Shouts From Down Under

Pour out the passion in a smokin' tyre thrashin' burnout..

Where we lived on the farm was 25 Kilometres from town, so it meant a bus ride to and fro every school day.

I was in High school when we lived at that rural property, and when the bus stopped for us to get off, it wasn't near our farm mailbox.
I'd get out with all the other kids but then have to walk down the road, across a bridge and climb over a fence into our front paddock.

I had an old ute parked there that I drove probably another kilometre to our home. Of course, there's nothing like having your own old car when you're still too young to legally drive on public roads. Back then there was none of this litigation fuelled SAFETY nonsense on farms, forbidding farm kids from even breathing.

I'm all for safety, don't get me wrong, but sometimes I think it's way overdone. Personal responsibility comes into it, or should be a major factor, instead of everyone blaming someone else for their stupidity and lack of common sense.

And so I'd drive the ute like a maniac all the way home along the dusty track, through the first double front gate, with it's piping frame and metal sign welded in a small arc over the top. It spelt the name of our farm.

MANUMBAH.

Then there was another single piping gate next to a pepper tree. Most times these gates were open, but if there was stock in the front paddocks for some reason, of course, they'd be shut. This made life interesting trying to pull up in time.

The ute didn't have brakes. Did I mention safety?

Also, behind the bench seat, the floor was very rusty. So rusty, that it had broken away. The floor pan, from the drivers side, right across behind the seat to the other monocoque chassis channel, was completely unattached. If you drove enthusiastically over a contour bank (these were curving banks of earth graded into place across the slope of grazing or cropping paddocks to stop erosion from storms) then the floor would bounce and come into contact with the ground.



The recklessness of youth! Yes, I never considered what would happen if the ute broke completely in half, concertina-ing the differential towards the engine in the front, tail shaft spearing up through the floor and through my backside.

This doesn't "bare" thinking about.

The ute was an interesting vehicle, bought for $20 from a "clearing sale", towed on the end of a knotted rope by Dad in his Toyota Landcruiser, with my Mum clenching her teeth, steering the old cobwebby ute from side to side down the highway. Happy mum? No.
Illegal method of towing yes. Effective yes.

Happy son. YES.

After finding another old "bomb" of the same ilk, I replaced the busted gearbox, did a whole bunch of other knuckled wounding repairs, stripping threads, breaking bolts, rounding off nuts and generally "learning how to mechanic" I finally came to the day of starting the old bomb.

Unless you have done this in your young days, with little advice, with no prior knowledge and no money, you may not realise the full potential of the satisfaction that came that day.
I'd sneaked off with a battery out of dads tractor as I couldn't come close to affording to buy one myself. I had fuel in the tank of the ute, the tyres pumped up, stuffed a cap full of petrol onto the air cleaner top with the butterfly nut loosened so the petrol could dribble in the carburettor.

Then I started cranking with the key. The distributor, High tension leads, sparkplugs and points were no longer a mystery, but setting the timing proved me to be not so smart as I thought. Even having the piston firing order stamped into the old Holden grey motor head casting didn't help me. It was only when I read in the Reader's Digest How to book about mechanical and electrical work, that I figured you have to take out number one piston spark plug, turn the engine over towards top dead centre as indicated on the harmonic balancer, and hear the air hissing out of the spark plug hole, that you can stick the leads in the right spot.

Otherwise the engine pops and bangs, backfires and will never start.

And the dogs loved this racket and weird noises. Dad had 3 or 4 sheep dogs tied up on chains under the trees nearby. I'd been bitten by ants, stung by stinging nettles, had raw knuckles, blisters from pumping up the tyres with a hand pump, and lots of thorns in my butt from lying under the vehicle on the catheads and American Burr grass.

But when that engine finally fired up into a scary roar, I nearly messed my duds. And the dogs went berserk.

It was a moment in life that you never forget. Yes, the mechanical details are boring. This whole blog is probably boring to you. But I remember every moment of that time. It was the formation of me. I did it myself. I may have been angry, frustrated, physically injured, even cried sometimes from rage at my lack of knowledge and patience.

With writing, I think you have to have a real person behind what it is you are writing. Otherwise it will sound false. Because it is false.

The thing with that ute was, I always drove it flat out. Always sideways. Always without brakes. Always with a cloud of oily smoke and noise so loud flocks of birds would leave the creek flats and fly away in disgust.

If I drove slowly and quietly, Dad would ask me if I was "crook" or not myself.

It was an outlet for a frustrated hormonal teenager bored out of his brain and lonely. It was also the best years of my life, and I wouldn't replace them for anything.

Let yourself write like this. Sideways. Flat out. With passion. LET GO. What's the worst that can happen? People laugh at your antics? You skin your knuckles? You get told off for a mistake?

So what? Who cares? Critics are just jealous if you have actually written something good.

And if you haven't it doesn't matter still. Because you've got something out of your system.

You've lived and enjoyed something.

Most of all,

YOU'VE DONE IT YOURSELF

.

Sparky

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