Tag: car

Day 2 – Modern Day Vampires

Day 2 – Modern Day Vampires

by Jupiter and Sons ♥ 1 Comment

We awoke on the morning of day 2 in a freezing swamp and wondered if sleeping in a swag in the middle of a racetrack in central NSW during winter is really for us.

Each day we are adding something to our list of basic things not to do. This morning it was don’t leave your shoes outside when you’re sleeping in a freezing swamp during winter.

We pulled on wet, crispy boots and went, shivering, to breakfast and the morning briefing. It turns out the whispers about the Astra are true; not only did it tragically pass away yesterday, the owners seemed to have locked the doors and disappeared, taking the keys with them. How this was achieved without a car in the middle of the NSW desert I am not sure. What I am sure of is that such behaviour is frowned upon by shitbox organisers. The drivers of the Astra, whose identities remain unknown to us, were the subject of quite some derision. It seemed that somebody was going to salvage their wheels however, which was a silver lining.

We also learned during this briefing that recent rains in central Australia meant that one of our key unsealed roads was unsafe to drive upon, which meant a two day diversion from our original itinerary; because, in central Australia, a washed-out road takes two days to drive around.

So we returned to our makeshift camp and tried to forcefully squeeze our enormous, not-at-all-shrink-wrapped mattresses into the back seat of our car. We eventually managed this, although the situation as it stands is untenable.

We then turned our attention to the dress-up theme of the day; ‘punk’, for which we were very unprepared. We have been about 22 hours behind schedule ever since our Carnival incident, and so our window to procure punk outfits in Melbourne had evaporated. We had some costume elements of Voldemort, white face paint, flamboyant renaissance painter, medieval peasant belts and a lavish, faux-velvet Dracula jacket. We did our best but ended up far closer to ‘modern vampire’ than ‘punk’; very, what we do in the shadows – Fauce like one of the well dressed ones, and me more like the emaciated 1000 year old ghoul in the basement. These outfits did, however, provide nice juxtaposition to the red dirt and country pubs we toured throughout the day.

We covered about 550km today; Hay via Ivanhoe, Menindee and Broken Hill to the gorgeous remote town of Silverton; famous for camels and Mad Max. We saw wild roaming cattle, goats of all shapes and sizes, birds of all colours, a huge golden sunset, kangaroos and wild emus. My wild emu count at the start of today was zero, now it is 37. This was a real treat.

We spent most of today again on sealed roads, due to the aforementioned diversion, so the fabled ‘triage tent’ remained without many patrons. But one feels this might change tomorrow, with about a million kilometres to cover on the dirt.

Oh, also the shitbox rally attracts a rather handy, practical genre of human. I am not saying Fauce and I are not without our skills and talents, but we have been keeping a list of the many things we have seen going on around us that we don’t know how to do. I’ll start that list now:

  • Open a beer without access to an implement specifically designed for this purpose;
  • Roll up a swag into any reasonably sized package; and
  • Get a ‘carby’ started with a small plastic cup of petrol that still had some red wine in the bottom.
Day Minus One – More smoke and steam than we had hoped

Day Minus One – More smoke and steam than we had hoped

by Jupiter and Sons ♥ 2 Comments

It’s Thursday, the rally starts in Melbourne in two days.

Started bright and early on the South Coast having made it safely from Sydney. Feeling smug. Car driving well enough. Some of the doors don’t open, the clutch is smooshy, first gear is pretty elusive and there are strangeish quirks with the locks, but in general things are looking bright.

We purchased Simply Red Greatest Hits and Love Songs 70s, 80s and 90s on CD from the Braidwood Vinnies, found a roof rack and installed it poorly, then purchased the incorrect tie-down strap for the spare tyre but it seems stable enough. Fashioned some flag poles from PVC piping and bought an over-spec’d esky and hundreds of cable ties. Procured five bumper stickers from Milton, Braidwood, Yass, Gundagai and Holbrook.

All day we’d been saying things like ‘woah that clutch doesn’t smell great’ and ‘geez, smell that burning oil? Oh well. That’s what you get for $1500’… and then just around Wadonga, with misplaced hubris, we started congratulating ourselves on our fine preparation and very very foolishly declaring pre-emptive victory. We’ll be in Melbourne in no time!

And very, very shortly thereafter… Oh, we’re slowing down, Fauce said. Oh no, we’re overheating. Oh, yup, the engine has cut-out.

By the time we had rolled to a stop on the shoulder there was alarming smoke/ steam/ smoke stuff billowing aggressively from all sorts of places. We bounced out of the car with our tiny, single use fire extinguisher at the ready. Pointing it this way and that.

After a minute or two, when we were slightly more confident our car was not about to burst into flames, we approached it with caution, like one might a caged tiger. We gingerly popped the hood then looked in. Yup, it looks really hot and smoky and not driving, we confirmed.

So, after eating a banana each, we used the power of a mobile phone and a credit card and before long Rhys from Murphy’s Mechanical and Scrap services in Euroa was with us. He confirmed the engine was really hot and smoky and not driving and then hoisted us and our shitbox onto his truck.

So now we are drinking nice red wine and eating a chicken curry in a lovely country pub in Euroa and wondering what tomorrow might bring us. Rhys has a wide selection of very shitty looking cars in his scrapyard so it may be possible that by lunchtime tomorrow we will be cruising in a very beat up Mercedes, a battered Bedford Wagon or a clapped out Euroa taxi, all of which we spied in his yard.

Stay tuned.