After a slow reverse in low range I stopped the Pajero at the top of the woyboy that had pulled Rob up. Rob was busy trying to crank over “Tickets” however the battery was fast failing to slow grooowlll, grooowlll. The starter handle was produced and much heaving applied but still no joy. The slope was that steep that fuel was spilling from the tops of the fuel tank and a decision was made to pull the Chev to the top of the woyboy to sort out the problem. A snatch strap was fitted between the Pajero and the Chev after a slow steady pull produced no upward movement, I decided that more acceleration was required. Backing back carefully to the edge of the woyboy I hit the peddle in first gear, a second latter Bang, Twack! As the snatch strap broke and wrapped itself around the Chev brush guard.
Things hotted up at this point a group of 4 x 4 drivers wanted to descend the spur and one grey haired older woman started to hurl abuse down on us from above. I went up to see her and explain what was going on but she was adamant that people with old trucks were not the type to be allowed out in the bush. Other members of her party suggested that a walk down might be nice and off they went. The drivers remained behind and were very apologetic for her behavior, it had been along day for them and they still had to pick up the old bird up from the bottom of the spur.
Back to square one, why wont the Chev start? Max climbed under and two minutes latter produced a small plastic fuel filter the color and weight of a house brick. This filter was probably installed in the seventies and had worked fine up until today. Max produced a new one and a few minutes latter Tickets fired up and crawled up the spur with absolute ease. I was soon to realize that Max only performed preventative maintenance when absolutely essential ie. After a Machine has stopped, no need to look at things before this point in time.
With all the trucks up the first climb things were certainly looking up, the forest in this area had been on the western edge of the extreme blazes that in 2003 had burnt 1000’s of square kilometers of bush. Some trees in Australia are totally adept at re-shooting after a blaze of horrifying magnitude. However in the Snowy Mountains, two species, the Mountain Ash and Snow Gum have to start from scratch. As we headed east with Mount Bogong on our right and the Elksdale range to our left we had magnificent views. A lot of the lower forest scrub plants had not returned and this added to the vista, a forest carpeted in low fresh green ferns. The super tall straight Ash trees that had escaped the intense heat had grown a new canopy that provided a dappled light in the now very late afternoon sunshine.
Young Matt from Canada Max’ farm exchange apprentice was hanging out the roof hatch of tickets and Emma was back sticking her head out of the Hatch of Ashley’s Chev. Matt is going to go home to Canada with a whole different experience of farming, to put it lightly Max is the like the Dalai Llama of farming in the Yass Community. To be a farmer in Australia you have to be able to relax and not worry too much about the weather, money, looking after livestock etc all those responsible farmer things. I am sure Max has spent a lot of time meditating to reach this state of inner tranquility. Every time I ring him at home Emma has to rouse him from his meditating lounge so that we can talk Old Twuks.
Anyway back to the track, Matt was really getting a great experience of the Australian bush when I stopped the Landrover on a steep pinch thinking that I might need to help Rob up that section in Tickets. Tickets proved unstoppable and powered up the steepest slope so far but as I jumped back in the Landrover she would not move off. The brakes had locked on all the way round, this was solved by releasing the bleed valve on the rear wheel cylinder. The brakes locking on were set to be a problem for the rest of the trip on steep hills especially when applied in a roll back.
Dusk was well and truly about over and night was minutes away, Matt enquired a little worried, “were are we camping?” Not here I informed the group, young Flynn was subject to Croup and already had a fever I needed to get a little closer to a main road. This was to be the start of the two hour night drive section, we soon entered an area were logging had been taking place to recover fire damaged timber. Huge clouds of powdered bull dust were thrown up by the lead truck. I watched the lights of the following trucks turn to candle like flames and then disappear into a sea of bull dust. We soon arrived at the Roosty Spur intersection the blitz crews clambered down from their mounts everyone of them covered in a thick coat of brown dust their eyeballs glowing red in the torch light. It certainly would have been a hard dirty job driving trucks in convoy in North Africa with little water to wash up at the end of the day behind the wheel. A clear mountain stream was now less than an hour away at the old lightning creek loggers camp we took off down the spur track toward our night camp.
Roosty Spur track was free of real heavy dust but covered in fallen limbs killed off by the fires but now dropping to the ground every time a wind blew through the mountains. In the lead truck I had plenty of stops to remove branches from the track in the clear night air I could look up and see a flicker of lights through the dead trees as the four other trucks dropped down the spur. The engines sounded clearly in the night as they rolled down in first gear fighting the slope with their compression.
We dropped about 800m metres in 4 km to the old loggers camp and on arrival there was one other family tucked away in the far corner of the loggers camp. It was now 10.30pm and we had not eaten since the bakery at Beachworth, but before food ,camp needed to set up for the night we set out one gas light in the center of our group and got to work on breaking out tents, tables and chairs. Out of the dark I heard Emma call
“Matt were are the tent pegs?”
“Don’t know” replied Matt
“What do mean don’t know you packed the tent” Emma shouted
“Couldn’t find them when we left home” replied Matt.
At this point Max stepped in and offered up his screw driver set as a solution to the tent peg crisis. A minute latter out of the dark Max calls out
“Hey Matt were are all the Barbie legs?”
“Don’t know” replied Matt
“What do mean don’t know you packed the Barbie” Max replied
This led to a really great all new Aussie invention the Barbie Chair before long sausages were sizzling and the group was starting to wind down from the days drive. Soon Max broke a bottle of Canadian whiskey and things really mellowed out. It was now well past midnight and everyone was totally worn out we hit the sack but somewhere in the back of Max’s truck a chain saw started and growled away all night.
To be continued
