Day 37 Of The East Coast

Day 37 Of The East Coast

In 37 days the car had broken down 5 times ..

Location: Cairns

We packed up and made the very reluctant man give us a jump start. 

As we drove out of the camp the car started to cut out. We made it to the road before it finally died … We were in the middle of nowhere with no phone signal and no one around.

Thankfully the restaurant from yesterday was only about a mile down the road. The lovely waitress let me use the phone, annoyingly we had to pay the breakdown cover just for the mechanic to even think about coming out, it was a complete mess! As i went to pay over the phone i realised that I had left my purse in the car. By this point the boss of the restaurant was getting very fed up with us, although we had bought food! 

$198 later and a disgruntled restaurant owner we had joined the RACQ. We were told that ‘Bob’ the mechanic would be out within the next couple of hours.

Thankfully he was’t as long as we had expected but he certainly no mechanic! He was so old he had to have an assistant who he gave instructions too! 

After he had replaced the battery we drove to the nearest shop to get $190 out. 

Whilst driving there the gauge started to play up again, we ended up then driving to his workshop in Cowboy. 

Not good news the alternator was going ... however it would work for a bit if you hit it with something heavy.

We both wanted to get out of the Rainforest quickly! It was such a good feeling when we got off the ferry we were in civilisation! As we headed to Mossman the alternator started playing up again. We had to keep pulling over for Marcus to hit it with our heaviest item ... a tin of baked beans!

Thankfully we made it back to Cairns after stopping numerous times. At one point we had stopped in front of a policeman ... he came straight over to us ... not to ask how we were but "your blocking my speed radar MOVE"!

We checked back into the holiday park that we first stayed at. Both feeling like we had been beaten up Marcus was feeling very poorly.

We set the tent up and Marcus went straight to bed, it was a pretty dreadful evening.

Hope things improve!