We wont be home for long. In two days we need to be off again on another adventure, this one business in purpose but still an enjoyable catch up with very like minded people
DOWN BY THE RIVER
Chapter 22 – Bowning to Home
Its basically a 6 hour drive from Bowning to Smiths Lake. Along the route there only two (count them – 2) sets of traffic lights which might impinge on the drive and except for the bt from the first ot the second one which are sign posted to around 80 kph, most of the distance is on expressway at 110kph or at least 100 kph.
Given those parameters you would think, again because the maximum speed allowed for towing anything is 100 kph, and optimum for the Cruiser and the van seems to be around the 98 kph mark, we should be able to drive the half a kilometre from Graeme’s house to the Hume Highway, get up to speed, engage the cruise control and sit back and relax (within reason).
Given we are going slightly slower than the trucks and road trains, and we utilise the UHF radio to listen for issues ahead, we can ensure we allow trucks plenty of room to overtake by slowing as they pass and flashing lights to them as they clear us, but being twin laned highway and as professional drivers they contemplate well in advance the needs of the vehicle usually there is never an issue.
As for the other maniacs on the road, the life of a vanner can be quite a different story. All thoughout the M7 and M2, the motorways allowing us easy passage around/through the greater metropolitan area of Sydney I constantly had to come off the cruise control having had a driver pass, merge into our lane and SLOW DOWN. Talk about frustrating!
Dont get me wrong, I see plenty of times, like the time we came out of Sarina in northern Queensland in a torrential downpour stuck behind two motor homes, one pulling the other along (because of a breakdown and it was Christmas with no workshops open) and a huge line up of traffic behind them, clearly oblivious to the turmoil they were causing. My mate Peter Sommerville when giving me my original “tuition/guidance” on driving with a big van always suggested you deal with whats in front of you, but I always keep an eye on the rear view mirror just in case my disruption to the traffic can be alleviated.
Then again you get to the “idiots”. Many a time when we would convoy with others on our trips around Australia, we as a group would come to an overtaking lane in a 100 kph zone, slow down considerably (and I am talking to 60 – 80 kph) to allow as many as possible a chance to overtake but the long line of vehicles behind us would simply stay there. At least we tried
Of course you get those who give the vanners a bad name by speeding up at overtaking lanes, clearly because the dual carriage way gives them peace of mind, thus not allowing the choking traffic behind to escape. The colour of the language on the UHF when such madness occurs can be more than interesting. When the highway patrol finally pulled the two motor homes out of the traffic at Sarina, comments like “I hope they throw the whole pineapple at them” and ‘no I know a better place for the pineapple” quickly made the airways.
But back to the story. Campbelltown, just south of the real metro areas, the heavens open and traffic quite rightly reduces to a crawl with visibility non existent. This was after a police escort passed us making everyone slow down as guilt overtook them almost causing a crash as those locked in the overtaking lane dived for the “safety” of the left hand lane. That meant traffic originally doing 10 kph over the limit having merged on seeing the escort, slowed to 10 kph under the limit, just to be sure. Of course that meant at times having to jump on the brakes.
Like I said that didn’t just happen out on the “open” part of the highway it seemed to happen all to regularly on the M7 and M2.
Once on the northern stretch to the Central Coast (the jaunt between Wahroonga and Gosford) the tradie mentality of drive at 20kph over the limit kicks in and any time spent in the overtaking lane, perhaps passing a learner driver, is met with disdain when you finally are able to rejoin the left lane and they can, in irritation, pass.
The lights I spoke of earlier are at the end of the expressway from Sydney to Newcastle and another at Heatherbrae. Both are in the process of being passed in a diversion but it will be many years off before we can pull the caravan our head south to the Robyns family in Melbourne and not see a traffic light until well into the Victorian Capital and if we are going to those on the eastern side, probably not at all as there are no lights between the expressway off ramp and their home.
We are home and unfortunately not in daylight making it a little more difficult to reverse the van down the drive and into its home in the shed. Taking only the pillows and other sleeping stuff we head inside to lay our heads.
We wont be home for long. In two days we need to be off again on another adventure, this one business in purpose but still an enjoyable catch up with very like minded people
Until the next time
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