Pop Goes The Tyre

Just a few days after our visit to the kombi mechanic and you'll never guess what happened. Well, maybe you will, as you've already presumably read the title of this post! But let me entertain you...

We were cruising down the Midland Highway on our way from one Victorian country town to the next (Bendigo to Daylesford), when one of our tyres went 'BANG'! But firstly, there's something I really must explain about hearing your tyre burst whilst in a kombi.

Driving a kombi or even being a passenger in one for that matter, demands a great deal of patience. Mostly because a kombi is about as far away from the picture of driving silence that you see on TV ads for the latest Volvo on the market as you can get. Simply said? Travelling in a kombi is a noisy experience. Of course with no air conditioning, the wind is rushing in through every available window, you have the radio on maximum volume trying to make out what Dr Karl is explaining about the reproductive cycle of camels on Triple J, the motor is humming rather loudly in the background and now we have the annoying voice of our own little lady reading out street names from our new Navman car navigator. And all this before you even attempt to make conversation!

Anyway, so you can see how driving along the freeway and hearing a loud bang, might take a while to register. Luckily our minor auto mishap happened about 3km from civilisation, so on the off chance that Luke was unable to fix our busted wheel, we weren't in danger of eating baked beans for three days while waiting for a passing motorist to save us from the road side (Note to self: check tyres daily before crossing the Nullabour or heading into NT).

Luke set himself a new pit stop record and changed our tyre in about 5 minutes flat, plus we were able to get a good second hand replacement at the next little town. All these little incidents make me wonder how bored I might be if we had attempted this around Australia trip in a brand new Ford Territory instead of a car from the 70's.

Yours in the great outdoors,

Odette