On The Side

 

 

I join River again on her Wednesday´s Words on a Friday, cause the words speak to me again, as in I can tell you a true story, follow me to 1995, if you like.

Buckle, up, ready for a time warp?

 

The words are: battery, remain, age, bite, produce, workshop, forest, critic.

 

 OK, those who´ve been there or live there (lucky you) know where my story is from right?

It´s from the land Down Under, the land of "Fliegen"!

 

There are those little flies, everywhere, even in the desert. 

They specialize on your "wet" parts, there are eye-, nose- lips- (BLOW!) and even ear-flies. A pest! Nets do help a little, see:

OK, let´s start, shall we...

 

We were in some National Park, it was forest-like, cannot remember the name.

Early morning, critics may say, hey you´re on holiday, sleep in, but I tell you, when you sleep in the car you get up with the sun or get baked!

 

I went to wash myself, with Aussie-produce, I took tea tree oil-soap, luckily as a bar!

Ingo smelled gas, again, and had a look.

There was a little hole in our tank, he said, "hmmm, dripping...", touched it and... "running!!!"

 

Luckily, also, Ingo´d read the chapter about motorbikes in our paper-Lonely Planet Australia book where it says: Have a hole in the tank, use tea-tree oil-soap and go to the next garage asap! Well, yes, our car was of old age, of course, this was supposed to happen!

 

The soap worked, we made it to Mackay, but all garages were busy! 

They help each other and one pointed out a mini-garage, like a workshop, a private person, more or less, who fixes cars (Australia is not Germany in many a way) - we went, but the guy was busy.

It was a Friday and he sent us to Eungella National Park nearby to come back on Monday. 

 

Against any bites over night we had this,...

 

...Ingo made, clever guy that, windows down, fresh, cool air in insects out (mostly, let´s not start with tiny sand-flies). 

So, up we went to Eungella - sadly our cams were not good enough, but we really saw three of them!!

There was one Platypus, then the next and the next (OK I admit, it´s like with the plural of Pizza, I have no idea ;-), so I just count, OK?)

 

Ingo has a memory of a pic, Perth-friend Grace took in front of the Australian Geographic store:

 

 Wiki says: "The unusual appearance of this egg-laying, duck-billed, beaver-tailed, otter-footed mammal baffled European naturalists when they first encountered it, and the first scientists to examine a preserved platypus body (in 1799) judged it a fake, made of several animals sewn together."

 

Were we lucky to seem them alive!!!

It got even "better", for us anyways...

We were a bit apart from the guys in their tents, stood higher up, in grass.

And.... it started to rain. 

Heavily!!! So much so, some had to come to our site even!.

Remember. We had a hole in the tank "repaired" with soap!!

We remained with our car safely, against the odds, made it to Mackay come Monday...

.. and after a brekkie we saw our whole clothes and belongings neatly on the sidewalk, our car on the side and the man was really welding our tank on his veranda!!!

Can you believe that? He also replaced some other stuff (I´m no mechanic, no idea what it was), saying these would break down otherwise, soon.

He charged us but AUS$ 100!!

 

The battery luckily made it through our whole journey around and in Australia.

Not so much luck in 1999, though, but, as usual, Aussies are friendly and help you, even in the middle of nowhere!

Henry 🦁

Yes, two posts again, thanks to River! 😘

Yay for a day off, huh?