The KIng of Siam

[croc]

I own an old ute. Every Oz bloke should own an old ute. They were built in the years when strength was all, and the old utes are by far better workhorses than the new ones that Towni....... Agghhh I won’t. Mate... get yourself an old ute. Mines a 1981 Toyota Hylux 4wd. They were originally 18R motors, mine has been updated to a 22R engine. The old girl struggles a bit with a two ton c/van behind and about a ton on the tray... you don’t need power steering... I stuck a new clutch in her about 10k clicks back, Had to do the brakes as well because with about three ton pushing her, she was finding it hard to stop. I sadly remember one event coming down Cunningham’s Gap... who ever Cunningham was... I was about half way down with the van behind me and what was left of the brakes decided to fade.

I had the gearbox in deep under at the time. And lo and behold there was a semi in front of me and he had every bloody brake known to man; and he had them all on. Every single tom jack one of them. Slow... Geezus. Well I was creeping up on old mate and it wasn’t looking good. I could well tell that in about less than a minute, old mate in the semi was going to be plus four ton.... to wit : me and the old ute were going to be bloody wedded to old mate and the semi. Many thanks to the bloke who invented uhf two ways. I got the mike and called old mate in the semi ... he had his name all over the back door... and the conversation went a bit like... “Old mate in the white Shifters and Movers semi down Cunningham’s gap ---copy.” He coppied. “Listen mate, I am right up your Ringfedder and I have a ute with a caravan on the back, all suffering brake fade. I am in bottom gear and rapidly going to stick my nose fair up your backside... could you give me about 5k/p/h more please ... copy that?” He copied and complied bless the man where ever he is. It was close with the old ute. Yeah I got the brakes done after that... not on the c/van yet but. Soon.

Me and the old ute have seen a fair bit together and I remember the time when she slid into a ditch trying to miss some bloody town.... person, in a car coming the other way on the wrong side of the track... I waited a while for a bloke to come along and snig me out. I had the brother-in-law in at the time and he as passenger said... “The grass is getting pretty bloody close to this window...” She’s a good old girl... strong, low geared, orf road diffs in her... real solid chassis, not even the van will stretch that... no front suspension, no steering damper, bloody great fat tyres on her and when she hits a rut, best it is that you haven’t got your thumbs in the way of the spokes in the steering wheel. Yeah. Not a bad old girl. 1981 ... what does that make her? In the main about 30 years old. She fair worked her arse orf out in Condamine. She never hardly shifted unless she had about her own weight in logs, cars, 1000 gallon water containers...et al to snig out. It’s the orf road difs that do it. Bang the old girl into 4wd-low and she’ll climb the side of a house no worries. I just put a new carby on her too. My beloved picked it up real cheap orf the net somewhere, in the box and direct from Toyota Japan. She stole it at the price.
Then things started to show their age a tad.

To wit... she stopped. Dead as a bloody maggot. No spark. I apologised to her for working her to the core, but that didn’t work, so it had to be old mate down the workshop; well I rang my beloved in Brisbane, and she rang the RACQ bloke in Brisbane, who gave her the number of the local bloke who just happens to be old mate down the workshop. Fair enough. ‘Where are you mate” “In the old cattle yards” “Yeah, I know where you are, I’ll come out with the trailer” A fine bloke. He’s a top mechanic... very good at what he does. He diagnosed its illness down to a non operational ignition igniter. This is where it all goes wrong... badly bloody wrong... There wasn’t an ignition igniter in the southern hemisphere, probably the whole world. Toyota stopped making them when Pontius was a pilot in the Greek air force. Anyhow... it comes about that if I can possibly get my hands on a points and condenser distributer, old mate down the workshop will put her back to standard ignition and do away with the electronic stuff. “It’s easy” I was assured.
Yeah... I’ll bet it is; compeered to finding a bloody 1981 22r points and coil distributor. Nowhere eh. Not one. Some wreckers even laughed... “Eh... 1981 what...” So the treasured bloody ute was now standing in style outside old mates workshop ... for a period of 10 long weary bloody weeks. Old mate at the local post orfice lent me a brand new Holden ute with only 40ooo clicks on the clock, and if it wasn’t for his kindness I would have been bloody well euchred.

Glenny worked her arse orf getting information orf the net as to where one may be found... we thought we had one in Sydney but that turned out to be an 18r... totally different. Then news of one came through from S.A. and the hopes went up for an early recovery... you can’t snig logs out with old mates ute, it didn’t have 4wd for a start... automatic, so she was always going to be all or nothing when the toe went down... no, you couldn’t get the new ute to do what the old ute did.
Then things went quiet for a couple of weeks and lo and behold Glenny comes up with a bloke in Tasmania who has just the ticket. So she rings me and I ring him and he’s a damn fine Tasmanian gent, and he says that how I can have the distributor for nothing and he’ll even pay the postage... old ute blokes must stick together... and I was pretty chuffed. A few days to get here from Tassie and old mate will have the old ute back on the road. So I waited... and waited... and it turns out that bloody Australia Post sent it to some god forsaken part of Australia... it certainly wasn’t Queensland... buggar the post code... and now they openly admit to having lost the thing, and what do you know... they are sorry. Not as bloody sorry as I am at this point. They lost it. They lost the only surviving bloody 22r points and condenser distributer in the world. They lost it. Man alive that’s like making a galah day out of shooting the last remaining Siberian Tiger.

So while I am trying to eke out a living in the bush, my missus has dedicated the best part of her life now to finding anything that will make the old ute go again. We have a list. Either/or... or both if they can be found, or whichever comes to light first. The list is... an ignition coil igniter for a 22r electronic ignition, or a much sought after second bloody 22r points and condenser dizzy, (For Oz Post to lose again... ) or both, or parts thereof and old mate down the workshop will see what rabbit he can pull out of the hat... geezus. So after toiling night and day over a hot monitor, my beloved turns up an igniter. Old mate who has this rare and unobtainable species says some fantastic price for it and credit card details and a pint of blood change hands and the thing is on registered deliver up from Sydney.

When it got here, it looked like a bowl of porridge. There wasn’t a shred of insulation left on any of the 5 wires and the plug ins were burnt orf and the thing showed ‘Dead’ on the multymeter. I prayed to my gods for my bloody sanity. The old ute, sat outside old mates workshop, was now just a dream. Every time I went past, there she was looking at me as if saying ‘How much longer’ and I went in to see old mate. He took the igniter and blessed it, rewired it, blessed it again and put it on the old ute. She started first turn of the key. Whoopee, the old ute is back on the road. Then word comes to the circle that there is a bloke who has a 22r points and coil distributor,... this bloke answered one of Glenny’s please for help... and it was in good order, a three month warranty on it... it gets better, the price was reasonable and... he only lived round the next bend from her and does she want to go round and have a look at it and pick it up. Sydney, Adelaide, Hobart, Kooralbyn... what’s the chances... So she asks me do I want it posted out and I thought of a lot of towny.... no I must not ... persons hands that it had to go through to get to mine, and I thought Oz post might have a 22r distributor sensor in the chain somewhere and I could see losing everything... old ute becoming a boat anchor.

She now has it under her pillow, waiting for me to go down to the smoke at xmas... I won’t be able to help myself shortly... and retrieve it, and never let it out of my sight until I get round to needing the conversion back to standard ignition. But she has got a lot of parts still available, and I can tell she’s a happy old ute because she was fair bloody galloping today and she was only half a ton overloaded. I went down to the smoke last winter with the old ute. She was a ton plus overloaded with ironbark for the good people who live in the city and don’t have time to get out and log ironbark... if they know what bloody good ironbark looks like in the first place... which is probably very doubtful, they buy little blocks of milled pine for something in excess of 35 bucks and I sell ironbark logged and chipped for 20 bucks a bag and come out o/k sometimes. Whatever. I set orf down to the smoke with about 2 and a half ton of firewood on the old ute, and as I pull up the range, right at the top in a nice little lay-by, is Norman the Lawman and unless I’m imagining that he is waving hello, he wants a word. He was doing r/b/a and logbooks. If he doesn’t look over the high sides, I may well escape.

Blow in this... nothing, and I don’t need a logbook. I’m away... “Can I see your licence” I produce and he looks at it and says “Heavy traffic licence eh... well it’s as well you have because you’ll need it for this load you have on, where are you headed”.. Shit. its going to be a long trip back to the scales and then drop the load and then what. No point in going down to the smoke half empty. Then he looks at me and says “Have a good day” and waves me through. What a bloke... I am now dreaming of megabucks for the sale of good bush ironbark to the poor bloody townies who as yet do not know what warmth is or how much their wood burners can take. Some rosewood or a bit of gidgee would soon put them in the picture. (That was diplomatic) and I get down there and the bloody temperature went up by about 15 degrees and I couldn’t sell a bag. I have a big sign saying Ironbark... at lower cost than factory cast orf pine blocks, and not one bloody townie has the sense to think... ‘ironbark,... my word, you don’t see that often, I‘ll buy a few and stock them under the house for when it gets cold, wood doesn’t cost anything to keep...’
Eh... hello... When did anyone last see a wood vendor by the side of the road selling bloody good wild bush ironbark in the middle of the bloody smoke for gawds sake. I could hardly give it away. Cop this... an old pommy sheila told me down the smoke that it was only the big snakes you had to watch out for, the little ones were fine.... There was a six foot king brown on the back porch of the old girl across the way this morning... I suppose the elderly lady from England would have been a tad wary of that one. I wonder how long a one foot Taipan would stand having its head patted. I met a pommy bloke the other day and he told me the best thing to do if you see a snake is put your hands under your armpits... no crap, that’s what he said.

How does this work. A very popular free download anti-virus prog for the p/c (I have it installed) went through the bloody roof at me the other night because I wanted to know how the cricket was doing in Tassie... we all know now... and so Glenny sent me a link to ninesman and in I went. Hoooly gezus, I wished I had never even thought of the idea. Pop-ups... I never saw the like. The anti virus prog went wild telling me I had spyware and tracking cookies in more abundance than the bloke who makes them. It said I was ‘under threat of being taken over’ and I don’t know what else... it had me a tad concerned and I flicked the site down and went for the kill, I ordered a full computer scan with all the bells and whistles, and it took this prog three quarters of a bloody hour to tell me that there was not a single thing found. Howzat. Good eh. Thank all the gods I didn’t hear the last of the match.
I’m orf into the swag...
...croc

[manfredvijars]

Good to see your fingers grace the keyboard again Mate - been too bloody long ...

[croc]

Thanks Manny...
...c

[Maureen K Clifford]

If you fancy a brew the next time you are coming down Cunninghams Gap - the one belonging to that bloke you don't know, drop in and say g'day. My old Ute can talk to your old Ute while the Billy boils Though you'd have to drive a tad past the Boonah turn off to get here and there'd only be coffee waiting

Loaded many a truck load of Ironbark and split it too - best timber in the world IMO for a good hot fire in winter and a beautiful timber to slab. The bar at the Texas Motel is made out of an Ironbark slab cut and milled on our old property.

[croc]

G'day Maureen...

Yeah she's good stuff is ironbark... bless you, I'll pop a few Tea bags in the glovebox... and the next time I'm down the gap I'll turn on my 'Maureens old ute sensor'. That should find you. One old ute will always sniff out another old ute.

Stay well girl...
...croc