Quite a Car-fuffle

1st - 3rd April 2015

I had a job in Cootamundra which was a few hours inland from Sydney. The only thing is I needed and Responsible Gambling Certificate (RCG) to allow me to work with the gambling machines called POKIES. Most of the rest of Australia will let you do this online but not New South Wales. I also realised with a pang on panic that my Responsible Service of Alcohol (RSA) wasn't valid in NSW so I needed to get that too. You have to do these in a classroom in New South Wales. I literally had two days before I was due to arrive at my new job. The only place I would be able to get an RCG and RSA at such short notice was in Sydney. I'm in Melbourne. I had only one option. Spend all day driving to Sydney and spend all of the next day, 12 hours, in a classroom doing the RCG and RSA courses back to back. It was an effort but doable but something happened which made the stress levels rise immensely.

Good Morning Melbourne

After spending the night on the ferry from Tasmania I arrived in Melbourne in the very early hours of Wednesday 1st April. I had an epic 9 hour drive to complete so I fuelled up, got some snacks and hit the highway. It was slow going getting out of Melbourne during rush hour despite me heading out of the city, the opposite direction to everyone else.

I stopped off in some country town service station and had myself a KFC. Just a sidenote: it was honestly the best KFC I've ever had. It looked like a new store so the equipment must have been brand new or something. It was delicious. Anyway, it was when I was going back to the car after fuelling up that I first noticed a problem. There was a large puddle underneath the engine. My small water leak had turned into a stream. I filled up the radiator with as much water as I could and hoped I would be able to at least get to Sydney and then Cootamundra where I would be able to get it fixed.

Yeh, nah....

According to the mechanic this was a separate issue but when I was going up a hill it started spluttering. I had lost all power. There were a lot of cars around me only being a few hours from Sydney at rush hour but I couldn't get up the hill. It was quite scary having huge lorries catching you at an alarming rate. I pulled over. I turned the engine off thinking it had overheated and I just needed to let it cool down and then hopefully it would work again.

Yeh, nah....

It wouldn't start! I was so stressed! This was no April Fools joke. I was screwed! No one was pulling over to help. I have no insurance and no idea what to do. I started googling frantically trying to find someone who would help me. I found a local towing company from the nearest town of Mittagong who could tow me into town for $100. That'll do I thought.

The nice tow truck man towed me into Mittagong and dumped my car outside a mechanics before dropping me off at the train station. I still needed to get to Sydney! I'd spent money to this these courses, I wasn't to miss them! I got into Sydney later that night after an extremely stressful day. I checked into the same hostel I had stayed at last time I was in Sydney.

The next morning I headed into the CBD to spend all day in a classroom. 12 whole hours! It wasn't exactly boring but by the end I honestly wanted to kill someone. I spent every break on the phone to the mechanics as they tried to assess my car and let me know the cost to fix it. It turns out the fuel pump had failed. They didn't even notice to the water leak until I mentioned it. That was a separate thing and also needed to be fixed. Total cost - $1200 and two weeks to fix. Not happy. But at least I had a job to go to where I could earn this money back.

Yeh, nah...

The next day I caught the train from Sydney to Cootamundra to start the most ridiculous job I've ever had in my life.