Been to the dentist yesterday and was quite positively surprised. He had been recommended to me by a guy from Kalgoorlie and that recommendation was spot on: He even treated me for free! There is also news regarding my car.

It turned out that the dentist was really quite young - maybe 35 years old - and that he has done a fair bit of backpacking as well. He asked me how I liked OZ so far and I told him about the car and everything and he said that almost the same thing had happened to him when he was backpacking Europe. The chipped crown wasn't very hard to fix; he just smoothened the edges so that nothing else would break off. And then he sent me on my way and said that the treatment was free. He also asked me to put a few of his cards on display in the hostel which I was of course more than happy to do.

The car is driving again - but...

The other rather pleasant surprise was my dealings with my car-dealer. As mentioned earlier, there is no warranty on cars that costs less than 2.000 AUD and since mine costs 1.900 AUD I was pretty much stuffed as far as my right towards the dealer go. But it turned out that he was really decent about everything: He had the car for three days, exchanged the distributor cap, put a new coil in, had it looked at by a different garage and didn't charge me a dime. He even gave me another car for the three days he had mine. Considering that he could have simply told me to get lost, I think that he was really decent about the whole thing. So I picked the car up again and drove it for one hour around town. Originally I had only intended to drive for 15 minutes but the absolutely insane combination of one-way roads sent me around Perth for a whole hour. I mean, seriously, I have never seen something like this! It's as if M.C. Escher and H.R. Giger got drunk together one night and developed Perths absolutely insane road-network. The good news is however that the car was running beautifully during the whole time. Even during stop-and-go on the highway and when I had to stop at traffic lights on steep hills. She was behaving very, very nicely. The downside is that according to the dealer and his mechanics the main problems is the carby (again). They said that the one I got in Albany wasn't very good. So I said: "Well, put a new one in then." But here is the clincher: Since the car is 20 years old, new carbies are no longer manufactured for this model. That means you have to buy them second hand (as I did) and that means that even if I buy a new (used) carbie it might have the same problems this one has. So there is basically nothing that can be done - except for me buying new carbies, just like other people buy stickers from places they visited: "And I bought this beautiful 1986 model in Exmouth, and this slightly blackish one is from Broome...". I don't think so. But if the car continues to run as it did today then I'm happy, old carby or not. All the other things they did with the car certainly did improve how she is running - but of course it coud be that I was simply lucky today. Well, we'll see, but I did put her through all the kind of things where she used to buckle - and she did fine.

"Rev the oil up!"

There is one other thing - though I actually find that rather funny: Obviously they mixed two wires up when they were repairing the car so that now the rp-meter is connected to my oil-indicator. I.e.: When I rev her, the RPM stays motionless but the oil-indicators needle goes up and down :-). I suppose, this doesn't really show a lot of comptence on the mechanics part but I just can't help to find it funny. They'll do something about that tomorrow morning and then I'm off!

Next station - Kalbarri?

I'll be travelling with the two German girls and not the Canadian. Not because I didn't want Sandy to come along but simply because I wasn't able to locate her. Really weird. Whatever. I"d like to think that we'll make it to Kalbarri tomorrow, 600 km north of Perth, but let's see how much progress we make on the road. I definitely don't want to drive there in the dark. Today I spoke to a girl who had just been there and she told me that they hit two Kangaroos on the last 50 km to Kalbarri. I can do without this.

On the web:

M.C. Escher
H.R. Giger
Kalbarri