The Murray

Again, no pictures, but they'll show up sometime, I promise.

Alright, so where have I been? Well, after exploring Melbourne for a couple of days, Adam and I headed to the north end of Victoria where there's a wholoe lot of nothing. Once you get 2 hours north of Melbourne, you hit the flatlands around the Murray River Basin. And they are FLAT. I'm talking Saskatchewan, see-20-miles-away flat. This is the agricultural heartland of Australia, but after ten years of drought, it's in a sad state. Just check out the once-great Lake Boga, now completely dry. As you drive away there's a sign reading: 'Farewell, Lake Boga'. Irony? You know it is.

Anyway, it was right around here where the Littlest Hobo (that's the name of our car, for not on the up and up) starts squealing something fierce. That's not right. So we pull over, pop the hood and notice that our fan belt has nearly slipped right off. Not only that, the pulley that holds the fan belt on is shot. Just then, who should pull up beside us but Mick Sparkes. Mick Sparkes, the man who repairs old cars for a living, the man who'll drive you all around town to get the best price on the parts you need, the same man, in fact, who'll put you up for 2 nights and let you use his garage to fix your car. Needless to say, we bought him a case of beer. And the Pajero's running great. Turns out our harmonic balancer was shot, as well as a seal on our main drive shaft. Plus, we decided to change out the timing belt while we were deconstructing our car. For those who are not mechanically inclined, this basically means that we had to take apart the whole front end of our car, something that would have cost us several hundred dollars in a mechanics shop. But at Mick's, you can do all the work yourself. He told us what to do and gave us a hand when we needed it and we did the rest. Pretty fun in the end, and a great learning experience. We couldn't have broken down in a better place.

For the past week, we've been bumming around South Australia (they have very original names for their states down here). The Hills around Adelaide (that's the capital city) are very scenic and surprisingly undevelopped and tons of fun just to drive around. We're going to spend Christmas in Adelaide, which is a nice-sized city, much more laid-back and relaxing than Melbourne or Sydney. Staying at a cool hostel called 'My Place', which is small enough that you get to know people, and just pretty awesome all around.

And that's it for now, Merry Christmas all, and to all a goodnight.