It appears that we cannot get away from the wet weather for long. The Melbourne area was hit by heavy rain, torrential downpours dumping over 100 mm of rain in many spots in just over an hour. It was the remnants from Cyclone Anthony which moved south through the middle part of the country and came through here last night. Many of the roads were closed including the freeway from Geelong (where we were last night) to Melbourne. In our blissful ignorance, not having listened to the news this morning, we set off not knowing there was a problem.
We awoke early to come into Melbourne this morning to get our awning and windscreen repaired. We didn’t get too far out of the city when the M10 highway was slowed to only one lane of traffic. We inched along for several minutes until we could see the reason was the road was flooded. We drove through water running over the road, though not nearly as deep as we did in Queensland. Along the way we saw several cars sitting off the edge of the road. With one it was obvious why. It was right in the middle of the road at the on-ramp sitting in about 50 cm of water. I imagine it had stalled there. Shortly after that we came to a sign that said “Freeway Closed” so we followed the majority of the cars over the off-ramp, and back onto the highway on the other side, as there really didn’t seem to be anything much wrong with the road. Not far up the freeway though the water was again over the road, but again not too deep, though it took a long time to inch along the highway until we got through it.
We then drove into the northern part of Melbourne to get our awning repaired. Enid did a great job of navigating using our less than perfect map (we don’t have one with enough details of that area) and our notes from Google Earth we prepared last night. We really need an Iphone! When we got to the awning factory it appeared to be closed. I knocked on the door, and was about to leave and get on the phone when Enid called and said that someone had opened the door. We were able to get our parts and fixed the awning so that is working again.
After that we drove to the windscreen repair shop. Since we arrived there early we waited in our motorhome until after we’d eaten lunch and then they fixed the front window. It took a couple of hours, and we waited in their waiting room. While there a family came in. The woman was the most annoying person I’ve met in a long time, and her kids didn’t fall far from the tree. She sat with her sleeve over her nose, complaining about the odor of the adhesives used, saying “I’m going to throw up, the smell is so awful in here”, while she proceeded to stuff herself and the children with food, and they turned up the volume on the TV (while Enid and I tried to read). However, we did get a nice new windscreen out of the deal, and so now we’ll just have to wait and hope that it was installed correctly and doesn’t leak.
We had a bit of trouble finding this caravan park, again as our map isn’t very good, but we made it here with only one short wrong turn. The grounds are damp, but nowhere like the caravan park that was on tonight’s news. About 10 km from here the park was flooded and the campers had to leave at about midnight. A large tree fell on one tent of three women from England. One is seriously injured, and they interviewed the other two (one of whom has a broken collarbone). Eucalyptus trees are very big and the branches would be very heavy if they fell on you. Fortunately we’ve had no problems like that.
I was brushing my teeth tonight when I saw a gray-haired woman approaching our door with a rolled up paper in her hand. I thought she was coming to tell us something, but she just kept on coming through the door. Then she looked up, saw me, and shouted in shock “Mama mia!”. She retreated to her own motorhome which is right next to ours talking to herself in Italian the whole way. I never said anything as my mouth was open wide to floss my teeth! I’ve no idea what she said as she left, but the whole incident was very funny.