Thursday morning, what I estimated to be a 3 hour trip from Murrurundi to Wyong turned out to be 4.5 hours thanks to the Hunter Valley section of the New England Highway being mostly 60 km/h due to towns, road works and traffic jams. So we didn't get to Vanderpoel Smash Repairs at Wyong until about 11 am.
I went into their office to tell them I was here for the trailer with the red MX-5 on it. John, the tow truck driver who had brought it, and the Pajero, in off the Sydney/Newcastle freeway, said "Oh that. We sold it." I replied, "So I won't have to pay any storage charges then." Actually, I had already seen it safe, and they were kind enough not to charge for the 4 days of storage, despite the framed price schedule including storage charges, that I could read on the desk.
I took this shot out the back window of the Vitara, with my dad watching while John moved the trailer out with a forklift so I could back onto it.
Then we headed off back up the freeway, this time pulling nearly 2 tons of aggregate trailer mass, about 20% more than the Vitara itself. I began to have even greater respect for Graham and George (suziauto and yurgi) who had driven the vehicles and trailers the 1200 km from Brisbane to Canberra, and one of them back again, at speeds up to 110 km/h.
As I was driving down the first long hill and the speed got up to about 100 km/h we could feel a severe case of "tail-wagging-the-dog".
Feeling it was one thing. Looking in the rearview mirror and
seeing the wild gyrations of the trailer was quite another. Some kind of resonance was just building and building with apparently nothing to damp it. Dad said "Brakes!" and I eased them on very gradually until the speed dropped to about 80 km/h and the lurching from side-to-side finally ceased. I think I may be suffering from PTSD (Post Trailer Stress Disorder) for quite some time after experiencing that. I'd better warn my wife not to worry if I wake up screaming. "It's just another trailer nightmare", I'll say.
We drove more slowly after that and texted Graham for advice. It came back as "Move the MX-5 forward 6 inches on the trailer". So at the next rest area we stopped and did exactly that, despite the fact that there was alread considerable down-force on the towball, and despite the fact that the present loading had worked better with the Pajero than more forward loadings. It worked! No more death wobbles at 100 km/h. But we still drove most of the way home at 80 km/h. It was easier on the tyres, the engine, and the nerves.
But we seemed to leave a path of destruction in our wake. As we passed Masonite Road near Newcastle (yes masonite, not melamine-coated MDF

) we saw a sign saying it was closed due to bushfire. We learned the next day that shortly after we passed through, the Pacific Highway itself was closed there, due to the bushfire.
We decided to stop for the night at a place called "Woombah" -- kind of like the sound of an elephant farting under water. The "Woombah Woods" caravan park is a few hundred metres off the Pacific highway along the road to Iluka, and the sound we heard the next morning was
far more disturbing than an elephant fart.
One of the fathers of MeXy the electric MX-5, along with Coulomb and Newton (Jeff Owen).