Way out West 2025

18th of July. Day one – Moe to Mildura.

We got away at 9:55. Today’s crew is Mary and Phil and Stef.
We’ve chosen to leave a day or two earlier to enable a run past Lake Eyre.

Smooth sailing through Melbourne, despite a slow patch due to a breakdown on Todd Rd.

Loo and. Lunch at Calder Service Centre then North via the Calder. A beautiful sunny day (mostly) for a drive.

Then all going well until it wasn’t.
Stef saw smoke from back of my vehicle. Turns out I’ve cooked the brand new bearings on passenger side of Tvan. So pulled up on side of Calder Highway about 5:15. 18kms from Ouyen and about 120 from Mildura where we are booked in tonight.
Luckily I was carrying spare bearings. Unluckily the old bearing was so cooked that the inside bit was stuck tight on the hub. We had nothing amongst all our tools to budge it.

Called the RACV at 6:36 only to be told they couldn’t help as it wasn’t my car with the problem. I offered to purchase Total Care but no good there either. I indicated that I couldn’t drive my car as the Van was hooked up and in pieces.
She put me on hold for a bit. I had told her we only needed some tools and we could (Stef and Phil that is) remove the offending piece and make the repair. Thankfully she came back and said the Ouyen depot would come out. I asked her to have him phone us first but she said she couldn’t. We settled for RACV to come.
To my surprise the phone rang shortly after and Hamsa from Ouyen was asking what we needed.

Even with his angle grinder and cold chisels the offending piece remained stubbornly in place. Hamsa was great he kept at it, as did Phil and Stef. None of them were good at standing back and watching the other two at work. Mary and I held torches and fetched and carried.

Eventually after a lot of elbow grease, grunt work, hitting, hammering and grinding it came off.

The job of fitting the new bits wasn’t straightforward either. Hamsa hung around for a while and then left us to it.

Eventually, the wheel was back together and we drove about 100m up to a side road to check the drivers side. The fellas decided the big nut on the stub had been done up too tight and this was probably the cause of the issue. They backed it off and at 9:33 we headed at a sedate pace for Ouyen with no electric brakes and stopped to have another look there. Both bearing hubs were cool to the touch, thankfully, so we grabbed some Pie Face pies for tea at the United servo and took off for Mildura – another 100kms, planning to stop every 10 mins to check on them.
After the first check (all ok) we drove to the Buronga Caravan Park, arriving around midnight.

Everyone knackered. The fellas worked really hard to get me on the road again and to say I was peed off is a massive understatement. It was getting very cold as we stood and worked. The sunset lit up a tiny cloud and the stars were amazing. AP we found my star too.

Not sure what we do now. Will discuss that in the morning. In the meantime it’s time for bed, if the brain can stop whirring.