Clearing out of Warrandyte

This was another trip to Melbourne. I had this grand plan of having an early night the day before, and then hitting the road during the early hours of the morning. As much as you might try, it’s almost impossible to break the circadian cycle. Our planning for this trip involved being in bed shortly after getting home from work, getting up at about 2.00am to drive the truck through the night to arrive in Melbourne in daylight. In this way we would be fresh enough to make the drive and get on with our work without much need for rest. We planned to have breakfast at Volumes, one of the local Eltham eateries, and then get to work. But it’s difficult to sleep when you don’t need rest, and the best I did was doze on Friday evening.

I got up about midnight after a very patchy rest. S didn’t sleep at all. We headed off, S in the ute and me in the truck. S had cruise control set on the ute which made it difficult for me to keep up with her. She could go up and down hills at a constant speed, whereas I found that difficult in the truck. Inevitably, we drove for a bit, got tired and had to stop along the way, just south of the Victorian border. S later had to stop again for a rest, while I kept going. It was drizzly on the way down the Hume Highway. It was a miserable dirty night.

I went straight to Fort Knox self storage while S was napping somewhere on the Hume Highway. I wish I had a camera with me when I opened the door to our storage. It was a sight to behold. I don’t know how I got everything inside. I set to work packing everything into the truck. The rain was clearing, and S arrived just as I was loading the desk. Loading took much longer than expected, and I was running out of energy.

S spent the rest of the day cleaning out the garage at Warrandyte. I forgot how much stuff we still had lying around the place. Of course, Melody had moved into our old house by this time. I began by loading the campervan onto the ute. I was tentative about doing this.

Loading the camper took me ages, but the repaired jacks worked just fine, and fortunately the anchors I had fitted to the ute were in the correct positions, which was a great relief. I was also dreading connecting the trailer extension lead, expecting to see problems with the electrics. The last thing I wanted was an electrical problem, but it was perfect.

I began loading a few boxes onto the truck that S had packed. It took so long. I don’t know how many times I’d walked up and down that driveway. It was tiring. There were so many little things to go into the truck that carrying everything down the long driveway and then walking back up that long, steep, drudge, time after time was painfully slow and sapped energy. We decided to borrow one of the trolleys from Fort Knox to see if it would help. The trolleys were heavy duty things, and would probably support the load of just about anything you might care to put on them. They were on casters and really so easy to manoeuvre.

It was a failed experiment, and we returned the trolley after using it only once. The trolley was a bit like the ones you see in railway stations or airports, hooked together to carry luggage, and pulled behind those funny little motorised vehicles, and about the same size as those trolleys too. I didn’t realise how heavy the trolley was, and it took quite an effort to push it up our drive. We got it loaded up with some of our boxes, but it took both of us all our energy to stop the thing from careering out of control as we took it down the driveway, because of the weight. The casters also made steering difficult as it tended to follow every variation in the driveway, rather than straight. The drizzle and wet drive didn’t help. What a flop of an idea.

There was nothing for it but to return the trolley and carry on loading the truck by carrying each box down the drive one or two at a time. Had I known the campervan would have gone on the ute without trouble I would have loaded it last and used the ute to ferry everything down the drive to the truck. But I didn’t want to have trouble and be trying to fix problems in the dark. The lesser of two evils. Though, it would have been a great time saver.

Eventually the day started to lose its light, and a continual drizzle settled in. There was a lamp in the back of the truck, but it was very bright and dazzling on the eyes, and would have flattened the battery quickly. So, I didn’t use it. There was a street light about a 100m away which shone into the back of the truck somewhat, and I found that car headlights shone into the truck as they drove down the street, and both provided adequate lighting for packing; funny about that. It’s interesting how your eyes cope with poor lighting conditions. The drizzle continued, and we gradually got drenched carrying the boxes to the truck.

S was buggered, and so was I to tell the truth. And, we went off in search of a place to stay, and called in at the Eltham Gateway motel. We’d both passed this place thousands of times while we’d lived at Warrandyte. It was funny to be staying there now. We must have been a sight; both of us wet, grubby, and untidy. We had been working hard and it would have been difficult to tell whether the dampness on us was sweat or rain drops; probably both. I was wearing t-shirt and jeans and when we arrived at the motel, it seemed a rather pleasantly mild evening. Everyone else was rugged up in coats and shivering; it’s all relative, I guess.

The spa bath after the day’s effort was irresistible, and we had a lovely meal at the motel restaurant, and a real bed. Our furniture hadn’t arrived in Canberra as yet and we’d been sleeping on a blow up mattress. The bed in the motel seemed luxury. I felt as though we were on holiday.