I really should have seen it coming.
The service was 10 months overdue, the engine oil light was flickering on and off and the engine had been making rather concerning noises in the quiet bit between songs.
But nonetheless, I was still surprised when every single warning light came on while driving down the Hume on Saturday night and my car came to a sudden, really quite awful, halt.
She was driving, then she was not driving, then the RACV guy said “maybe she overheated? Give it a spin?” and she was driving while making horrible, awful noises and then not driving again, but worse this time.
I bought the car off my history teacher in 2013, days after my final high school exam, and sold it for $100 to a mechanic in Seymour on Sunday morning, who tutted at me for not taking the most basic precautions to stop my car dying.
You know what? Tony Abbott was right. I scoffed at his comments about a car being a man’s castle when the debate about the East-West tunnel was all the rage back in, what, 2013?
“Just catch the train!” I thought of yelling to our onion-eating PM. “Join the rest of humanity and catch up!”
Now, a pandemic, moving to the country and a blown up car later, watching the farmland of Mangalore and Murchison glide away beneath my feet while on the train back to Shepparton, I have to concede the man may have had a point.
There’s nothing quite like having a car of your own, and for nine years I’d taken my beautiful, wonderful Nissan Pulsar for granted.
It was a realisation made while on a walk — funny how less glamorous that feels when it’s the only option — from Seymour’s McDonald’s back to my hotel on Saturday night, which coincidentally took me past every Seymour new car dealership, a used car lot and a car wash.
We had some good times, that car and I.
The first drive to the Macca’s Drive Thru; the first time I changed a tyre near Benalla; drives through gorgeous Blue Mountains scenery blasting Taylor Swift’s iconic 1989.
That time it blew a radiator; trips driving across the Great Alpine Road and the Pacific Hwy; long days on the Hume; that other time it blew a radiator.
And who could forget the time it blew a head gasket and I drove it for four months because it was lockdown and only had to travel 800 metres to the shops, but it still overheated in those 800 metres because, I repeat, it had blown a head gasket and what was I doing driving it?
Good times — now all in the past.
Fare thee well, Tilly, and thanks for the nine years of loyal service. You were the best Nissan Pulsar I ever knew.
I’m sorry I let you down by being a big idiot, who doesn’t know how cars work.