Mount Evelyn

We spent a couple of nights and days with Bun’s niece, on their farm and a trip to Ballarat to see her sister Carole. Carole is vacating her house as her youngest son, William, is returning from Japan where he has spent the ski season, and is returning to “voluntary isolation”. As William has no residence in Australia, he’s taken over his mother’s house!

On Friday we drove 4 hrs to a dealer on the west side of Melbourne only to be told that, due to coronavirus , the motorhome market had collapsed. Many “grey nomads” rely upon their superannuation funds for their income and those funds are invested in the stock market which is collapsing, la la la.

We already have a fallback position, the dealer we bough Bertha from will buy her back from us at approx 60% of what we paid, not a great deal, but better than leaving Australia without having sold her.

I received a message to say that the person who was going to view her on Saturday had family problems and had put off buying a motorhome. This situation is getting me down 😡

I didn’t have much confidence in the guy who was looking at her today (Friday) as he’d told me all of the problems with the way I was going about selling her. It’s not my fault that the system of each state having different requirements makes selling a vehicle terribly complex.

Allan and his wife Gaye met us, looked around Bertha and we went for a test drive. Lots of questions but many negative comments. They said they’d let us know.

As we were “in the area” we had contacted some people that Bun hadn’t seen for many years and agreed to drop around for a cuppa. We are getting used to the Australian perspective of distance, driving two hours to go out for dinner is not a long journey.

Chris and Wendy live in Mount Evelyn so not hard to imagine that it made Bertha puff to get up there. Having said that, Bertha covered 250km averaging 84kmph earlier in the day so she can get a wiggle on if need be. Wendy came out to Australia with Bun’s sister Carole around 1972.

A cuppa turned into a take away fish and chip dinner and spending the night in Bertha outside their house. Allan and Gaye phones to ask if they could have another look at Bertha on Saturday, they would be driving through Mount Evelyn and could meet us there.Read more