Road trip interrupted

Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011 at 10:05pm

A few days ago I posted the map that was the plan for the Canberra to Cooma section of our road trip. Apart from skipping Corin Dam, it pretty much went to plan. The following day was Cooma to Merimbula via Bega and Tathra, we also kept to this plan:

View SE NSW 2011 Tuesday – Cooma to Merimbula in a larger map

We had a plan for today, head inland from Merimbula to lookouts, waterfalls and rainforest walks before looping back to Eden. We got to Wolumna Peak and started to head west to Myrtle Mountain via fire roads, but this happened:

You see the dissipating smoke surrounding the car? That is the remains of the clutch…

The more dramatic action shot is:

After this our priority was to get back to the main road, which we almost did until being stopped by a creek about 200 metres short. A 2km walk later we had enough phone reception to call RACV/NRMA. It took two hours for them to arrive, but they pulled us out and got the car to a mechanic in Bega. As it would take more than three days to fix (you do have to remove the whole engine and gearbox from the car) it will be towed back to Melbourne instead of being repaired.

But what about us? A taxi got us back to Merimbula to a motel (everything was booked in Bega) and we shall pick up a rental car tomorrow morning. All thanks to RACV Total Care.

Unfortunately we will only have the rental car for two days, and they are only paying for 200km per day. As the direct route from Merimbula to Melbourne is 560km, we will have to pay that difference plus that of any detours we make. It also means we will return to Melbourne a day earlier than planned. We are updating our itinerary now…

Tagged with: road trip