Day 6 Thursday 7 September 2006 Darwin

Well, 4000km and 495 li later we had made in on schedule, and pretty uneventfully. The morning was spent frantically sorting, washing and packing before our appointments with Perkins and customs at the port at 10.30am. After meeting the Perkins rep, we drove the car into the port area where the customs man stamped our export forms. He couldn’t find the engine number but a frantic call to BMW elicited that it was inside the engine and to see it would require the engine to be removed. Ok in Aus but how would that play on the Pakistani or Laotian border?
On returning to the Perkins office we were gaily told that the ship was stuck in Singapore with rudder trouble and wouldn’t be leaving for another week. Jane was not exactly happy having dashed all the way from Sydney, and was even more pissed off when we found that having exported the car we couldn’t take it out again. Fortunately we weren’t in India and she’ll be right mate ruled so we repossessed it and headed back into town for a stiff drink and to regroup.
Restored by an excellent late breakfast beneath a banyan tree at W cafe and bar on Mitchell Street, soon to become our defacto office, living room and dining room, we started to replan what we would do whilst waiting for it to depart and arrive Singapore on 25th Sept instead of 17th. Given our own departure date was fixed for 12th we faced 2 weeks hanging around in Singapore so started exploring going to Vietnam or Thailand for a week.

Weather 27 Sunny
Distance today 30km
Distance from start 3999km
X5s today 0
X5s from start 3
Creme brulees today 0
Creme brulees from start 0