Well this is the second year that I have attempted to get to the Ottways for Easter but my car does not seem to like the idea at all. Last year I had to turn back when I reached Bordertown due to 2 studs on the exhaust manifold deciding to pop off. This year I managed to make it there without any dramas, but when we left on the Saturday morning to go drive in the Ottways, my cars "engine management" decided it was not up to the challenge.
Every time I tried to go up a hill the cars accelerator stopped working and the car would just idle. So we headed back to camp with Paul and Paula while Jeff and Jeane as well as Darryl, Karen and Sam carried on.Back at camp Paul offered to take us in his car. Gareth and I accepted his offer while Margie decided she would rather just stay back and read a book. So we headed off again to meet up with the rest of the group at Forest. Once we were all together again we headed into the Ottways.
This is when Paul started to have some serious problems with his navigation system. He has quite a fancy one called "Paula". Anyhow we managed to find some mud as well as a few challenging hills to climb. Darryl managed to get his car bogged and Jeff came to the rescue.Paul, still having problems with his navigation system switched over to his secondary system called "Chris". "Chris" then started to play up and was rebooted back to "Paula". To cut a long story short we ended up taking the scenic route back to camp. That night I took my car for a short drive to see the glow worms and it made the trip without any problems.
Sunday Paul decided that, seeing as he was having so many problems with his navigation system, I should take over the role of trip leader for the day. We went to the Fly Treetop Walk as well as the Triplet Falls before heading in to Apollo Bay to do some shopping. This was thankfully accomplished without any U turns or navigation system reboots.
Monday we packed up early and headed for home. The car made it home without any more dramas and will now have to be booked in so that they can tell me why the Engine Management System fault light was coming on. Hopefully I wont have to take out a second mortgage to get it repaired.Thank you to Paul and Paula for leading another great trip.
C Ya Chris
Disclaimer : please note