The father that wouldn’t leave

So my dad left on his little journey around Australia a few weeks ago. I should have known there was no way that this was going to happen quickly and painlessly. Not when my father is involved.

So we went to the Adelaide hills with him, went strawberry picking and watched polo [as you do] I wrote another post about that interesting day called  strawberries, sport and sheep if you want to read about it. Anyway, moving on.

My sister asked whether we would see him again before he left, and, because he is an idiot, he said that he was leaving in a few days, so yes, this would be the last time we would see him, for god knows how long. [N.B. I added the last part in] Thanks for the heads up dad. So he dropped us off at our mother’s house, in his big fancy 80,000 dollar four wheel drive, that was only 2 weeks old. And we walked inside.

My sister stood outside a little longer, she wanted to see him drive away. This is the funny part. She came back inside and informed us that he had not driven away. I went out 10 minutes later. He was still there. After half an hour we decided to drive past him in our car. We thought that he was in the car crying. My dad has an annoying habit of always always crying. But when we drove past, he wasn’t there. However, he was there when we drove past the petrol station.

We went home about an hour later, and my sister and I went over to the car to see what was wrong. He had run out of petrol. What an idiot. This car had a 170 litre tank. He must have thought that it came with a magical tank that never emptied or something because it obliviously didn’t cross his mind to fill it up. The funniest part was that it was right outside his ex wife’s house, mum could see the whole thing.

In fact, it is hard to decide what is the funniest part is about this, because there is more. They had to call the RAA. The RAA, for those that don’t know, is a company that sells car insurance, and if anything is wrong with the car, they will come out and fix it. The RAA couldn’t fix it, because it needed diesel, and they didn’t have any. Dad and his girlfriend [that’s right there was a girlfriend as well!] only had a 5 litre container to put it in, and, being my father, it didn’t occur to him that having a tank as big as his is, 5 litres wasn’t going to get even close to covering the bottom of the tank, making it impossible to start.

So he had to call his parents. That’s right, he had no-one else that could help him, so he got his  parents to buy a petrol container, and some desol, and bring it to him. So then there were six. Seven, if you count mum, who was inside, playing her world music inside REALLY loudly, so that they could definitely hear it.

I was constantly going in and out of the house, to see what was happening, and to report back to mum. One minute I would be doubling over laughing, tears rolling down my cheeks, swearing like a sailor, and then I would compose myself, and go outside to discuss Jane Austen with my grandmother. At one point, my sister went inside, and I heard a very loud ‘Jesus Christ.’ I can tell you I have never seen so many people turn their heads so quickly EVER.

They were not successive in starting the car, so they had to call the RAA again. Finally, after about half an hour, they managed to get the car started. Both the men who came to look at the car told dad and I quote ”you would have to be crazy to run this car with next to no fuel”  They summed it up in one. So after 5 hours, 2 awkward goodbyes, and I think dad learned a valuable lesson. The fuel light isn’t just a colorful suggestion.