Enjoy.
Rolling in towards Lilydale, the road was deserted at 7am meaning that I could kill some time and take amusing happy snaps. I was certain that I could hear Matt's exhaust from in front of him, a repair that incorporated coke can and hose clamps having an unfortunate little incident resulting in the sound of a Masey Ferguson tractor for the rest of the day. Although he was a little down on power ("the turbo is at home in a box...!") the gearbox allowed the pristine black truck to soldier on.
In the first puddles we found, we were feeling all tough and macho! Matty getting it in deep, or so we thought.
A nice look at the trees in the Toolangi State forest.
This could be called the beginning of the end, this track here saw us detained for a few hours. The main problem was the we were stuck in the wheel tracks, like really stuck. We tried all the limited tricks in our books before being forced to take on the big puddle, which ended badly, and resulted in a lucky recovery involving plenty of right boot and healthy dash of luck. The path to the right was the chicken track (1 hour of sticking, building and revving) and straight ahead was the deep puddle way (30mins of self recovery) and so we elected to *turn around*- the joke was on us, there was no chance of that, and then midway through our exercise, 15 trucks turned up and wanted to get through...
This is Matt midway through the reverse snatch strap recovery that goes a fair way to explaining the condition of his truck now... If you notice that the rear quarter is resting on a tree, the left front is in a large hole and the whole car is really quite stuck. After overheating the first car that was helping us recover the trucks, it took a fresh truck, a great deal of tyresmoke and heavy welly to get the black beast up out of the hole and dragged up the hill to safety.
This was our eventual saviour having a play in the puddle. With a great deal of repeated gusto, he managed to make a hell of a mess, clear most of the water out, and roast his truck, but still didn't make it out the other end. I've got a great video of it too...!!
And this was the broken truck looking a bit sad on it. You can see how slippery it really wasm as thats just slick clay all through there. The Red Baron was part of a 3 car recovery where 2 cars got linked together and pulled out as one, by one other truck.
As much of a shit fight that this few hours was, and it really was, I reckon I learnt 5 times more than what I would if it went right, and with plenty of knowledgable people around, its proably the best place to jump right in... Pity about the corners of both our trucks, they are a little more rounded now ;)
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