I'm shattered. I'm on a flight from Hobart to Sydney on Thursday 13th Jan and I can barely type. Still, at least I'm on my flight. This morning there was a real possibility that wouldn't happen.

So what happened yesterday? Lots of things, actually. We started the day feeling optimistic despite the weather continuing to frustrate us with rain. We had meat and a public barbecue and we'd all had hot showers. Good start. Then we went to Queenstown and things started to go a bit wrong. Firstly the speedo died and I had no idea how fast I was driving, the wipers had slowed down and even the clock was dim. Got some battery or electrical issues, then. I economised on everything electrical and we were eventually driving through the rain with no wipers in the middle of nowhere, still 20km from Derwent Bridge, the next tiny point of civilisation. And that's when the engine also spluttered and stopped. We were pointed downhill at least, so we looked under the bonnet and nothing looked obviously wrong. We let the engine cool and flagged someone down with Telstra (no other mobile has any signal outside Hobart) and got them to call the rental breakdown number from Queenstown. We then roll-started the car (thankfully it was a manual) and got another kilometre before everything stopped again and we were now facing uphill. Can't push start that. We were stuck.

That was when we were offered a lift to Queenstown in a passing 4x4 with one spare space. I went and in haste we didn't make any solid plans to meet up that night. I told the others to try to get to Derwent Bridge for the national park. They had the car keys. I phoned the rental company from Queenstown and they were no help until tomorrow. So I went and got a spare battery and sat in the wind and rain trying the hitch a lift back to the car. For two hours. I got a slice of pizza for my troubles, but no lift, until Fred, the guy who was staying at the house I was stood at, offered me a lift up there. He even brought a four pack with him. What a bloke!

When we arrived at the car, Lorenzo was still there, and the car was full of balloon animals! He was obviously bored, but he had waited the whole 4 hours since we broke down. Martyn and Brecht had hitched a ride to Hobart so it was just the two of us. I replaced the battery using Fred's socket set and gave him 20 bucks, and we could start the car! We drove on to Derwent Bridge before the familiar spluttering started again, and that was it. We pulled into a hotel car park for the night, used their phone and got nowhere with the rental company again. We slept in the remarkably comfortable car. Possibly comfortable because I was exhausted.