Rufus the Wallaby

So we were driving along the A3 enjoying the pretty scenery in the dusk light when Graham pointed to a Wallaby hopping along the side of the road. Was cool to see some of the local wildlife...until at the very second we came alongside it, Rufus turned 90' and hopped across in front of us. With a big BANG, Rufus headbutted the underside of the car and rolled out the back and along the road. Good Bye Rufus!

Everything seemed fine with the car as we continued to drive along, but we hadn't gone very far when the gear box light started flashing on the dashboard. Any flashing dashboard sign is not a good sign, so Ollie pulled over quickly. As soon as he opened his door, we could smell transmission fluid....not in the transmission like it should be but all over the road!! So much for a nice stress-free weekend...it was obvious then that our trip home wasn't going to be as quick as planned.

So here we were on the side of the road in rural Tasmania....with no cell phone coverage on either Ollie or my phones. Grahams NZ phone did have coverage though...luckily!!

Since it wasn't our car, and we don't really know about road side assistance etc in Tassie, we phoned the owner of the car, who put us in touch with his insurance company. To find out where exactly we were so that we could give the location to the insurance company we went and knocked on the door of a house near by that had lights on. A lovely couple invited us in to wait in the warmth, and let us use their phone.

The insurance company eventually located a towing company to come and collect the car and told us it would be an hour or so. In the mean time we had to figure out how we were going to get back to Launceston (a 2 hr drive away) or even back to Hobart (about an hour away) where we could at least stay the night and figure something out the next day. In the end we made a call for help to one of Ollie's classmates, Jamie, who very very very kindly drove the 2hrs to pick us up, and then the 2 hrs back to take us home again. Jamie didn't arrive til about an hour after the Tow truck had taken the car, but by this stage it was 9pm so we didn't feel like we could impose on the lovely couple any more (they looked like they were ready for bed!) so we spent an hour or so standing on the side of the road, listening to the Aussie birds talking to the moon.

Not quite the adventure we wanted - definitely not good for our stress levels! And not good for Ollie's classmate who is currently still with out his car!

So apologies to Australia for taking out some of the native wildlife...I'm sure we could arrange for some possums to be shipped back from NZ as an apology gift ?! And a big thanks to all those who helped us out!!!