It wasn't that long ago I was writing about a minor catastrophe with a pothole in Bright.

I went to Melbourne for a birthday on Saturday, visit family, then came back Sunday morning. On the Hume Highway, travelling at 110km, my front right wheel dropped into a deep, small pothole. With a bang.

Didn't feel good, but the car seemed to be driving ok. Fifty KM later, not so good. Odd noises coming from the front wheel.

I stopped at a fuel stop, filled up and then spent 20 minutes parked , crawling under the car. I'm no mechanic, and couldn't find any damage. I rolled from side to side, comparing left and front wheels to see if there was a visible difference. Then I started putting my hand on different segments. The bearing cover on the right wheel was almost hot enough to burn my fingers. On the left, slightly warm.

I left, got back on the highway. Five km further on I pulled in again at a roadside rest area. I rang my wife to tell her I was already behind schedule, might be a slow trip home. And again, checking the front wheel, it was very hot, even though I'd been at rest for 20 minutes.

Back on the road and now I was hearing metallic crunching, and the steering started to wobble. That's it!

I pulled to the side of the highway. Conveniently a road crew had left a yellow road safety sign behind on a job, so I parked my car in front of that. No protection from someone sideswiping me, physically, but it would be less likely someone would hit me from behind with the sign very visible.

I rang the RACV. It was Sunday afternoon and I was in the middle of nowhere, 2 hours from home, an hour from Melbourne. The roadside assist guy showed up surprisingly quickly. I explained what had happened, my guess it was crushed bearings. He jacked the car up and grabbed the wheel...it rattled from side to side. "Yep", he said, "bearings and maybe more damage. You'll need a tow."

The tow truck part of the trip took longer. One towie in the area, he had just left for a job that was an hour and a half away. So it took him three hours to get to me.

Where I was there was nothing much to do....the roadside dropped away rapidly and it was much quieter down below the road level. Pleasant enough light scrub to look at, but no birds and a lot of rubbish. I walked up and down the road a bit. I found a 20 litre bucket and used that as a seat ( It was too noisy to sit in the car, and I was still worried about being hit from behind by someone not watching the road.) A car accident had happened where I had stopped. There were blue fragments of a car body flung through the bushes, streamers of police tape, broken light fittings.

I fished my laptop out of my travel bag, but no luck in the gully hotspotting my phone. So just a long bout of thinking.....

Towie was a nice chap, from a farming family, and I enjoyed the conversation as he drove me and my car the two hours to the mechanic we use in Myrtleford. Sunday, no one there, so I parked the car under the security camera at the mechanic's and dropped the keys, and a note, in the keybox. My wife drove in to Myrtleford and picked me up. All in all it took me eight hours from Melbourne to home. Normally its four with a rest stop.

It could have been a lot worse....at that speed, the force of hitting the pothole could have caused a catastrophic, abrupt collapse rather than a gradual disintegration.

I'm not the first one. The towie said they are getting two jobs a day along there. Sometimes people break both front wheels and/or the axle.

Post-script: I was told a few days later you can lodge a claim from with the Victorian Government for damage caused by poorly-maintained roads.

Off I went to find it. Yes, you can! The bubble burst pretty quickly.

There's a minimum damage allowed of $1680. You can only claim for damage above that amount. All you have to do is fill in the form, including a photo of the pothole(!) and location.

Oddly, I didn't stop on the Hume freeway to back up and take a photo of the pothole at the time, and by the time I had realized I was nursing a damaged car that wouldn't make it home I was long past the pothole, which was on the other side of the road....and my car wasn't going anywhere anyway. Certainly not back the other way.

And my damage bill was 'only' $1500.

So yes, there is such a refund possible. I doubt anyone ever gets it though.

Post-post-script: Apparently the fund never pays out! ABC: 3 Oct 2025: One per cent of road damage and injury claims lodged by Victorian drivers approved for compensation over two years