Getting the Autovilla to the Farm

Limping, sniffling and stuttering...

We had our camper. We had each other. Mother in Law following behind in case of misadventure. And a misadventure it was. Derek looked like a child that had, had all his Christmases come all at once. The sun was shining. The seats in the camper were comfortable.

We hadn’t really thought a lot of things all the way through in our over excited naiveté. For a start, we didn’t take into account that it was Saturday afternoon by the time we got the camper and headed for a family member’s farm. Small towns in South Africa are interesting, at around 2pm on a Saturday.... things tend to close and we needed fuel. So before we set off we got some directions to the nearest fuel station.

However approximately 25km after happily trundling off with the camper, the entire cab was filled with smoke and smelling of burning oil, which precipitated a hurried stop next to the road. As we found out later, the dipstick set in the block? Yeah, that had come loose and separated itself from the casing... that was the oil that had been fouling up the cab and, spritzing itself out the back and all over mother’s pristine white Suzuki Celerio.

And woe. The minute we tried to start the camper up again to get to the fuel station... She refused to start. That lack of foresight to bring... well anything for a 40 plus year old vehicle that we didn’t know? It left us with a bent teaspoon we found in the glove compartment to fix whatever had gone awry. Incidentally, that bent teaspoon has come in handy several times since. Maurice, to his credit drove out to us with some tools and oil to see what could be done. Eventually we were once again on our way to the fuel station.

The camper took an inordinate amount of fuel, considering that we were under the impression that it had only a 50 litre tank. The smell of fuel inspired us to get out, only to find that there was a massive pool of fuel underneath the camper, where it had somehow escaped. Nonetheless we chose to trudge on, disheartened. The fuel jockeys pushed the camper into starting and we were once again on our way. Thankfully the cab did not fill up with smoke again (but only because there simply wasn’t enough in there to come spilling out) and we crept onward slowly. We chose to go over the dam wall at the Hartebeespoort Dam to avoid the toll roads and plod, given that the license issue had not yet been resolved. The camper drew eyes on stalks at traffic intersections wherever we went.

These Autovillas are not all that common on the road any more. We are sure it was a sight to behold. Hawkers and gawkers abounded. One man was so impressed with the lumbering behemoth that he gifted us two black Stetson style hats, the same are now sitting in a newly built bookcase inside the camper. We began to feel lighter and brighter as we wound our way through the verdant hills onward. About 100km from the farm, something went drastically wrong.

We couldn’t get the camper into 3rd gear, it slipped, crunched and groaned. It is a manual gearbox, so a stick shift. Intersections became a game of careful timing to avoid needing to coming to a complete stop. We were in no way sure that we would get her started again should she stall. Eventually we managed to park her in a field next to mother’s house on the farm.

It turned out that there was a problem with one of the fuses under the driver’s side seat, she started again with the minimum in fuss and hassle once the fuse situation was remedied. Finding a replacement dipstick for the mangled one proved to be a fools errand. Derek attempted a repair with Pratley Steel. Everything seemed to be holding. We breathed a nervous sigh of relief.