For Kelly King Travelling South When it came time to move from the North Coast, money was tight and things were stressful.. Old timers may remember some of what was going on in our lives at that time, and I would rather not remember. Mrs K had started a new job at Queanbeyan and had been living at a pub at Bungendore, I was still working up north waiting for my transfer to be effective. Finally we managed to rent a property at Breadalbane, with room for most of the horses. Then came the issue.. how to move? The goods and chattels from our huge home, personal effects for 6 people and seven horses had to be moved 750 km. Resources consisted of our regular pay packets, a holden barina, an old Nissan patrol and the mighty hino horse truck. Available labour was .me , some of the boys and weekends…I had to be at work at least 3 days /week. At that time only no 2 son had just gained a licence. The task was made somewhat easier since some kind soul had burnt down the garage, destroying the motorbikes, much of the saddlery and just about all my tools, eliminating some of the transport worries, but not a method I would recommend. It is quite amazing what you can fit in a horse truck. The back on the old girl is 4.8 m x 2.4 m and a bit over 2.1 m high.. she is a 1978 Hino 300 KL, with a 5 litre diesel engine and about 1500 km range on 250 litres of fuel. First load consisted of beds, tables, chairs, clothes, lounge, fridge, some pots and pans, No 3 son, 2 retrievers and a Rottweiller, Scooter and me. I arrived home from work about 4:30 pm and started loading, had the goods in by 6:00 pm, with a one horse space at the rear. Grabbed a bite to eat, loaded Scooter, the dogs into the cab with No 3 and I and off we set at about 7:00 pm.. It was mid November, and at least there was plenty of day light. If you have never ridden in an old, slow, overladen truck with three large dogs and an adolescent ADHD sufferer, especially after being on the go for around 18 hours, you will have no idea how cheerful I was as we trundled down the divided highway near Karuah around midnight.. The mighty Hino is able to reach speeds in excess of 80 kmh , down hill, if the wind is right. Trundling along the highway in the dead of night being blown around by B Doubles attempting to break the land speed record for amphetamine users is….. interesting. Being stuck on 60-80 kmh doesn’t worry me usually, even going up Waterfall Way at 5 or 10 kmh isn’t an issue, (although the 6 km line of traffic stuck behind may have different thoughts) but these truckies were just as likely to mistake the old girl for a pink elephant and drive straight over the top as they usually do with such apparitions. This then sets the scene..for the thump thump THUMP.. as one of the steer tyres developed a huge bulge..didn’t blow, quite, until I managed to stop, whereupon it expired rapidly. So here we are, at midnight, only just off a very busy road, with a flat tyre (drivers side of course).. well we have a spare, bald but will do for a slow trip. Have a wheel brace.. where is the jack? Recall a blackened item sitting in the ruins of the garage!.. How to change a tyre, in the dark, on a cab over truck (and all the weight that implies) without a jack. First unload horse send her and No 3 as far off the road as possible. Remove divider from truck. Unload half the back to get to the pile of bed slats. Reload truck (and in the process discover that our bed has acquired a distinct aroma of mare urine). Scrounge around off the side of the road and find some rocks and junk. A challenge on a night as black as a politicians pocket. Build a fulcrum with the bed slats. Loosen the wheel, build a pile of rubble under the axle, then put divider on top of the fulcrum and put all my not inconsiderable weight on it. “ Give me a lever long enough and something to rest it on and I can move the world.” Shove No 3 under the truck to pack up under the axle.. Repeat this several times until the divider is bent beyond usability, the bed slats are destroyed and the weight is off the wheel, and even No 3 is starting to look nervous. Then use the wheel brace to excavate a hole under the wheel, avoiding nasty wires and things on destroyed tyre. Finally get old wheel off, and while the truck rocks as each tachyonic behemoth passes, excavate a larger hole beneath the hub. Eventually fit spare tyre, load scooter, bent divider and remaining bed slats, and drive off the cairn.. elapsed time 3 hours. Dear readers you may not credit this, but at 3:30 am on a Saturday morning there is nowhere in Raymond Terrace to buy a truck tyre.. I kid you not! Now this is mid November, and believe it or not a frost is settling ..so decide to call it a night, as I really don’t trust the spare for any but emergency use. Find a park, unload scooter and tether her to the bull bar, explain to No 3 son that I am bigger than him and need the little sleeper shelf, he can curl up in the seats. Explain the same thing to the dogs. Settle down, and as the engine heat dissipates, start to freeze.. debate getting into the back for a blanket, but the effort plus the eau du scooter is offputting,, So just grab a rottweiller and a retriever and close the eyes. I was woken the following morning by a combination of desperate dogs, a horse rubbing on the bulbar, fleas and a hungry teenager. A wait till 8:30, a few hundred dollars and we were on the road again.. Putting us in Sydney, Saturday, midday. I thought the previous night was scary, but is nothing in comparison to dodging the souped up rice burners with the seats laid so far back that you can only see the nostrils of the driver and the Doof Doof music acting, I suppose like some form of early warning system or possibly an urban sonar? In addition there are the families of all shapes and sizes out for a drive or shopping or doing the soccer run (which btw is far inferior to the Pony Club run) in a kaleidoscope of people movers, ranging from the unwieldy to the unwieldy. None of the other road users seem to have any idea that it takes more to stop a truck than a car, and that if it is a choice between damaging my horse or their car, it’s a case of by, by back end. A few of the more perceptive eyed the steel bulbar, battle scarred and rusty, and gave way but the majority just trusted in the gods of lunacy and cut in and out faster than a mosquito at a bloodbank. It had been a decade since I had lived in the metropolis, probably two years since I had driven there, and maybe 20 since I had had to wrestle a truck through it.. Delivery drivers are grossly underpaid whatever they earn. It had taken, by this time, 17 hours to travel 500km. I was tired and cranky the dogs and the boy were suffering cabin fever and were very smelly. It was getting hot and the horse was being as patient as a mare in season can be. (Even though we passed some 20 Km west of Rosehill I would bet more than one entire sniffed the air.) Finally battled our way out of the smoke, and bumper to bumper up the Gloom Byway.. at that time I had never been to Campbelltown, and could not work out the attraction for the 2,435,316 cars that were on the way there that afternoon. (sadly I have since visited, and still can’t). Before you get to the turn off there is a very large rest area, characterised by acres of bitumen, parked semi trailers, a food van that sells anything you want as long as it isn’t hot or cold (the generator had broken down and possibly the filthiest toilets ever seen in a developed country. With the unerring poor judgement I have studiously developed over many years, I decided that would be an appropriate place for a brief break, to let the dogs have a walk, Scooter have a drink and me get a breath of air.. I also thought it may have been an appropriate place to murder No 3, but there were too many people around and the ground was too hard.. You would think people had never seen a dog before, or a horse, or a grumpy and dishevelled man whose knees had seized to the extent he was compelled to waddle like an obese duck. While leading the afore mentioned creatures on a constitutional. The delightful and unmistakeable aroma of “Mare in Season” now permeated the entire load (and to this day we sometimes get a wiff of Scooter from the mattress). Having tried for a coffee (nope) an icecream (nope) a sandwich(same) a pie (you guessed it ) we dined on packets of stale crisps washed down with lukewarm coke, loaded the patient horse and the less patient dogs and set off again. A little further down the road and a sign appears - Goulburn 185..A quick calculation indicates this , at the current rate of progress, is only another four hours or so.. I have since travelled from Sydney to Goulburn on numerous occasions.- .whipping along in a powerful car with cruise control the trip is a doddle. In an old and smelly truck some of those hills go forever.. and no matter how many times I looked, there is no gear between first and second.. the upside is we touched 110 km going down one long slope. No 3 went white and closed his eyes, and the dogs sat in petrified awe. Passed through Marulan, fortunately not big enough to be of interest to the weighbridge, and then Goulburn wizzed by (well slowly anyway). Then the interesting part began. Anyone who knows Mrs K well will have heard she has absolutely no sense of direction. She has at times gotten lost between the front door and the garden gate, and needs a GPS even now to get home from work. Mrs K had found the rental property inspected it and collected the keys. She was supposedly waiting there for me.. But the directions were “It’s a brown house with green sheds a fair way from Goulburn and you can just see the highway, there’s a few trees.” Using these directions I was able to locate a brown house with a variety of multicoloured sheds practically right on the expressway :O.. It was about 4:00 pm, had taken 21 hours to travel 750 km…. I don’t know who was most relieved.. Mrs K who thought we were lost forever, Scooter who had decided the world was a smelly box, the dogs who believed they would never run again, or No 3 who had spent much of the trip in fear for his life,, I was the one who didn’t collapse in relief, as I had to do the same trip another three times in the following weeks, although never again as eventfully
Posted on: Wed, 26 Nov 2014 09:50:06 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015