Tambellup… or bust

I’ve been thinking about how I was going to write up the Tambellup trip since Saturday. One version starts off: “The reading of this post may be enhanced by listening to the theme music to Gilligan’s Island“. Or “The GPS [Global Positioning System] device finally came in handy at approximately 1017 hours.” Or, simply, “We didn’t make it to Tambellup.”

That’s right, folks, we didn’t get to Tambellup! But it wasn’t for lack of trying. It all started out very positively. The alarm went off as intended, at 4:30am (which seemed awfully early to me) and we were at the meeting point at uni by 5:55am. We were finally off and on the road by 6:45am, all packed into a 20-seater bus, complete with an inflatable penguin for company. We were told that we had to travel behind another bus, “just in case anything happened”.

It was this other bus that started it all. About 40 minutes or so out of Perth, it started to really labour trying to get up the hilly Brookton Highway. At one point I think it was doing 10km per hour, so we had to suffer the ignominy of crawling along behind it, while the rest of the traffic whizzed on past us at 100km per hour.

When we finally found a safe spot on the side of the highway to stop, it was established that the clutch in the first bus was not working properly. The smoky odour emanating from the bus wasn’t inspiring much confidence, either. After much discussion and investigation of which mobile phone networks worked outside the city, it was decided that some of the people in the “good” bus would go back to Perth and try to make our own way down to Tambellup. Yes, M and I volunteered to go back to Perth, along with our colleague MR, and use our own car to get down to Tambellup ourselves.

So while most of the people in the dodgy bus piled into the good bus, me, M, and MR hopped onto the bad bus to make the crawl back to the city. Surprisingly the drive back was uneventful. Perhaps the fact that it was mostly downhill all the way helped.

We were back at uni and on the road again in MR’s landrover by 9am. We decided to take Albany Highway instead of the ill-fated Brookton Highway. It was all going fine, until a few minutes past 10. What I remember most about it was the stricken look MR gave M when something popped in the engine. An unpleasant smell started to permeate the car and smoke started coming out of the bonnet as MR quickly pulled the landrover over to the side of the road. We all hopped out very quickly and watched the smoke and steam and green coolant spew out of the bonnet.

Our journey down to Tambellup.

The car cooled down eventually while we stood around wondering what to do next. Luckily it was a beautiful day. MR called the RAC who promised to send someone out to us. This is where the GPS really came in handy, because we knew exactly where we were. I think MR was consulting the GPS in this picture.

Unfortunately it took the mechanic about an hour and a half to get to us, during which time we ate some of our food, discussed the bizarreness of the situation, read, wondered if we could still make it to Tambellup, tried to work out what had happened to the landrover (MR), and explored the bush (me – I came back to the car after seeing the empty, rusting oil drums seeping into the earth).

When the mechanic finally arrived, he took one look at the engine, said it was “cooked” (must be a technical term), and offered to tow us back to Perth for the princely sum of $2.80 per kilometre. (It ended up costing MR $310 to get the landrover towed back to his place in one of the northern suburbs. I wonder how much it will cost to get it fixed!) We finally got back to uni at about 1:30pm, hopped in our little Barina, and went to MR’s place to collect our gear which had been towed back to the city in the landrover.

All in all it was a most unusual day. Did I mention that it was my birthday too? I don’t think I will be forgetting my 35th birthday in a hurry. The Day We Tried to go to Tambellup.

Categories: Western Australia, A Couple of Unfortunate Events