The next morning dawned and I was awoken by “clank, clank, tap tap, bang”. Looking up the tent was covered in a heavy dew I pulled on a pair of strides unzipped the tent door and stepped outside. About 100 metres away Ashley and Rob were busily digging through their respective tool boxes. Max stood there slowly stroking a gear on a big winch set once used to haul logs out of the steep valleys, Rob shouted out “ hey Mark what is the biggest socket in your tool kit?” I wandered over to investigate
“Hey Max what’s going on?”
“Have at look at this” Max replied “carrier drive sprockets, near new”
Well I felt a little sad that Max actually wanted to pull apart this monument to the logging industry, though the sprockets were in good condition “near new” was a little bit of an over estimate in my mind.
In the end no socket or spanner will ever part these drive sprockets from the winch set and we returned to our camp to cook up some breakfast.
The old logging camp is set in a deep north south running valley between Mount Bogong and the Wombat range right on the banks of lightning creek as we prepared breakfast the sun was just starting to hit the valley walls to the west of us. No one was in that much of a hurry to get going, the camp gear could wait for the sun to dry off the nights dampness.
After breakfast the dishes were quickly handled by a volunteer wash up crew while the rest of the crew packed tents bedding and trucks. My wife Rowena and son Flynn headed home from the camp taking the road north to Corryong at 10.30.
The rest of us jumped into our trucks to warm them up for the days drive, that is all except Max the “Girlfriend” (trucks nickname) refused to start. Max entertained us with a series splutters and BANGS before deciding that this morning would be a good morning to service his Ford. The first job was to replace the distributor he had a new one in a box in the cab. On inspection of the old one the rotor button arm was chewing into the cap because the base plate had not been fully seated evenly by the cir-clip. This was the third time the cap had been replaced in recent times and now the problem was solved or so we thought. A start attempt now produced a very rough idle, Max commented
“She’s short a few cylinders”
A screw drive placed against the block and the plug top soon showed us that we were short four cylinders, not a problem. Max produced a wire brush and a collection of second hand plugs, soon we had a set of seven cylinders running and hit the track.
Today’s drive would take us up along lightning creek to the top of the Wombat range. The morning saw us crossing the creek many times in a deep green valley as we climbed toward its source. Today was the only time that Rob in Tickets came unstuck, a steep red clay bank out of one of the crossings pulled up the Blitz. After a few attempts a tow rope was attached to my Landrover and Rob was out of the water. However after dropping the tow Rob still could not find traction and after a long reverse back to were we left him he was hooked up and pulled to level ground. We climbed for a couple of hours the Blitz’s could only do about 5 mph on this steep climb until we reached the top of the range. The ground levelled of and we rolled along for about 10 km with views for miles blue sky to green hills all around.
We stopped for lunch at about four in the afternoon at an intersection that would drop us to the Mitta Mitta river at the old Gold Township of Wombat Creek. At this point I told our group that we were only a third of the way through our intended trip distance for the day, jaws dropped, everyone was buggered. We worked on an alternative stay, a night of relaxation at the Benambra Pub only about three hours away by Blitz.
Everything that goes up must come down this applies to old trucks especially and for the next hour and a half we crawled down hill to the Mitta Mitta river. By this stage the Ford was performing rather poorly as it crawled across the wide river bed and up onto the well formed dirt farm road on the other side.
The tar road run into Benambra was a real treat, two days of bush tracks wear you down in these old trucks compared to a modern 4x4 they are hard work. At the Benambra general store we filled up our fuel and looked at the now really sick Ford, Max decided it was time to shout the “Girlfriend” a new set of plugs. A few enquiries found a set of 8 x CJ8’s a plug normally used in lawn mowers available at Omeo 30 km away. I was elected to go on with Matt and pick them up, the service station owner would wait for us to arrive. All went well and we were back in one hour, Landrover,s are faster than Blitz’s after all. But Max had fallen asleep in the back of his truck so we left the plugs on the front seat and headed in for a drink and for some dinner.
I did mention that we were staying at a pub I had a couple of drinks with dinner then one with desert. At about 9pm Ashley produced a copy of “The Year Of The Studibaker” video that was plugged into the common room VCR. I headed to the bar for another round this time shouting the boys a Bundie and Coke can each to get them in the swing of things. For those who do not know Bundie is a rum made from sugar cane at Bundaberg in Queensland. It is a funny drink the rum makes you silly quickly and the coke keeps you going so you can have another can and get a little more silly but still keep going. Now that bloody Video was playing and everyone was looking forward to a certain gear change by the author of this story.
Reminder to all.
“Never let Keith Webb film you drive a borrowed truck”
Then there it was GRRR Grrrr Grrrr Clunk with a silly comment by me.
“You wont use that one in your film will ya Keith”
Just as all this happened an old chap who looked very much like Santa Claus walked down the hall in nothing but a poo brown jock strap. The whole room was torn up with laughter, I felt sorry for Santa he must have thought we were just laughing at him.
Going to sleep that night was not easy we were all in a bunk room except Max who was still sound asleep in the back of his truck, pillow fights and all sorts of silly things happened in the next hour. As I dosed off I was looking forward to tomorrow while Max fixed his Ford Rob and I were off to see a chap about some truck parts for my Dodge WC51’s that I had bought nearby. A treasure hunt always a good thing on a road trip.
To be continued
