on the horizon .... while trying to figure out if it was a tractor, house, grain silo or a truck, some fool would appear out of the fog doing easy 100km/h with driving lights on full loud ..... and of course the trucks, canal cross bridges the Winnie or the truck narrowly fitted through, but single file, can't see what's up the side of the road but no choice but to head that way and end up on down slope of a spoon drain, but torn up by trucks that had done the same thing.

Corners appeared out of now where, including T intersections but no hope of seeing any direction signs or just how wide the new road was ..... anyone who has driven a 10mtr rigid with a 6 mtr trailer, all right on the 2.5mtr width legal limit, knows you have to drive almost straight across the road before making a 90* turn, or the trailer will take out the posts marking the corner and fall in the drain the road runs across.

What google said should take 2 hrs, took 5 1/2 hrs, even Echuca itself was blanketed in thick fog .... getting the Google distance count down so I could look to find where the actual corner was that we needed to turn down ..... I hope to never experience that again, the inside of the windscreen covered in water rivers running across ways didn't help much, can't reach the windscreen sitting behind the steering wheel, so I couldn't wipe it either ....

T1 Terry

[Newcastle George]

Which route did you take, Terry, Via St Arnaud or wooroonook?

George

[jon_d]

Terry,

Most of those narrow roads around that area are just for the milk tankers to get to the dairys.

But rest easy I have an idea!

If Margaret used Street View, she could see the corner a 1km before you get there. And then , she could advise.

a - "oh no"
b - "oh no, we better find some where to turn around"
c - "oh no - we should make it if your careful"

And if the road is not on street view, well.... why are you???