An Eventful Trip to Tara

Monday, February 11th, 2008 at2:30 am by traveltripz

It seems to me that every time I drive to Tara it is raining and this week was no exception.

We are in the process of moving from the beach in Brisbane to a rural area in Queensland which is a good 5 hour drive, although everyone tells me it is only 3-4 hours.

So we are off with the car trailer loaded up with stuff in the first of our moves. We are going to do this progressively a bit at a time. Right! apart from the rain everything is going smoothly until we are on a down hill run, just around a blind bend, in between the towns of McClagen and Kaimkillenbun. In fact we are 24 klms from the latter, when there is a loud bang and the car swerves over into the wrong side of the road. I heroically fight the 2 ton beast with its 3ton load back to the right side of the road and carefully bring it to a stop without flipping it.

Okay, let’s sit for a minute and let the adrenalin rush calm down. Now picture this – we are as I said just around a blind bend on a very narrow piece of tarseal that passes for a two way road in rural Qld, pulled off onto a very narrow dirt edge.

Yep, a blown tyre on the trailer. While we are contemplating our predicament, a car pulls up and the occupants offer assistance. Just as well really because it turns out that we don’t have the necessary equipment to remove the tyre.

The lovely couple to whom I am eternally grateful, firstly for stopping and secondly for having all the right equipment, are Steve and Shirley from the far side of Tara. We live on the near side. Dalby being the measuring point.

Once the tyre is removed, it is determined that the wheel bearing has also done itself in. So there is no way we can hobble to the nearest one horse town in the hope of finding a mechanic. So I gingerly drive the car and trailer to the nearest safest spot where we are least likely to cause an accident.

By the way, mobile phones don’t work in this part of town.

Okay, we head off to the local pub in Kaimkillenbun to see if we can track down some help, but no, the mechanic is away camping, how selfish is he enjoying himself at holiday time while we are in this mess.

So there is nothing else for it but to head to Dalby, another 24 klms on. Off course by now it is getting on towards 5pm when the shops all shut and sure enough they have all closed early at 4:30pm because it is still holiday time. None of the three garages have what we need. Val wants to just leave the trailer and carry on the further 88klms to home but I am a bit dubious about leaving our stuff on the side of the road where it will more than likely get knocked off.

Once we reach Dalby, where mobile phones do work, we make a quick call to our son who contacts some of our daughter in laws rellies and they get us a number of a fantastic chap who comes down and opens his store to provide us with the necessary items to fix the car.

Back to the car, in the middle of nowhere, and by now it is quite dark, so there we are, in the rain and poor Val is fixing the wheel bearing by torchlight.

Thank goodness Steve has left us a rag as the bearing has to be encased in gooey gunk. I of course have my trusty bottle of aquium hand cleaner which I never travel anywhere without. so clean up isn’t too bad.

We have a few hairy moments when Val is putting the brake pad back on but eventually everything is back to normal and we head off to Tara, finally arriving at 12:05am. So we have been on the road for 12 hours. A quick shower, cup of tea and everyone wearily hits the sack.

Unfortunately, my camera was packed in the back of the car. However, this is not the first time this has happened to me.

We were traveling back from Tara to Brisbane and once again I had the car trailer with 3 motorbikes on board when a tyre blew out on the Land Cruiser. So much for retreads. This was my first blowout and the family all said I handled it very well, I’m an old hand at it now.