Cold. It makes you do funny things. It also makes the heater in our van do funny things, turning it into a non-functioning piece of junk. I have mentioned this before, but according to the poorly translated instructions that came with our machine of happy warmth, when the temperature outside becomes too cold, which is defined as about 2^oC, an alternate source of warding off the frost might be necessary. Well, wouldn’t you know it, but the little red winking lamp on our supposed blast furnace was aptly telling us that it was in that vicinity of being too cold as we tried to drift off to the land of nod last night, in a van almost devoid of warmth.

Someone Wasn’t Happy About The Heater Situation.

Then, if getting to sleep at something close to 2:00AM wasn’t bad enough, we were, much to our surprise, rudely awoken a few scant hours later by the incessant buzzing of my phone. Oddly, it was a work colleague calling, enquiring as to my whereabouts, given that due to someones inane incompetence, I was expected back at work this morning. Even as the cogs turned over slowly in my over tired, weariness fogged mind, did I do the mental calculations, working out that even should I expend the energy to start driving home immediately, we wouldn’t arrive until such time that my first day back at work would have been coming to an end anyway. I may have iterated this rather tersely before hanging up in someones ear and diving back beneath the duvet to continue my warmth deprived slumber until a much more sensible hour.

It was at this much more realistic hour of 10:00AM, which is more than reasonable given that I was still on holidays, that I heard back from the office, from a further colleague who I honestly suspect drew the short straw in the ‘who’s gonna call Marcus back office sweepstakes’! With my imminent return to work sorted out, in my favour and not until Wednesday as originally planned, thankfully, I was able to relax into the day, knowing that we were now in no rush to get moving. A good thing we figured, as the only place we were going today was home.

It was with this ultimate destination in mind that we ever so sluggishly packed up the van for the final time, wasting time in a madly vain effort to prolong our holiday by as many minutes, seconds even, as we possibly could. As the clocked ticked over from morning to afternoon, we could put off the inevitable no more however, as we bid our kind hosts farewell, before shunting ‘The Beast’ into position before the tin can, reefing the gear selector into drive and accelerating slowly down the dirt road towards the highway.

With Horsham quickly becoming an ever diminishing smudge in the rear view mirrors, I opened up the throttle of ‘The Beast’, loping along sparing but a couple of kilometres of the speed limit, letting the heady purring of the engine ticking over fill the otherwise aurally muted space, the four of us lost to our own silent thoughts for the most part of the trip home. My mind for one, was running wild, thoughts streaming through it like a newsreel, played in fast forward, alternating between conjuring up gaudy pictures and memories of where we had been over the past five weeks with images and plans already for our next tremendous adventure. I’ve got a few ideas up my sleeve, but also am I, open to the persuasive powers of suggestion.

It was thus, that with only a very brief interlude to garner some tucker from the fridge in the van to satiate an unexpected appetite, did we make our way home. And what a relaxing drive it was, the moments of utter monotonous tedium broken up only by the fun of having to slow down for extended bouts of road works zones, then upon our approach to Melbourne, gaining a reminder lesson in the ineptitude, bordering on insane, driving skills of Melbournians. I would not hazard to suggest that in all the driving around Australia that we have done, our own local Melbournians are the absolute worst, lacking in everything from common courtesy and etiquette to the much more imperative skill of actual road craft. Yep, after having travelled only a whisker under 7500 kilometres over the preceding five weeks, it took barely 15 kilometres on Melbournes fair road network before I felt the stress levels rising, while my head spun around dizzyingly on my shoulders in something akin to a Linda Blair impersonation as I tried crazily to watch for what the traffic around me as doing. Yes, indeed it is good to be back. Not.

Actually, that last little bit is quite pertinent, because in the now several hours since we carefully reversed the tin can back into its resting place up our driveway, unmated ‘The Beast’ and began the tedious task of unpacking them both, we have spoken to neighbors and taken phone calls from family and friends, all of whom suggested with a sympathetic sigh, that it must feel good to be back home. Well, no. No it doesn’t. We couldn’t really give the little bit of a rat, just below its tail, about being home and would be quite contented with re-hitching our little home on wheels back to the rear of ‘The Beast’ and disappearing for another five weeks, or five months, or five years, or hell, why don’t we just go all out and disappear for ever more into the wilderness. I mean really, it couldn’t have been much of a holiday could it, if you get home at the end of it, with the sole thought running through your cognizant mind of “Gee, it’s good to be home”!

No Welcoming Party, But There Was A Sign That We Were Home.

But, home we are, home we shall stay and as I alluded to earlier, our least favorite task of the entire adventure, the unpacking, has begun. Having toiled away this afternoon into this evening for a solid few hours, I am anticipating that we still have a good few days worth of work ahead of us until we can call it complete.

What I can now call complete, at least until the next time we do indeed choose to hitch up the tin can to ‘The Beast’, wheel our rig back out onto the open road, hunker down in the van and find ourselves bound for as yet unknown, but sure to be delightfully breathtaking destinations across this great wide land of ours, is this chapter of My Rambling Tales. To all who have read and enjoyed, I thank you.

Until next time, have fun, stay safe and don’t forget to write.