Cars

Had a good week this week. Tim managed to finally sell my car which is a load off my mind. I'd been wondering how things were going to work out with this sale for a week or so. Initially before I left the UK I tried unsuccessfully to sell it. I had acquired the car when my Grandad (Pop) died a few years back (June 2004 I think it was) and since getting it with only 16000 miles on the clock I'd only put on an extra 30000 miles, and the vast majority of that was added in the last year during my daily commute from Bournemouth to Southampton. It had been a terrific car after the saga of my previous mode of transport, a somewhat dodgy Rover 220 coupe which I'd always wanted ever since getting a lift from one of my dad's friends at his amateur dramatics society. I still remember the smell of that new Rover, a K-reg version in British Racing Green and ever since that day I thought "I'm going to own one of these one day". I finally bought it, my first car, using a fair whack of my savings that I'd built up over the years and in hindsight it was probably a bit of a waste of my savings, but I was sure it was a great deal. It turned out to be one of the greatest drives I've ever experienced, but that turned out to be fairly rarely. The day after I bought it, I drove to Lancashire and on the return journey, the head gasket blew in the outside lane of the M5 ... not what I was expecting. Three replacement heads later, I was back on the road. It then went through 2 clutch cables before I realised a leaky battery was causing that disaster - again the clutch went on the outside lane of the M6 this time, but again not far from the RAC headquarters in Birmingham. At least they didn't have far to come to pick us up!!! So as you can see, I was really happy to get the Micra. It never put a foot wrong and sailed through all but the last MOT, when a leaky brake cylinder called for a rear brake overhaul. Pretty good for a 9 year old car I reckon :-)
Well with the sale of the Micra, we can now start planning the purchase of a new car over here in Australia. We'd been looking since we got here as we knew that we needed to buy one as soon as possible because shift patterns would soon stop falling right for lifts to and from work for Emma. The costs of cars out here are not cheap at all. There are some cheap ones, but they tend to be high mileage and by high mileage, I'm talking seriously high mileage!! In the UK a high mileage car would be one approaching 100,000 miles. We're talking about cars with over 300,000 kms (about 200,000 miles. I know Australia is big, but that is just daft! Izzy came back from a shift last week andtold us of a girl at work who she'd been working with who is also English and out here on a 6-month contract but is off at the end of the week and is desperate to get rid of her car at what ever cost. We went round to her place on Tuesday to see if it was still available, and although she wasn't around (has gone on a short holiday for a fortnight before beginning a new job in Darwin) her house mate was there, although in the process of moving out to also go to Darwin, she let us go and view the car. It is a year 2000 Ford Mondeo and looks to be in really good nick. Yes it does have a fairly high mileage of 155,000 kms, but at only $4000 it is a steal, so we are hoping to pick that up at the beginning of the week after next.
The acquisition of a car will help Em quite a bit as she's on ICU which I believe I've mentioned before, but this means that she does 7 days straight, working 12 hours minimum per day (8am to 8pm), so although she can get a lift into work easily enough, she was having to get buses or taxis all week to get home which is not ideal - especially when buses switch to an hourly service after about 6, and if she misses a bus has to wait around for up to an hour to catch the next one and so therefore wasn't getting home till between 9.15 and 9.30pm each day. It'll also allow us to go for trips of a weekend or on her weeks off and explore a bit of Oz. Something which we are not easily able to do at the moment, but we have been exploring Terrigal quite a bit.
Our explorations were cut short this week however. This was due to what the news broadcasters were describing as a one in twenty year thunderstorm, referring to the quantities of rainfall during one particularly bad storm on Tuesday. Parts of New South Wales experienced more than a months rainfall in an hour and a half. This, following some horrendous weather in Queensland (the state to the north of NSW) where they've had massive floods and only on Monday had 600mm (yes that is over half a metre or 2 foot) of rain in a matter of hours! At least it isn't at flooding stages yet here!!! The storm was mightily impressive though. It passed over us as I was cooking tea on Tuesday. There were bolts of lightning hitting all around, and Rhys (who had gone out) told us next day that he saw a bolt hit the ground about 100m from where they were all walking ... a rather scary experience by all accounts. It soon turned into an electrical storm and the clouds were continually flashing, about one bolt/crash of thunder, every thirty seconds for about 2 and a half hours as it passed over us and out to sea. It has since been raining for at least a few hours each day, with today finally picking up and rain only falling first thing this morning. All this after I sat watching the news over breakfast and was informed by an australian in England that England has experienced the sunniest February since records began - over 101 hours of sunshine by all accounts. Here was us moving to the other side of the world in Winter thinking that we'd be in NSW, by the beach, in February which is always the driest and one of the warmest months, and we are then told on the news that it has been the wettest February over here since records began!!! Typical!
Here's hoping the weekend brings some slightly better weather so we can get out and about a bit more this weekend and go exploring. Izzy is off tomorrow so we are hoping to go and do something. Might go to the Reptile Park near to Gosford which seems like a good day out. They also have a spider acclimatisation area where you can go and see the nasty spiders, and if you are brave enough, go and pick up some of the friendlier types. I don't think Em will like this bit - we were looking at a book the other day and I think she began getting a mild panic attack!!
Will write more shortly,

Tootle pip,
Rich