When 1 day in Darwin turns into an unintended week….#cartroubles

Let me begin this blog by first saying there is a lot of excitement in finally re-telling this story, to think back it was quite a load of hilarious horse sh**! However it must be known that the contents below caused severe stress, cost us a fair bit of $$, there were way to many visits to McDonalds, we could have been without clothes, and well a mechanic almost felt my wrath.

I’ve set the story up really well now haven’t I? You are just waiting to hear what happened to us when we returned to Darwin aren’t you?

Well let me tell you.

It all started when our red eye flight from Denpasar to Darwin with the wonderful Jetstar. Don’t worry we landed, no injuries, just kink necks from sleeping weird or attempting to sleep. No it all began when, we as the only plane had landed stood at the bag belt. It was full and yet no one went for a bag. And around and around the conveyer belt went, with the same bags over and over. To be honest no one noticed which makes it all the funnier.

It wasn’t until one of the border security guards cleared her throat and announced that the Jetstar staff were so embarrassed about what she was going to tell us, that they had left the airport already. She proceeded to tell everyone that the bags on the belt were not our bags, go figure, but those of a flight that was destined for Cairns. You can guess then where our bags were right?

We laughed, I mean it’s 6 am, we haven’t really slept in 24 hours and we really could have taken our bag as carry on it was that small. Ahh well what can you do in that moment?!

Once we cleared customs, we headed over to the Jetstar check in desk, where a ground staffer was unfortunately receiving a lot of blame by other passengers for what was happening. Poor lady it really wasn’t her fault! We filled out our form, gave my parents friends address and we headed to their house.

We grabbed our car they were looking after and headed into the city to drop it off and get serviced. Whilst it was in the shop Alex and I roamed around town, almost fell asleep in the park on a bench, and then actually had a nap on the grass, with a number of other people by the waterfront. The day was going well, it was hot, we were tired, the usual really.

So the days progressed and it’s mid afternoon. We get a call from someone at Jetstar, he informs us that we will receive our bags that evening when they come in on the flight from Cairns. Great we get all our toiletries back! Living out of car means we don’t carry much and most of that was in our bag, with Jetstar, in Cairns, and not with us.

With the security in knowing our little bag would be returned to us we were in great moods. When we picked up are car things were a little different.

Do you recall in a prior post, where we mentioned we had blown a shock absorber? No? Well essentially on the Gibb River Road we experienced some bumpy as F*** roads which in turn caused a shock absorber to blow. That’s at least what we thought and had been told in Katherine.

Well ok we did blow a shock absorber, but it wasn’t just one it had been all four!!! Now I have absolutely no knowledge about cars other than after this experience four means $$.

So when we collected our car it was not completely fixed. We had to take it to a mechanic again, we could have taken it back to the one in Darwin but we wanted to continue our journey and leave the next day. So with two new and two old and slightly ok but slightly broken shockies we took the car and stayed a night in Darwin, ready to continue the journey the next day and deal with the not so ok shock absorbers when we arrived in a bigger city, maybe Cairns.

Well fate, the car or maybe just Darwin did not want us to leave, because that evening Alex noticed that we had a few little oil leaks coming from the bottom of the car. He called the mechanic we had seen, mentioned what was happening and he was given some instructions to clean it up and wait to see if it continued after a few hours, he admitted that it could be just un-cleaned as he may have not done that.

Two hours passed and unfortunately the leaks continued. Alex called again and we had to take the car back into the mechanic because well those leaks shouldn’t have been happening.

So sure that is not a problem, except for the fact that it was Saturday and mechanics don’t work on weekends do they? No so we had to wait until Monday…

So as our title suggests 1 intended night in Darwin turned into a weekend in Darwin.

But I wont give everything away in one post, with the amount I have to write I’ll bore you to death. So stay tuned…..

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