Tag: cars

Day 4 – Carpeted walls and functioning brakes

Day 4 – Carpeted walls and functioning brakes

by Jupiter and Sons ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

The remnants of our enormous bonfire were still smoldering when we awoke in Hungerford, to a pleasant temperature and a dry swag. We were in outback Queensland, where the dew point is high and the chance of obliterating your vehicle on a wandering cow is yet higher.

There were quiet whispers in the breakfast line that one or more vehicles had not made it through the night. This rumour seemed supported by the battered Commodores and Corollas still sitting on the flat bed trucks here and there. We dropped our heads solemnly as we ate our packet weetbix. We also heard, indirectly, that somebody had left the rally and maybe they weren’t coming back and that their partner was driving alone, and liked it better that way, or maybe didn’t like it at all. Also, that a certain buddy group wasn’t getting along, or somebody wanted a new group. It occurred to us for the first time that maybe we were on a school camp, with all the personal turmoil, rumour and strain that entails, but a school camp for people in their 50s who are also drinking a lot. This hadn’t occurred to us at all; our group was reasonable, harmonious and relaxed, and also we were so distracted by our obvious capability gaps and out-of-sync costuming that we hadn’t had time to consider the relationship aspect of what was going on around us.

Also, most of the men today are wearing wedding dresses, so that tends to offset any genuine discussion on the human condition.

The theme was ‘white wedding’, which had been enthusiastically, and rather gloriously adhered to by most rally participants. This was another theme for which Fauce and I had planned to shop in Melbourne, but ran out of time. Also, we had misread it as simply ‘white’ and Fauce had procured a white body suit for the purpose and we had thought maybe I could just wear white undies all day because I am quite pale. But, knowing what we now know about the driving and the weather and the public interaction and so forth, we thought that might not be tenable.

Fauce put on his Fem-Bot outfit, which we had loosely thought we would use to match my Dr Evil costume later in the week, and I put on the wig from my German weight-lifting ensemble, plus a Teen Wolf singlet, for which we had no real other plan, and some shorts. We went with ‘white-trash wedding’, which most people to whom we explained it found amusing. Everybody else just seemed confused, which was quite reasonable.

This morning at the briefing two or more groups were subject to public derision and hoola-hoop humiliation because their vehicles are not, well, shit enough. We feel that hoola of shame is coming for us too. Our replacement CRV is really quite comfortable. It even has an electric sunroof and carpet on the inside of the doors. We are trying to keep those luxurious facts secret but simultaneously trying to circulate the contextual story about the demise of our Kia Carnival. It doesn’t seem to be working. People are noticing our comfortable car with its functional wing mirrors and reliable ignition. We didn’t bring any logs for the fire last night so our credibility is already hanging by a thread. Also, Fauce is dressed like a Fem-Bot.

You might be surprised to read that we had quite a long drive today.

About 550km through Quilpie, which doesn’t seem to have any Give Way or Stop signs, to Windorah. At some point during the drive we were required to pour in our first every Jerry Can of petrol, which was quite the moment. It was made even more special because Fauce did it whilst wearing a pink negligee and matching bright pink gloves.

I took the last driving shift today, which once again concluded in the dark. We had the opportunity to test the brakes very late in the day, when a very large black cow, which was inconveniently the same colour as the night, sauntered out onto the road. It was a narrow miss. Perhaps we were self-conscious about our car’s lack of shitness at the beginning of the day, but we were certainly grateful for its functioning breaks by the end (and the carpeted doors, which are a delight).

Tomorrow our journey takes us through the classic outback pubs of Betoota and Birdsville.

Red Dirt

Day 3 – The pagan sacrifice

Day 3 – The pagan sacrifice

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I woke up with ice on my forehead and white face paint on my sleeping bag. Despite my best efforts in the camp shower last evening, there was no soap and no mirror, and so actually I hadn’t washed off much of the white paint at all. Yesterday I looked ghoulish, today I just looked confusing.

Like aged, disinterested, quite soft crocodiles, we wrestled our mattresses into the car, then ate breakfast and ultimately we were ready to depart about 10% faster than yesterday. As Fauce and I say to each other every morning; soon we’ll be ready to start this rally. Our key learning from this morning was; yes, tuck your tomorrow trousers into the swag with you, but go one step further and pop them into your sleeping bag. That way you don’t have to pull on wet, semi-frozen trousers to start the day. That’s pro-camping.

It came as a great surprise to us at the morning briefing that today we would be driving a lot, and lots of it would not be on very good roads. We mouthed things to each other like “did you know we would be driving this much?” and then shrugged our shoulders theatrically while looking around at our fellow rally-ers who seem wholly aware and supportive of it.

So today we journeyed from Silverton through Broken Hill and Wilcannia to Hungerford. We are still on our 1500km, 48 hour detour to avoid the wet road, so Hungerford, and perhaps also the route there, felt hastily arranged. I can confirm, however, that you can buy paw-paw lip balm at the Ampol in Wilcannia, which feels like real progress to me.

This was our first real stretch of relentless dirt road for the rally and at first it was a great thrill, not particularly stressful, and afforded wonderful photos of red dirt and opportunities to spray vast waves of muddy water everywhere through the dips and culverts. Wonderful stuff.

As the sun slipped lower, slowly melted away and then completely gave up on us for the day, we realised however, that the sticky cloud of dust in which we had been driving all day might prove to be something of an obstacle at night.

The cloud enveloped us. Our tepid headlights threw out just enough light to rattle around between the dust particles, this way and that, but not enough to cut through. And so the whole convoy slowed to a walk, each of us floating in our own ethereal dust bubble, guided only by the blurry pricks of red tail-light bobbing about in front, which were in turn guided by their own red tail-light, and so on and so on. Each of us under the flimsy presumption that at the end of this long chain of tail-light reliance there was a car that knew where it was going.

For an hour or more Fauce and I lost our tail-light safety blanket and so drifted through the outback alone, in a dream-state, listening to Simply Red, not always sure we were on the road; occasionally running through a small patch of spinifex and so then turning away from that spinifex and back onto the bumpy, gravelly bit which may have been the road, but may also have just been ‘the outback’. We never hit tree nor shrub, which we thought was a good thing, but then again when the sun had set it didn’t seem as it there was much to speak of in the way of tree or shrub.

Just as we had submitted ourselves to the fact we were 300km off track in the middle of a thankless desert, a tiny pin-prick of red light sprang for a moment above the horizon. We yelped with joy and accelerated ever so slightly towards it, and ultimately rejoined the snail-paced convoy as it lurched and jolted through the desert.

And so, in this way we all finally reached camp at the Hungerford showground, or rodeo ring, or marketplace, and quickly set up in the dark. After a very tasty dinner put on by the very fine residents of Hungerford, we set up near the fire to watch the triage tent crank into action; the road today had claimed many a victim.

The fire began as a very pleasant affair; warming, invigorating, but not imperiling. Then the logs began to arrive. At the morning briefing ‘those with utes’ were instructed to ‘pick up some firewood’ during the drive. Now, if you want an instruction to be enthusiastically carried out, tell a group of ute-driving men to out-firewood each other.

Wow. Some of the logs looked like whole trees, hewn from the earth with bare hands. Ute after ute pulled up and triumphantly disgorged their bounty, building enormous piles of timber all around us, as if we were preparing to build a new community centre. And once the wood has been collected the wood must be burned!

And so on it went, trunk after trunk. None for later. All for now! And so what started as pleasant campfire quickly became pagan sacrifice and we were forced to retreat a good 50 meters, lest our polyester trousers catch fire.

Before bed we added one more item to the list of things Fauce and Jupiter cannot do, but I can’t even really describe it, it was a partial conversation we overhead during the pagan sacrifice and it was something about cutting up a star picket and welding it into some or other part of the engine, or engine-adjacent area. Wild stuff.

Tomorrow we are back on schedule and on our way to Windorah.

Frosty swags and frosty heads

Day 1 – Spaghetti Pie

Day 1 – Spaghetti Pie

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Today we were wearing tie-dyed coveralls and orange stakhats and the only comments we received were about our tyres. They are admittedly very nice tyres, but that gives you a reasonable idea of proclivities of our fellow shitboxers.

Today was a smooth ‘introductory’ day, mostly on sealed roads, 425km from Melbourne to Hay via Heathcote, Echuca and Deniliquin.

We’re getting to know our buddy group, the members of which all seem to have their eccentricities, as do we, I suppose. There seems to be a genuine interest in helping one another. For example, we mentioned the weird slow acceleration thing our new shitbox goes in for from time to time. A fellow driver sought to help:

“Does your transmission have a dip-stick?” he asked me

“Ah yes” I said “the gear lever? It’s just to the left of the steering wheel.”

He could have shamed me in front of my new colleagues, but did not. Instead he just popped our hood and had a look. Of course he was referring to a dip stick for our transmission fluid, to check our level, who knew that was a thing? Well, as it turns out we don’t have one, so the mystery remains.

The day went quite smoothly really; we lost one car very early and news of its demise travelled like a whisper on the breeze.

“An Astra, did you hear?”

“Ooh yes, the Astra. I heard it was a tyre, or the engine, or the transmission fluid. If only they had a dipstick.” Anyway, they weren’t in our buddy group and we never met them so it all still seems rather theoretical to us. Like a tragic flood in a country we’ve never heard of.

Otherwise, the number of bakeries in rural Australia is truly astonishing, evidence that a meat pie will survive any cost of living crisis. And they are so confident in their product they will unashamedly offer up ridiculous concoctions, like the ‘spaghetti pie’ we spotted in Echuca. Unfortunately it is so popular that they had sold out. An experience missed.

We made it to Hay before sunset and set up quickly for us, but objectively very slowly. Our swags are brand new so we had to drag them out of their original plastic – a classic way to identify yourself as a seasoned professional. Our swags contained these shrink wrapped mattresses that expanded like microwave popcorn as soon as we released them. They are, between them, now about the same size as our car. Not sure what we’re going to do about that tomorrow. We don’t have any means with which to re-shrink anything.

There are some truly spectacular set-ups around us however. One team across the way casually set up an almost full-sized basketball hoop, which emerged from their car somehow, and there were all manner of contraptions and home comforts disgorging from tiny vehicles in every direction – dudes playing darts over there, ladies wearing LED robes over here, and a fella sitting on his roof with an electric guitar.

We have already heard legendary tales about what happens over night at the ‘triage tent’; like a frankenstein’s laboratory that fuses 40 year old Corollas and battered Datsun Sunnies together in an unspeakable alchemy of rust and flame. It sat quietly this evening because the poor fallen Astra was either long gone or a myth all along.

Anyway, we hit the dirt tomorrow, so quite likely by the evening we will see smoke and steam begin to billow from the triage tent, like Mount Doom in the heart of Mordor.

Hay Showgrounds

Day Zero – Some good things and some bad things

Day Zero – Some good things and some bad things

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So, today some good things happened and some bad things happened. Most of the bad things happened in the first 15 minutes.

Firstly, Damian from Murphy’s Mechanic and Scrapyard had a quick look at our now no-longer-smoking engine and said a word that made it clear our beloved Carnival would not be leaving Euroa.

“It’s fixable” he said “but the cost would be many, many, many times more than the car is worth”. We thought the number of times he used the word many was indelicate, particularly within earshot of the car.

The second piece of bad news from Damian was that none of the cars on his lot were for sale; not the Bedford, not the battered Merc, not even the former taxi (which we learned later was just a taxi – Damian also runs the Euroa Taxi company, and some other things).

It was about 0900hrs and we hadn’t had coffee or food, only bad news.

So, following the principle that you can achieve most things with some internet, a phone, a credit card and a positive attitude, we found a café with wifi and set about trying to find a new shitbox. Our first one took six months to find but today we had about 6 hours.

We started with local dealerships, which was not profitable. Seymour, Echuca, Shepparton… well-meaning used car sheisters just couldn’t bring themselves to sheist quite so shamelessly. “we have cars like that” they would say “but they’re not really road worthy. Or safe. Or registered”; it was always a variant on that.

Autotrader and Facebook Marketplace next. Gone were our days of only pursuing Taragos, Carnivals or other 7 seat leisure wagons; anything with a whiff of registration, in the price and geographic ballpark we went for; Astras, Lasers, Hondas, Wagons, Sedans, Utes, anything. Lots of non-replies, a few “yeah she’s sweet except for the complete lack of suspension, or windshield, or wingmirrors, or transmission”. Very few roadworthies, even less registration and not much time left.

So, late into the morning, and on our second coffee we spotted a Honda CRV with 268000km, alarmingly cheap, three weeks of rego, 30 minutes drive away with the magic words listed on the ad  “must leave the country. Need sell now.”

So we made contact with the seller, confirmed it was still available, and yes those precious three weeks of rego. So we called a cab, which was when we realised Damian ran the tow truck, the mechanic, the scrapyard and the taxi company. Full life cycle.

Minutes later we were picked up by one of the mechanics who had diagnosed our poor Carnival earlier that morning and we were off heading north, with an envelope of cash, to Shepparton. We bid our taxi (and only means of transportation) goodbye and threw our lot in with the Honda CRV.

The seller, let’s call her Sammy, met us enthusiastically and gestured for us to hop in. “Does it drive?” we asked. She looked at us quizzically and said “yes” and asked whether we wanted to have a drive. We were satisfied by the answer but thought a test drive might be a reasonable bit of due diligence.

We drove around the block, and because the car didn’t immediately burst into flames we agreed to the sale. She seemed pleased but also confused “you don’t want to check anything?”

“Should we check anything?” we retorted to which.. “no, no but most people who have looked have wanted to check things”.

This gave us three pieces of information; more than one other person had inspected the car, those people had ‘checked things’, and based on those things checks (at least in part), had decided not to pay the, admittedly very modest, price for the CRV. We had no time to consider the second-order ramifications of those observations and reiterated our enthusiasm to confirm the commercial arrangement.

This was not as easy as we might have hoped.

Given Australia has in no way achieved Federation despite declaring Federation 124 years ago, if I live in the Northern Territory and wish to purchase a vehicle in Victoria, I may as well be from Mozambique. We tried and tried to navigate the internet and hard copy versions of the transfer forms and then ultimately decided we needed to drive to the Vic Roads office to work it out.

Sammy, leaving the country on Sunday, was delighted to take this journey with us to finalise the sale. Time was ebbing away.

Arriving at the Vic Roads office we were dismayed to see a large, milling, disgruntled crowd all waiting to get an eye test, or dispute a fine, or offer their organs up for donation. We took a number and I sized up each of the tellers, trying to decide which was the best demographic to explain this slightly out-of-the-box transaction that we wished to complete. Women aged 55-59 are usually my best demographic with which to build early rapport, so I hoped for Lynda at Counter 4.

After the setbacks of the morning we felt our spirits soar when the number 4 popped up on the screen and Lynda gestured us over with a forced smile “How are you?” she asked “how can I help you?”

“Lynda, we’re great” I responded “we have a slightly difficult challenge and would love your assistance”. Sammy stood smiling bemused, wondering how she had found herself in this situation.

Anyway, Lynda was great. She explained that because I was from the NT (and Fauce from miles away) we would need a ‘temporary’ garaging address which could be Sammy’s. And, no problem about the Roadworthy Certificate, we have 14 days to complete that. She would transfer into my name which is all legal and excellent and once that certificate is available the transfer would be complete, and if by then I am back in the NT I could transfer the plates etc etc. All sounded great and irrelevant given at the end of this week we will cancel the registration and mail the plates back to Victoria (if the CRV lasts that long). Sammy explained again meekly that she hadn’t had time to get the Roadworthy done, but it was becoming more and more apparent to us that perhaps Sammy had the time, but not the inclination.

No matter – a glorious victory, thanks to Lynda’s generosity of spirit, and expertise within her own bureaucracy, we had our second shitbox!

So we bought a few more essential provisions, learned that our hotel in Melbourne had cancelled our room because we didn’t show up the previous evening, and navigated that particular issue via a ‘shift manager’ named Simon who was the least helpful person we encountered today, and drove the 30 minutes back to Euroa, and Murphy’s Scrapyard.

It was now 3pm and we were still at least 2 hours drive from Melbourne (pre-rally briefing at 6pm).

Damian and his crew greeted us warmly, although we had to wait a few minutes while he finished with some customers. We learned at this juncture that Damian is also responsible for Euroa’s rental car market. King of the town.

As a parting gift our now vanquished Carnival yielded up her high spec dirt tyres which Damian’s team transferred onto our new CRV. “looks much less sissy now” he said and shook our hands.

Damian offered us $100 to receive and dispose of the Carnival, which had now been stripped of all fixings and dignity, which we immediately offered back to him for the labour on the tyres and his general good vibes and assistance. A gentleman’s transaction.

With one last defiant gasp of energy, our Carinval sprung to life just once more, long enough to spit out the Best of Simply Red CD, then closed her pale green eyes forever. Rest well old friend.

So, with a heavy heart but a renewed hope, Fauce pulled out of Murphy’s lot as we both waved furiously. The CRV was momentarily stuck in 3rd gear and then wouldn’t accelerate, or really drive at all, but then it seemed to hiccup and come to life and off we went. So maybe we’ll hear more about that, and maybe we won’t.

Onward to Melbourne… and the start line tomorrow.

Farewell newish friend

A rally car for less than $1500?

A rally car for less than $1500?

by Jupiter and Sons ♥ 1 Comment

My friend Garth and I have signed up to participate in the Winter 2024 Shitbox Rally.

What is the Shitbox Rally you ask? Well, simple concept really. In teams of two you drive thousands of kilometres over some of Australia’s most questionable roads in a car that can cost you no more than $1500… a Shitbox. You will be joined by hundreds of other teams of two all doing the same thing in their own Shitboxes and everybody will be raising money for Cancer Research. Outside the requirement to find a vaguely roadworthy car for less than $1500 the only stipulation is that each team must raise at least $5000 before the Rally commences. Although we cannot find it written down anywhere, we presume orange Rosebank Stackhats are another pre-requisite.

Strangely, mechanical skills of any kind are not required. That’s good.

I will document key milestones in our journey on this blog, but if you wish to learn more about the Rally you can go here.

The first challenge (after tracking down some genuine Stackhats) seems to be finding a suitable vehicle, with a little bit of rego on it, in the right price range. Following some preliminary research my first observation is that car adverts for vehicles in this price range are written in a slightly different manner to what one might be used to. Here are some early excerpts (written verbatim):

A 2001 Citroen berlingo located in Maitland, NSW

Great little van surprisingly alot of room for the size of it cheep on fuel too just is having a issue with the immobilizer i havnt had time realy to look at it but my licence is disqualified now anyways and got too many cars its got to go.

A 1991 Subaru Brumby located in Dog Rocks, NSW

Car runs but are issues with engine

Otherwise perfect car for paddock basher of project vehicle.

Back window shattered

A 2000 Chrysler PT Cruiser located in Camden, NSW

Up for sale my pt cruiser

Have had it for a number of years , planned to fix it up and sell it but have lost interest

Was running however it has been sitting for over 3 years

Make me an offer it’s pretty dirty from sitting around but can all be cleaned up

A 1996 Mitsubishi Pajero located in Wokalup, WA

Moved house forgot to do change of address and it ended up unlicensed. To many things for me to sort to put it over pits. Its pretty straight. Suit farm use.

Bit of ping noise from engine which i have not had advice on as car cant be drive unlicensed. I dont know not a mechanic.

An imprecisely old Lada Niva located in Coonabarabran, NSW

Lada niva country car , very minimal rust . local origanal car .fuel tanks. it’s a lada , what more can i say.

I am sure our dream car is out there somewhere.

The Winter 2024 Shitbox Rally route