They finished the last of the work, gave the van a quick wash.
We go through the hitch up routine, hand over a large cheque, we’re almost right to go. The van and the car are wired up for the van’s reversing camera, we’ve plugged it all in, but it’s not working. A problem for another time.
I nervously drive it out of the factory, now to navigate north Melbourne to the highway. Only left hand turns allowed!
Onto the Hume. You certainly notice he weight! But we are on our way. The 1st hour or so was just concentrating on keeping it in the lane and getting the feel, particularly when being overtaken by large trucks, did I say divided double lane freeway were boring……. with 2t on the back they are not, they are wonderful. Anyway the van tracked pretty well and didn’t show much sway or unsteadiness.
As the K’s pass you start to get use to the weight and movement, and we settle into the drive. It’s about this time I start to realise the car is working a bit harder than I would have expected. For a six speed gearbox it is spending a hell of a lot of time in 4th. In fact most of the time I need to get it into 5 via manual override, only for it to drop back at the slightest incline. Also at this time I notice the fuel economy is heaps worse that I was expecting, on the way down we got about 650km out of a tank, and we’re now looking like we will be lucky to get 370km. The thought of working the car this hard and going through this much fuel has me picturing a much harder and expensive trip than I had planned. A little voice in the back of my head is asking have I just spend an obscene amount of money on a combination that is not going to work.
On a positive note, Justine got behind the wheel. A bit of a baptism of fire, first time towing is a huge van on a freeway. After a nervous start she got use to it and found the driving pretty easy.
We made it as far as Gundagai and pull into the local van park for our first the night in the Van.
