Troubles with Nora

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Day 384 (14.04.08) to Day 390 (20.04.08)

So today was the day when we'd have to say our goodbyes to Nora our trusted little van...or would we? We picked up Sarah and Duan, the buyers, and drove up to the Victoria Roads office in the north of the City to sign over all the forms etc. It turned out to be not quite that simple. We had to re-register the van in Victoria despite the fact that there were still two months on the last registration. To re-register the van (it was registered in Queensland where we bought it) we had to book an appointment. "No worries" said the lady at the desk "the next available slot is in two weeks time" - What?!

In the end we managed to book a slot at another office an hour from Melbourne for the coming Thursday but in the meantime we'd have to put the van through a Roadworthy Test (the equivalent of an MOT). Since the van had a new, clean roadworthy certificate when we bought it just 4 months ago and we'd had absolutely no problems with her, we didn't think there'd be too much needing doing. But, having dropped the van at a garage and made our way to work, we received a phone call from the garage and were proved to be very, very wrong on that front! Poor little Nora would need to have $2000 worth of work done on a list of things as long as your arm (or perhaps longer) in order to pass the roadworthy - S@#T! We decided we must have been the victims of a fake roadworthy certificate in Queensland and thanked our lucky stars that we'd got so far!

We called up our poor buyers, told them the situation and said we'd more than understand if they wanted to look for something else. But, as has happened to many of her previous passengers, Nora had worked her charms and they'd fallen in love with her! It was Nora or nothing! We made the decision to get the work done and they even offered to give us some money towards the repair work so we'd still get some money back from the van.

With Nora in van hospital the appointment on Thursday was cancelled and another booked for the following week as we were promised by the garage that it wouldn't take too long to get all the work done.

The rest of the week passed as normal with dancing on Tuesday, basketball on wednesday and the return of Lost to TV on Thursday (it had been off for a month - terrible stuff!)

When we first arrived in Melbourne and were desperately looking for work we signed up with a catering company but hadn't heard from them until this week when they offered some work for Mark on Friday night. After work he headed off to test it out while Chrissie stayed behind for a couple of Friday drinks with everyone from work. The work turned out to be pretty simple and Mark told them we'd both be up for more if it was available.

With the weekend finally upon us we caught up on the usual jobs and then went and booked our flights for the next section of our trip. This will include time in New Zealand, South and Central America and quick stops in Miami and New York before eventually hitting home sometime next August. It had cost us more than we'd hoped but promised to be another extremely exciting chapter to our trip so we weren't too upset in the end!

On Saturday night we had some friends from work round for drinks and had a great time chatting and drinking until well into the early hours. We have met some great people here in Melbourne; they make work way more bearable and we have a good laugh out of work too.

Sunday was a very lazy day recovering from the previous night and preparing for another weekof work.

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