1 Apr 2023

Early start today and mainly driving through, so it will really just be fuel stops and not a lot of much else. Hopefully there will be no problems travelling through Sydney and the new(ish) city western bypass. it is dual lane most of the way so hopefully there will be no problems with people being able to get past and overtake the slow old car!

Great start to the day, cool and misty, perfect Morris weather

Another Big Thing, the Big Merino at Goulburn, New South Wales

The day started well, clear sky, bit of a chill to the air and some low mist as well, just the sort of weather a Morris Minor enjoys. No problems at all getting through Sydney and not a single angry driver or horn blast from anyone, most surprising. Oh and stopped in at Goulburn, haven't been through there since the highway bypass was put through in 1992. Other than the Big Merino having be scaled down and moved, not a huge amount seems to have changed.

Starting to get late so travelling on.

Traffic report yet again

Nearly at Gundagai, quite a long day driving 

So calling it a night at Gundagai, 890 kilometres done today (553 miles), bit better than yesterdays effort.

31 Mar 2023

Heading back home to Melbourne this morning and there has been no set plan of route or of planned stops, so we'll see what happens and how long it takes...

Didn't do a leave at o'stupid hours so a relaxed start to the morning. Decided that the coast rout will have to do as technically it is the quickest route and it is actually the only route, out of the three main "Highways", Newell highway, New England highway and the Pacific highway, north and south that the Count has not yet been on through New South Wales. That said though the Count has been of part of the Pacific highway before as the New England highway ends at part of the Pacific near (relatively) to Sydney.

Along the way are some of Australia's "Big Things", so will drop by some of these and other places along the way and see how far we get...

The Big Pineapple, Nambour Queensland.

The Big Banana, Coffs Harbour, New South Wales.

Had a brief stop along the way at Grafton to visit with some very good friends and overnighted at Grafton, so not too many kilometres done today in total, only 503.7 kilometres (312 miles), though a lot of roadworks along the way...

17 Mar 2023

 Basically today is just a run through a few towns and getting to the destination with few stops. There would have been other stops along the way, though any water tanks and Silo art are few and far between in the area I am travelling now. So today is heading for the Queensland border and specifically through Texas and on to the water tank at Millmerran before heading to a finish at Gympie. Just a long day of driving with few photo stops.

Texas, Queensland

More of the nightmare traffic, will it never end!

Millmerran water tank

16 Mar 2023

 After a night at Parkes due to no booking having been made anywhere else and limited options, it's back on the road to continue on with the trip up north. Now the plan was to go through Manildra and Molong and on to Dunedoo by the shortest route, though the roads were closed due to flood damage and thus a 66 kilometre diversion out to Wellington and then 112 Kilometres back to where I had planned to go, oh well can't help flood damage. From Dunedoo I wanted to get to a Silo art location in Barraba, again by the shortest route and Google maps highlighted a good and direct route through Boggabri. Well it would have been a good route if the road was sealed or if it even resembled a road. that section sure gave the suspension a good work out and some sections were so bad it was done in second gear at 20 kilometres an hour. I actually could have lost the car in a few of the pot holes in the "road". 

I did drive out to Manildra and Molong but Manildra was hard to get to and see clearly as there wear cars and trucks parked everywhere, so gave that up as a lost cause. Molong on the other hand, the water tank was easy enough to locate at the entrance to the town, but it was impossible to get the car anywhere near enough to get a pic unfortunately. Silo pictures improved as the day progressed though.

The traffic was a nightmare heading for Dunedoo

Silo art at Dunedoo

As it says on the sign...

"Prepare" as the traffic was so bad on the cattle track called a road

Barraba silo art, The Water Diviner by Fintan Mcgee

Bingara the stop for tonight, had hoped to get further, but...

15 Mar 2023

Following on from fixing the car after the little up close and personal from the neighbour I decided to take it for a drive. I need to go to Queensland for a visit, so why not take the Count for a bit of exercise. So with some plotting and planning decided that on the way up may as well visit some of the Silo and Water tank art on the way. Well actually none of it is technically on the way and some of the locations are well out of the way to get to. To get to most of the ones I want to see it involves quite a lot of extra kilometres that wouldn't be necessary if going direct and it would take less time too, though that isn't the point of a road trip is it.

First day plan is Melbourne to Goorambat Silo art, then into the Winton Wetlands for the CFA water tank art. It is then onwards to Chiltern for s look as I haven't been before and then over the Victoria/New South Wales border and off to Walla Walla, then through Wagga Wagga and Junee to Harden for more Silo art and on to Grenfell for yet more Silo art.

That was the plan anyway and mostly followed that path, though it went off track there due to lack of accommodation options and fuel, the plan was amended to head out to Forbes and Parkes for somewhere to sleep. Had hoped to get further, though all the back tracking between art sites and travelling at 80k's tends to slow thing down a bit.

On to the photo progression of the trip:

Out on the highway ready for the early departure

First brief stop at Benalla

Silo and shed art at Goorambat

CFA water tank art in the Winton Wetlands

Water tower at Walla Walla

Water Tower at Yerong Creek

Silo art at Murrumburrah-Harden

Magnificent Grenfell silo art

Day one ends...

21 Feb 2023

 Apart from a flasher can for the new lights that I have installed the car is basically good to go for now, though it does need some areas touched up paint wise in the near future.

The new lights are a pair of front parking / indicator light that were briefly fitted to some of the early 60's cars, between the old single use parking light from the Series 2 and the parking / indicator jobbies that i had on the car previously from the later series 1000's. It's a much better look and closer to how the car is supposed to look, so that is a good thing. The reason for not installing the earlier Series 2 lights is that they are singular parking lights only and it is much tidier to have the new ones as they are parking/indicator in one unit and they can fit an LED "bulb" so that is even better. 

Installing the "new" guard and the new LED powered side lights

Everything went back together fairly well and only required a light degree of swearing and cursing to come together properly. The "new" guard is a much better fit, being and original part, that the other guard which is a pattern part like the one that got crunched. Everything just lines up better with it and seems to sit much more "properly". Thankfully the bumper is not too out of square, so all the previous work done wasn't totally a waste.

Everything lines up better and the new lights look much more in keeping.

New sidelights look so much better than these old ones

The concerns over the colour match with the new paint seem to have been unfounded, as even though the colour in the tin looks much darker that the old colour, once on the car it is so much closer than was expected. Only real problem is that it really shows up the rims that are still in the old eye matched colour that was way too green.

The rims are now very obviously the wrong colour

10 Feb 2022

 Slowly, slowly is the process of getting the car back onto the road after the neighbour collided with it recently. Naturally as I am doing the work myself it has become a bit of a snowball situation and as per the last post, I have added a few extra jobs to the mix that has taken a lot longer than it would have if I had just replaced the guard and grill panel alone as per the brief.

Having already cleaned up the lower engine bay and wiring, as per the last post, I have managed to get the grill panel, grill and radiator support panel back into the correct shade of green (Valley Green, 1955-1957 only and only in Australia. Good luck finding someone that has the original colour mix directions anywhere!).

Now all that is required is to put it all back together and reinstall it in the car. That said the tidying up of the bonnet catch mechanism and the pivot pins has been added to the list and I have just realised that there is supposed to be an additional spring between the bonnet catch and the radiator support panel which hasn't been on my car since I have owned it. The whole system has been relying on the anti-rattle spring on the release handle to make it all work. So now I have to wait until that spring turns up from the parts supplier before it can all go back together.

Further to the additional jobs that I have added, there is the worrying line of rust bubbles along the bottom of the drivers door that have been expanding for a while now. I have started working in them and discovered that there is a frame inside the door that basically makes reaching the bottom of the outer panel almost impossible to reach. I managed to duct tape a piece of garden hose to the vacuum cleaner hose and get that into the cavity to clean out old pieces of broken window glass and dirt that I managed to scrape up with a really long screwdriver and a steel ruler. It cleaned a lot of rubbish out of the cavity and I then filled the space with a rust converter/preventative spray through the open door and every drain hole and rust hole in the panel. Hopefully that will hold the rust at bay for a while until I can get some sort of paint into the space.

So now it is on to repairing and sanding the outer panel and getting it back into a reasonable state, which includes the paint bubble/blister damage in the middle of the panel from some years back.

 

Would like to be a Panda car when it grows up perhaps.

Onward we go...