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3 years 8 months ago #212361 by hayseed
Replied by hayseed on topic Need a few good yarns

PaulFH wrote:
Phoned from Braidwood for directions for a stud south of town, none of the others had been there.
Manager casually says, " Can go out on the top road, but has a load limit on the bridge. Other way is to
come out the Captains flat road about 10 km and turn right into a lane. Go down there a bit and there's
a bit of a creek crossing. Go over that and we're down on the left ". Out we go and get to the crossing.
It's the Shoalhaven River, more than 50 metres wide. Down the bank onto a stone bottomed causeway
with retaining structure on the downstream side, and a bend part way across. Walked down first and it
seemed ok. In the 9 horse rigid Scania float. Good drive traction but low front clearance under the sump.
Got through ok and up the other bank. Not so easy later trips in the semi floats as less weight on the drive.
Could hear the round rocks rolling under the drive. Bit of pace to get up the dirt banks as once wet no go.
A few years later the bottom was concreted and approaches made less steep with gravel surface. As said
in a previous post, some would have nightmares if they knew where their horses had been!


Yeah Paul, That River Crossing was always an Interesting Experience..
From Memory the Bloke who Owned It then was, the founder of Just Jeans (I think)..??

"Be who you are and say what you feel...
Because those that matter...
don't mind...
And those that mind....
don't matter." -
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3 years 8 months ago - 3 years 8 months ago #212381 by eerfree
Replied by eerfree on topic Need a few good yarns
A Long Time Ago
Old Vince had a Commer Knocker and his mate Dougie had an AR 160 Inter, Vince had an old dog that he swore was an Elk hound (no one believed him but he was convinced) this dog was a bit overweight so Vince had to lift him in and out of the cab, The dog would sit on the seat with his head out the window most of the time. Dougie was travelling with his young son.
They were cruising through the Pilliga one afternoon when Vince spotted a Buck Deer and decided that the antlers would look good in his house, pulled up and told Dougie the story, Vince lifted the Elk Hound out of the cab and pulled his 22 out from behind the seat and away they went, the dog first then Vince, Dougie and the boy behind, about 100 m in there is this big tree in the path, the dog walks around the tree just as the Buck standing right there lets out an almighty roar, well the dog
Yelps and the deer heads for Gunnedah at a great rate of knots, the dog does a 180 and takes off, he crashes into Vince who knocks Dougie over, the gun goes off, then the dog pushes the kid into a prickly bush and keeps racing down the track yelping its head off, Vince is swearing blue lights, Dougie is yelling - You nearly shot me you Bugger!! and the boy is screaming, Get me out Get me out, Pandemonium !!!!
They get the boy up and head back to the trucks, No dog! Vince starts swearing again whistling and yelling for his dog, Dougie is still pulling prickles out of the boy, they check under the cabs under the trailers he is not under the tarps “too tight” so Vince opens the passenger side door to put the gun away and there is the dog curled up on the floor shaking like a dog dropping razor blades, to this day they do not know how that dog got into the cab without opening the door !!!.

Bob,
I do not know how I got over the hill without ever getting to the top.
Last edit: 3 years 8 months ago by eerfree.
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3 years 8 months ago #212383 by prodrive
Replied by prodrive on topic Need a few good yarns
hahahahaha that is great Eerfree!
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3 years 8 months ago #212447 by Ozfury
Replied by Ozfury on topic Need a few good yarns
About 1979 or 80 I was coming back to Townsville from Mt Isa early morning and had to pull up at a flooded creek near Homestead. I jumped into the bunk for an hour and when I woke up an hour later at daylight Toots Holzheimer had pulled up behind me and was having a wash in the creek. I got out and we yarned for a while, and she hung her towell over my bullbar. Not long after a couple of trucks and a Pioneer bus pulled up on the other side of the creek and a mob of people wandered down to the waters edge. Toots turned to me and said " I,d better get my towell off your bullbar or all those people might think we spent the night together" (I was a callow youth of around 19 and Toots was a mature Lady) then in her dry deadpan voice she said "It wont do my reputation any harm.....but it might damage yours" I ran into Toots a couple of times after that and we always had a good laugh about it, what a great Lady with a big heart!
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3 years 8 months ago #212462 by Brocky45
Replied by Brocky45 on topic Need a few good yarns
I have to agree with PaulFH. When my wife and I went to work for Wrangler Blue Jeans they gave us a ring binder, about 2 inches thick, with directions to Wrangler and Lee facilities and a lot of our suppliers/ customers. A lot of them used landmarks!! When it said go to the barn that has "Chew Redman Tobacco" Painted on it and turn right the directions did NOT include that the Barn had blown down 20 years ago!!
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3 years 8 months ago - 3 years 8 months ago #212466 by Lang
Replied by Lang on topic Need a few good yarns
There was an interesting study on how men and women navigate. It is not sexist or a joke just men and women are different.

Women are not as good at spacial stuff as men eg ball games so have difficulty with estimating distance and converting the picture on a map to the ground. Women are amazed that you knew we would be going down hill before a blue line crossed the road. They are good at recognising landmarks.

A man will say "Go 2.5 kilometres and take the road to the left". A woman will say "A little way up the road you will see a blue house, turn left there". A good navigator of either sex will say "Two and a half kilometres up the road turn to the left opposite a blue house."

We have all had the local tell us "Keep going and turn left about a mile before where the old Smith house used to be".

Having said that there are hopeless male navigators. We were driving an old Dodge in Naples Italy trying to get out of town in rush hour. Old mate from Yamba was along for the trip and my wife had shown herself to have the navigational skills of James Cook compared to poor old Ray. It was pre-GPS and Ray had a very good city map but was stuffing up. I was driving in the heavy traffic and getting pissed off from his errors and let him know. Bev was in the back seat with a big smile on her face with somebody else being yelled at for a change.

Eventually Ray lost the plot and put the map on the seat and said 'This map is bloody useless nobody could follow it, there are too many lines!"

I got out of town by sense of direction and in any other big cities managed to have Bev in the front seat with the map at least up the right way so I could glance across to maintain track.

Lang
Last edit: 3 years 8 months ago by Lang.
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3 years 8 months ago #212478 by mammoth
Replied by mammoth on topic Need a few good yarns
......and if stopping to ask directions in Ireland you might be told " If I were you I wouldn't start from here".
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3 years 8 months ago #212486 by prodrive
Replied by prodrive on topic Need a few good yarns
Mt Ive../ Lake Gairdner salt lake

Many moons ago (not as many moons ago as driving the old Atkinson, but still a fair while ago) I had a bit of a gig doing enclosed car transport, which involved lots of TV commercials, photo shoots and the like. Basically we'd cart the cars to some exotic location, keep them cleaned and detailed and so on, whilst they were being filmed. It was all very glamerous in a not very glamerous kind of way! But we did see some amazing places, and often had a lot of fun doing it.
Anyway we got this job to Mt Ive station, which is near Lake Gairdner, SA, (middle of bloody nowhere) where they do all the land speed records. The idea was to take two new /unreleased Mazda MX5 Convertibles out to the salt lake so they could do a shoot for a brochure.
I took a mate with me, for a laugh more than anything, and because it was quite hard work too. We were staying at Mt Ive Station, which was probably about an hour from lake Gairdner. So up well before the dawn, about an hour in the car or truck to the lake, to be actually filming by dawn light. The same again at dusk, as dawn and dusk are the "magic hour' for filming anything. But there is a lot of setting up needed, and the cars always need some loving prior to shooting anything.
Anyway we ended up going out to Mt Ive/ lake Gairdner three times, the first time it was just grey and crappy light, so thats no good. The second time, a few weeks later, it bucketed down, whilst we were on the Lake. By the time we got back to the truck the lake was aoout three inches under water, and the road/track back to the station was awash.. I had the old Volvo sideways, and only made it back to the station by the skin of my teeth. The next day I spent fixing the diff lock, before tackling the hundred odd k's of dirt back to the Iron Knob / Port Augusta turnoff, and the bitumen. Poor old Volvo was totally covered in red muck.. but we made it.
Anyway a few more weeks later third time lucky, so after a long day on the lake for the day and ran out of daylight, we returned to Mt Ive for the night. We'd decided to leave the Mazda film cars, and our truck out on the lake overnight, the lake surface is quite hard, and having a truck on there is no worries. And there is certainly no one around, so security is no problem! EXCEPT next morning in the pre dawn darkness, we couldn't find the bloody Mazda's! The salt lakes are massive- it's probably like being on the middle of port Phillip bay- you can only see one shore, no edge to them at all, they just go on forever. And we realised that your headlights have no reflection, so you can't see a bloody thing.. "No sweat" says Richard- "The Volvo's got great lights on it, I'll fire it up and we'll find these cars".
Now the owners of Mt Ive Station, who were sort of the care- takers of the entrance to the lake, were a bit "odd"... Too long in the bush, we all thought? They'd had great delight in discovering the film industry, with the silly money that they could make from these city slickers.. They had only just had a Korean film crew there who had got their Tarago bogged on the side of the lake, and they delightedly told us of the thousands they'd charged them to extricate them from the salty bog...
Anyway, here's me doing great sweeps with the Volvo lights, couldn't see a bloody thing, and thought "gee, the Salt lake is a bit of a funny color here" as the wheels sank through the surface and were were stuck...
What a complete bastard.. Anyway we left the old girl there all day and night, had to slink back to Mt Ive and inform them that we'd bogged the semi... They were rapt, and I could see the dollar signs in their eyes... they started insisting that the Film company should pay, as it wasn't my fault, I had to very firmly inform them that this was my stuff up, my business, and if i ever wanted to work in this industry again, it was up to me to sort it out- and whilst I obviusly had to pay, hopefully they would help me without charging too much.
Anyway we took out a backhoe, a landcruiser, about forty miles of matting, ropes, jacks, cables, you name it. Bogged on the salt crust, there is no use digging, you can only get out by jacking and planking... you need a lot of planks ..... One attempt failed after she fell off the end of the planks, so back for another load..
A whole days work was required, and it was a complete bastard of a job. Anyone who's ever been on a salt lake will tell you, it is the worst place, and the worst stuff ever. The glare is shocking. its hot, the salt is wet, sticky, burns after a while, gets in everything, and I mean everything...
We got the old Volvo out on dusk, with my mad mate stuffing around all bloody day- he decided that he wanted to set the World land speed record for postie bikes. His mate had a set of Wayne gardner leathers, so he'd brougth them with him, and sign with him. So whilst we are jacking and planking, he's rooting around taking pics of himself with the bloody postie bike, and working out that it would do 94KM's flat to the boards over a one kilometer distance.....the bastard..
Anyway we made it back to the station at about nine PM, the station owners were actually good people after they worked out they coudn't stick us too hard... I eventually gave them $400, a new battery, and a cheap gerni pressure wash I was carrying in the truck. And hit the road with eyes hanging out, to be home in Geelong by the next day..
That was a bloody hard trip!



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3 years 8 months ago - 3 years 8 months ago #212487 by PDU
Replied by PDU on topic Need a few good yarns
In my past life I have also worked part time as a taxi driver and also in an aboriginal community.
Two things I have learnt:
1. Aboriginals no longer go walkabout, they now go cababout.
2. When looking for strange or unknown places/destinations it is a cunning move to use your aboriginal black tracker instincts. Basically this requires wandering in a seemingly aimless circular fashion, progressing in ever decreasing circles until locating a water-hole. The next movement is done in a confident fashion . . . moving to the front row, raising one foot and then resting it on the provided step.
AND . . .
. . . finally the easiest part - order a drink and ask the barman for directions! :whistle: Never fails. B)
Last edit: 3 years 8 months ago by PDU.
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3 years 8 months ago #212570 by prodrive
Replied by prodrive on topic Need a few good yarns
Mt Ive again..
This is another story that springs to mind, funny enough it was from Mt Ive again, a few years on from the previous story.
We were out there on a pretty big yank job, they were filming Toyota Tundra's, we had two semi's with four Tundra's, and a heap of spare parts just in case (often things got damaged, swinging camera's in and out, doing some wild manouvers and so on)
Anyway by this time things had got a bit more modern at Lake Gairdner, (it is actually a National park) and we wern't allowed to take vehicles on to the lake surface without washing on, and washing off. The idea being to stop red dirt going on to the pristine white salt surface, and stopping salt from being carried into the surrounding countryside. Fair enough, I guess. we certainly didn't tell anyone that we'd had the semi bogged to it's guts in the salt a couple of years earlier..
Anyway me and my offsider were pretty bored, as we had nothing to do apart from stand around. So we volunteered to do the washing on and off as vehicles came on and off the Lake. We had a generator, 30,000 ltr water tank truck, pressure wash, and so on all set up.
A day or so later we are running out of water, they had a general pow-wow as to what to do.. The Mt Ive station owner says "look, we have plenty of water, but it's bore water and pretty brackish, so you wouldn't want to wash all your preciouls film vehicles in that?" The consensus came back- "no, we can't do that, what on earth are we going to do to get fresh water out here hundreds ok kilometers from anywhere? It's a bloody desert after all!"
Me being all so smart (bored and desperate to get out of there for a break) pipe up "No worries! We'll drive the water tank to Iron Knob and get a tank full from there"
Great idea!!
So me and old mate jump in the water tank and mosey off, it's a bloody slow trip about 120k's each way of rough dirt, and we certainly aren't in any hurry anyway..
Upon making it to Iron Knob we start asking around as to where we can get a tank full of water, we start hearing "geez mate, it's a bloody desert out here, I dunno".. The local shop owner points us towards to local copper, as surely he'd know? We wander off to see him, he's a good fellow. He says "lets go see Bill at such-and-such station, he's got bloody big tanks". Awesome, off we go..
We meet Bill, he's a genuine good fella too, he says "no dramas at all boys, I have lots of water, let's fill her up".. Thats all good, so we do that, and hour or so later we are full, and we tell Bill that we must pay for it, as you know, it's a film crew and all, and they aren't short of money. He says "whats a fair price, you know it's a desert and all" .. We tell him he may as well charge good money for it, they'd be stuck without it after all. So me, being all so generous with other people's money, say "how about four hundred bucks?" He's as happy as a cricket.
Anyway we tell him he better give us some sort of reciept so they can reimburse me, the best he can do for that is to use a 303 bullet that's been floating around his ute as a pen, written on a torn off bit of beer box... a genuine country reciept!
We reckon we are going to be the golden boys, getting back with all this lovely water, until old Bill casually says "hey thanks very much, if you want any more let me know, I have as much as you want, it's only bore water anyway, pretty brackish, but it's wont matter will it?"
We nearly choke... Anyway, we swear Bill and the local copper to lifelong silence, and slowly, thoughtfully make our way back to Mt Ive and the lake .....
Everyone is pretty happy to see us as they can start driving off and on the lake again, except the producer, who nearly has a heart attack at paying $400 for a tank full of water with a 303 written reciept on a bit of cardboard...(the first tank full, from Adelaide, cost him $30 or something)
The only thing we can reply is "geez mate, it's a bloody desert out here, water is scarce you know!".. as we quickly bugger off away from the water tank before someone got a whiff of the stinky bloody bore water....
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