A post from the past.

Its Autumn (Fall) here in Australia and I'm still struggling for something to write a post about, this has been going on for months now and if I didn't love blogging and my network of blogging friends I would have just given up by now.
Instead I'm going to reach back into my memory chest and see what I can make of an old story, memory is a funny thing as no doubt a lot of you know already, I can walk from one room to another and upon arrival have no idea why I'm there sometimes (too often over the past few years!) but I have a quite serviceable long term memory.

Dad and I not long before we lost him.

I have decided on a story about my Dad to see if that will regenerate my incentive to write, I am going to tell you a true story if it sounds familiar to some long term readers that is because I have posted it before, I hasten to say however that this is not a re-post but a new telling of an old tale, I for one will be interested to see how similar they turn out to be.
The link above will take you to my previous telling of this tale it was a chapter of ICWAB (I could write a book) about my Dad.
This all happened a long time ago, in another lifetime in fact, one in which my Dad was still alive and I was happily married (or believed I was anyway).
Two of my very industrious cousins on my Dads side of the family had organized a family reunion at Sale in Victoria which had been the hub of the family network since my great, Grandfather settled there, I am purposefully avoiding dates here as these are not part of the things I remember clearly.
Dad was living in Queensland, some 1000 miles away from Sale, but was never-the-less keen to attend, he asked me to go with him, while I was not very interested, when he showed disappointment at this news I decided that we should all join in the spirit of the reunion and go to it, I am very glad that I did this as I thoroughly enjoyed the event and renewed a lot of childhood friendships.
The next day at the Motel we had stayed at Dad asked me if I could drive him home, I assumed that he meant back to Shepparton where he was staying with my Sister Merle's home, I said sure I could drive him home and inquired about why... was he feeling sick or something? we eventually got to his real meaning... home to Queensland!!! and also to his reason, "Oh I thought you could keep the car for the return trip" he said.
It gradually dawned on me that he was offering me a 3 year old Mercedes Benz if I drove him home in it, once the "penny dropped" it didn't take long to accept his plan and about a week later we set off for Queensland.
The Mercedes was a 300D model, the D signified a diesel engine which in turn meant very economical motoring so some 500 miles up the track I announced that we needed to re-fuel, Dad who had insisted he would pay the trip expenses asked if we could make it to the next town as fuel there was cheaper there, another look at the fuel gauge told me this would be a foolish risk to take, when I told Dad this he said "OK then we'll put $10 worth in here and fill the tank at the next town."
Fuel was in fact cheaper by 2 cents a litre there so Dad felt quite justified in his decision and he saved about $1.00 on the deal, the fact that he was giving away a $40,000 motor car yet had gone to the trouble of saving $1 on fuel seemed perfectly reasonable to him, and who was I to argue with my benefactor???
Without incident we got Dad back to Queensland and eventually ourselves back to Maryborough and so began the many years of happy motoring in our Mercedes.

Julie with the Mercedes, not very flattering of Julie but the only photo I could find with the Mercedes