#48

Events of the past few months

March .. Well in a nutshell, you split with Jemma and sadly decided to come back here because you had no other place to live, bringing Jimi your kitty and all your belongings. Poor little kid :-( Not a rosy outlook at all. )

Next thing - a couple of days later you were offered an apprenticeship at Toyota Co-op, oh wow have you ever landed on your feet there, even though the pay is pretty crap, like $6.81 this is a wonderful opportunity for you, I wonder what would have happened if you had been offered this opportunity a month earlier. Anyway, this is a bonus for me, you are back home again, lol. The downside being that you have to drive back and forth to your work - a round trip of minimum 3 hours each day. Understandingly this got you down, especially with oncoming winter and driving back and forth in total darkness. The inevitable happened and you damaged your precious car a little when you hit a wallaby and after that fortunately one of your co-workers offered you a room to share in Hobart, wonderful news. So you left again, in the middle of mum and dad's visit here - yeah everything happens at once, lol.

Then on the 9th June, Queens Birthday holiday weekend.... this happens

a very bizarre day! It was beautiful weather and I was all set to take off on a 5k walk nearby then you called in tears ..... you had damaged your beloved car .....

Awww geee how sad

Really sorry

This happened the night before, you and 2 mates had been cruising and you took a hilly corner probably a little too fast, said you were not speeding (ur a boy!) and your 2 offside wheels came off the road onto an embankment (pic following), while the car was on the tilt it hit a rock with the undercarriage of the car so ended up with damaged radiator/sump/thermotstat fan/steering gear and obviously cracked an engine mount or two as the engine was on a slight tilt and popped a tyre, the stuff draining in the pic is remains of oil and coolant.

You and your mates were unhurt but you are heart broken of course. The car was not insured for your own damage (only if you damaged another vehicle) and its market value is not much so now you need to get the damage assessed and find out costs so to make a decision on whether it is viable to repair it. You can't afford to get a loan for another, only making A$6.80 per hour as a first year apprentice auto mechanic so you are in a hard place at the moment.

I went down to Hobart where you are living to pick you up to bring you back here so you could borrow the small one to get to work and back, you have to travel next weekend to another capital city to do TAFE training for a fortnight next Sunday, so needed some wheels.

Now we get to the bizarre! After I picked you up I asked you where this had happened, it was only 5 minutes away so off we went, saw where it happened, did a U-ey and went back for a closer look and to take some pics - this had happened in the middle of the night so you wanted another look anyway. So we are dawdling along this road, you hanging out of window taking pics when ....

in the rear vision mirror I saw a car pop up on the crest of the road behind us, it was absolutely flying, the driver negotiated the slight bend, obviously saw us at the last moment, wrenched his steering wheel to the right and I saw him lose control. I gaped, heard his wheels screeching and scrunched up my eyes, waiting for the impact when his car hit us from behind!!!! After some moments I heard him go past us, narrowly missing our car, totally out of control, his car mounted the embankment and flipped over onto its roof right in front of us then slid into the barrier. I could not believe my eyes !!!!!

Ohhh what !!!!

All I could think was I hope there wasn't kids in the back! I could see the driver hanging upside down, then thankfully movement and he was struggling to undo his seatbelt. I grabbed my mobile to call for help and you jumped out to help but the driver managed to quickly get out. On his own fortunately. He was unhurt but mad! He was yelling something at you, then came over to me and pummelled on my window yelling at me to open it and he was going to call the police. I said I was already doing it and he took off back up the road and disappeared ! End of story. Gone ! Bizarre eh? We gave our statements to the police, the tow truck picked up the car and we continued shakily on our way none the wiser. Don't want another day like that one in a hurry!

As a postnote, You finally sold your commodore for $150 - very very sad and I am so sorry you lost your beloved commodore but yeah we were in a bad place, nowhere to fix it, no idea of how much damage, well now you are back to driving your little old suzi, your first car, lol.

Love from Mum

xxxx