Following the break-in, departure from Melbourne ended up being delayed by 2 days, with the rear window being fixed that afternoon, but one of the two struts holding it in place also needing replacing and not being available until the following afternoon.
It turned out that when I explained the damage over the phone to Windows O’Brien the girl I was talking to decided that instead of ordering the strut in at the same time as the window, they would wait to ensure the strut was actually damaged (even though I had explained that it more resembled a pretzel than a strut). This meant that it then was impossible to get the strut in until the following afternoon. To top it off they asked me to bring the car back in at 2pm the following day to get the strut repaired, promising that they would call should the time need to be changed and then left me waiting around for an hour before it arrived (following being told that it would take an hour for the repairs the day before and then waiting around for over two hours I was pretty happy with the service at this stage).
One outcome of being held up for the extra days was that Harry could celebrate his actual birthday in Melbourne with Iris and Grady. He actually thought the thieves had done us a favour and was quite happy with them smashing into the car.
Finally, on Friday we managed to set off. First stop was Strath Creek, for a quick lunch in the park and then we moseyed up the road to find the Hume and Hovell Cricket Ground - http://www.humeandhovell.com.au/.
Some 4 years earlier, while on a flight back to WA from Canberra I was chatting to the lady sitting next to me. Part way into the flight, after finding that we were heading back to Victoria as a family for the following Christmas, she asked me if I followed cricket and then told me about this beautiful, private cricket ground north of Melbourne, built and owned by her cousin. She then provided the details of her cousin and the ground and insisted that we drop in to visit it.
Sadly, on that trip we didn’t ever manage to get close enough to visit, so thought we would make a special effort this time around. When we arrived there we were directed up to the main house by a man working doing some repairs around the front gate. Before we had even managed to get to the front door Don (the owner) was out greeting us. He then proceeded to show us around the main part of the grounds itself and opened up the club house for us to look through. The tour included a very healthy history of the ground and was a wonderful interlude in the days travels.
Following this we kept going up through Shepperton to my Aunt Sally’s place in Koonoomoo. After I had extricated myself from a bog hole commonly referred to as her driveway we set up camp for another few nights and prepared for a second round of catch-ups.
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