Need a few good yarns

Used to know this bloke or as the story goes a friend of a friend told me
There was this young bloke in country Victoria as it was then would drive at a elevated speed through a small country town letting of shots in the sky. Then get to the other end and drive back the way they had just come from and the police car would be going the other way at high speed lights and siren going.

& they never ever grabd U
LOL
cya

Late 1970's took on a relief job driving an old Loadstar with a long tray on daily run for TNT Country Express.
Early start from Westall Depot with truck already loaded and tarped, to Renfrey's yard in Geelong West. TNT
staff member there would take paperwork and help with some of the drops around town. Got to a lot of places
in the area doing other drop offs and any pick ups. Typical general freight, never knew what was next!
Old truck had been an agitator, V8 on gas for a while then repowered with a silver Perkins. Reliable and ok on
that work. Got to use the joey box, mainly direct and overdrive to split the 5 speed main.
Usually left Geelong about 2 pm, then back to TNT Footscray Rd. drop off and pick ups there, then Westall.
Given the paperwork to pick up a front end loader backhoe from an industrial site, to go on a Sydney truck.
Big machine, no loading facilities so dug a hole with it to back the Loadstar down into. Put some form ply on
the tray to help take the weight and drove the machine on. Up out of the hole easily in low and steady trip to
Footscray. Backed up to the Sydney truck and shifted the machine on to his trailer. He was happy, half a load
and no tarping. You were just expected to get the job done, on your own, no fuss. Left the hole there!
Three months of that was enough for me.

May well have told this yarn before, but, Sat arvo, only the racing on TV, WTH!
Young, green, not long out of the Green Machine, put my hand up for a truck driving job on the coal in NSW.
Bloke I was working for had a pretty laid back approach to life in general, used to do all his own maintenance and servicing, drivers were merely an irritant to balancing the bills at the end of the month.
So, bopping along for quite a while, no great dramas, used to start in the dark, truck always left near the front gate. Jumps in the cabover this day, heads off and first time I used the skids, she pulled sideways. WTF? Get out with the torch, can't find anything hanging off, no oil or grease coming from inside the hubs etc. Jump back in and flip the front brake limiting switch to off and get going for the day.
Return to the yard not long after lunch, "That trucks not handling right, screwed sideways and almost put me across the road"
"What did you do?"
"Turned the front brakes off, switch on the dash"
"Well, that's what its there for, don't need front brakes, especially when empty!"
"You want me to drive this truck, better sort the picks out, not driving it while unsafe!"
"Pansy! OK, fix it later, busy at the moment"
So next morning, dark again, choof off, do a couple of short loads, brakes although not pulling to one side, don't seem to be all that flash.
Pulled up for smoko and before going into the pie shop, stuck me head under the front alloy bar, he'd doubled the air hoses over and tied them up with wire!
Did the last load and back to the yard, jumped out ready to give him a rocket over the brakes, he's down in the shed at the lathe, he used to build up the "S"cam rollers with weld and then machine them back down. For a long time I thought to myself, "you mean bas,,ard", you wouldn't spend 5 bucks on a cam roller but you dick around half a day wasting time". Fact was, he was a very cluey man, an ex merchant marine engineer, who loved nothing more than tinkering about.
He was telling us one day about how he was out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, in a convoy with an old tramp steamer carrying desperately needed war supplies to the Old Dart. She run a bearing and the only way they could get her going was to cut up a heap of army canvas haversacks and stuff them into the bearing retainers. Had to do it quite a few times to get to England. "Alternative was to be literally dead in the water if we hadn't got ourselves out of trouble!" I respected him a lot more after that.

Thanks for the kind words and thoughts about my Dad everyone, it wasnt expected

Ok, time to punish you lot with some more endless dribble

Back before I had egg white and tadpoles all over my face I was knocking around with a few other blokes and Robbie, John and my self were problem solving in the Rosedale pub QLD

Now young Robbie came up with the genius idea of how to make a bucket load of coin and have fun doing it

The plan was fool proof be carried out by a few fools, what could go wrong
Than plan was to catch wild pigs vaccinate and drench them, keep the for 30 days and sell them to the butchers

So somehow we came up with the idea on how to catch them

We threaded a thin steel cable thru a length of conduit inside another length of orange electrical conduit

One end of the cable was attached to the ute hurdle, a 4x4 Hilux
The other end was formed into a noose, the noose had several layers of garden hose on the cable so it wouldnt damage the pigs to much

So the genis plan involved us driving like madmen across the open paddocks after a mob of pigs with one or two of us in the back and lasso a pig running around like a crazy pig would been chased in a 4x4 with 3 idiots in command

Once the lasso was around the neck, jump on the brakes, then quickly grap and sometimes tie its legs and man handle it into the crate

Simple!

Well it was a lot harder than I think any of us thought but slowly we got the hang of it and made sure we kept swapping our hunting grounds so as to not spook the pigs to much

I think someone (John) got the idea from a old John Wayne movie

We would then tranport our prize home to feed and grow out, it is amazing how quiet some pigs became in that 30 days

I had a 4 ton Dodge tip truck and with big hungry boards and we would every few days travel down to Bundaberg and pick up reject pumpkins, melons, zucchini, tomatoes, sweet potatoes and the like to feed the pigs

We would get some massive pigs sometimes , we caught a huge sow once that she couldnt stand up properly in the crate
On the way home we pulled into the Rosedale pup to rehydrate
A lady walks in and tells us that our pigs about escape, we thank her and investigate and decided we still have enough time to finish our drinks

Bugger me we ballsed that up, next thing we are chasing this pig around trying to catch her thru the town park and people's yards , a heck of a laugh, dont think many in town were laughing at us though

I dont think we made huge money out of it and with in 6 months the pigs were getting a lot harder to catch, but we had some laughs

Now a bit side tracked, one of Johns big brahman bulls had escaped into a neighboring property and no one new who owned it(the property), so I was given the job of finding and getting the bull back
I grabbed Troy Johns nephew and in the little Dodge we went exploring and looking for the bull


We found the mallee gate had been knocked down and so followed the tracks in the truck

This country got really rough going, way to rough for a 4 ton Dodge
Well bugger me we eventually we came across all this gear hidden in the bush, from earthmoving gear to rolls upon rolls of poly pipe, like semi loads
There was caravans trailers and on and it went, dozers loaders tip trucks

Anyway we didnt pay it much attention but sure shocked to see all this stuff

Well we pressed on found the bull and some cattle and started working them back and then in some really rough going I broke the center bolt drivers side front spring


Well we pushed the cattle out and decided to go back to the clearing and back out the road and the longway home

So we got up to the road and bugger me the gates locked, very unusual in this area, as in we had never seen anything like a locked gate before
So I cut the fence and finally got the little Dodge home, it was hard enough to handle in the bush with a busted center bolt but was almost uncontrollable on a road at 40 km/h

Got home and jumped in my ute and patched the fence

We discussed all this gear with people we new but it was all a mystery
I get back home one day and all hells broken loose
Turns out the mystery owner of all this gear had been and abused hell out of everyone and given that doo doo flows down hill it made it to me pretty quick

Well I just stated what had happened and we were just following orders and we fixed the fence right away and no damage was done and left it at that

Neverheard no more until months later and some one has seen on the news that a major criminal network had been busted who were flogging gear in Brisbane and storing it out in the bush
Turned out young Troy and I had stumbled across their hiding spot, bugger me Pauly boy

Paul

Good one Paul. Reminds me of another pig story.

During an exercise at Wide Bay I had often seen wild pigs on the beach and thought this supply of pork should not be lost so, asked Bambi Weaver to take me in a Sioux helicopter to look for a likely animal. Flying along we saw two good size pigs on the beach and Bambi hovered over them and proceeded to follow one who bolted along the waters edge. After about 400 metres the pig got sick of the game and, completely exhausted, turned to face the helicopter. As Bambi hovered over the panting animal I slid along the skid rack and launched myself into space, landing on top of the startled pig. Unfortunately I had misjudged the height and dropped about 5 metres and lay completely winded on top of the equally winded porker. As we both began to recover the pigs sharp trotters started thrashing and tearing me and my flying suit to shreds. While I was trying to stop the legs, a set of sharp teeth latched onto my foot. Not only was I in a no win situation for letting go or keeping hold, Bambi for some unknown reason, continued to hover over the wrestling match. I still had my helmet on and a storm of sand was being blown under the visor so I could not see while the pig regained its strength, alternately chomping on my foot and squealing at 150 decibels. Eventually Bambi landed and we managed to get the large struggling animal onto the skid rack, marginally tied up with our belts and boot laces. Halfway back to camp the pig struggled loose and started to work his way over the edge of the skids. There was no way I was going to allow our hard won pork supply to take a 2,000 foot swallow dive so there was nothing for it but to undo my seat belt and slide out on top of the pig whose body by this time was hanging out half way in space. The troops say they could hear the pig squealing ten minutes before the chopper arrived and they saw a bloody body in shredded rags laying on top of the hindquarters of a large animal whose front legs thrashed in the air. Help was soon at hand and I limped off to the medic to have my numerous lacerations attended to. We didn’t even eat him – a couple of feeds and he calmed right down and someone put a rope around his foot and turned him into the flight mascot!

Winter 1988 hired large caravan to take the family north. First to visit Army mate on a cattle property
100 km north of Cloncurry, then up to Normanton, across to the Daintree, Brisbane Expo then home.
Property on the Old Normanton Rd, on the Dougald River. Very dry year up there, picked up supplies
and mail in Cloncurry then out to his place mid arvo. Two families met, set up and dinner together.
Mate said to get an early night as two road trains of young stud brahmans loading out in the morning
to be agisted at Burketown. One arrived at midnight, the other at 5 am for brekky. Good feed then out
to the yards to load. Helped a stockman draft the young cattle off their mothers while the others loaded
280 odd head on each road train of 6 decks. All went well, smoko, paperwork and ready to go.
Went to watch them cross the dry river crossing, gravel road with concrete bottom in the river bed.
Hooked the two trains together with a rigid bar, both fairly new V8 500 Macks. As the lead prime mover
started climbing up from the crossing, the trailing operator put the boot into his Mack. Once up on solid
ground, the lead operator did the same so they both crossed smoothly. Unhooked and off to Burketown.
Great to see how differently work is done up there. Cattle numbers amazing.

That reminds me.......

The terrible visibility in the Fly River district during 1971 caused a number of problems for the 183 Recce Flight pilots as the smoke from a thousand fires, during the driest spell on record, made navigating in this featureless country near impossible. 2nd Battalion Pacific Islands Regiment were doing a six week intensive patrolling program along the Indonesian border and had a Pilatus Porter and two Sioux helicopters in support. Returning from a visit to a company operating from Lake Murray, about 200 kilometres to the north, I missed our base at Morehead in the one mile visibility so had no option but to fly direct to the coast and follow the winding river back to the strip. The 30 direct kilometres from the sea to Morehead was increased to about 90 along the winding river. The turbo-prop engine in the Porter was guzzling fuel at 100 feet and I could not see far enough to cut the corners of the river bends. As the fuel totalizer wound back past 9999 I told Colonel Lloyd, the CO, and his Ops Officer that I would put the aircraft in the river if Morehead did not come up before the fuel rang out – better the crocodiles we had seen regularly than the heavy timber. Without so much as a change in expression Col Lloyd removed his peaked cap, undid the leather chip-strap and placed the hat back on with the strap under his chin. He then adopted the position of seated attention as seen in regimental photographs with fists on his knees. After we landed with minus 60 pounds of fuel the CO replaced his chin strap, turned to me and said “Well done Kidby” and left the aircraft. The Ops Officer slunk off to change his underwear.

During this job I encountered the only mutiny from the RAEME crew along with us in my whole time in aviation. There were thousands of Rusa deer in the Morehead / Bensbach region and as it was extremely dry they had gathered into herds of hundreds around the remaining waterholes. I suggested to the CO that we should get some venison for the troops (and ourselves) to break the ration pack monotony. Working out we would need to shoot about 30 deer to feed everyone I drew some ammunition and rifles and we set off on the hunt. We found a dry claypan and landed the Porter about 50 yards from a large herd of deer who did not move, standing there like dairy cows as we knocked over about 25 of their number. The three of us (a PIR platoon commander and RAAF crewman off an Iroquois visiting for the day) set about the hard job of gutting and skinning the animals in 30 degree heat. The RAAF sergeant didn’t want to get dirty so after about 2 hours the two of us stood back absolutely covered in blood, fur and flies beside a huge heap of dressed animals. I loaded the first 15 or so carcasses into the Porter and flew back to Morehead. Dave Allan in a Sioux came along and managed to carry the rest slung by ropes under the helicopter. The blood from the animals had run by the bucketful through the floor and down into the back of the Porter and was putrid in minutes in the heat. The RAEME sergeant marched very formally up to me and said “Sir, we are here to work on the aircraft in reasonable manner but this disgusting mess you have brought back in the Porter will not be cleaned up by us.”

“That’s OK sergeant I will clean it up later but only those who contributed to the collection will be getting any venison. You can enjoy a tasty feed of ration pack tucker for the fourth straight week.” I saw a good size group with buckets and rags at the aircraft about 15 minutes later!

Paul

I have a couple more cattle stories but you need to put up another. What about the other blokes? Everyone must have had something happen to them or heard some tall tales but true that are worth a paragraph.

lang

Just a short one while someone else has a go.
Not long before getting out of the army, went down to the Tianjara training ground up in the ranges above the Nowra naval base, great country but pretty rugged.
Me and another bloke down there supporting the grunts (Infantry), with a dozer and I had the Pengo (earth borer), huge job! I was digging toilet holes, the dozer pushed up buns and filled the holes in at the end of the exercise.
With little to do during the days, other than wander over and B/S to the cooks, we went for a bit of a walk down to this little creek that ran through the range. Bloke I was with looks at the creek and says that he reckons that there would be either yabbies or freshwater shrimp in there. We go for a bit of a wander up the creek, can't find anything to make a net out of.
That night back in camp got talking to one of the senior cooks and he said to grab a couple of empty plastic buckets and if we looked around hard enough, should find something with fine mesh, where we purloined a couple of mossie nets, wired them together and returned to the creek,
After dragging it several times, we ended up with two half buckets of these small freshwater shrimp, probably illegal, but whatever. We took them back to the cooks camp, scrounged one of those square ration tins with the large lid on it, about 4 gallon capacity.
Got a fire going and boiled the drum up, only intended cooking them for ten minutes or so, couple of us sitting around on a log. Bloke walks past on his way to the canvas showers set up not far up the track, with a towell around his waist.
"Ah, doin some washing boys?" and promptly dropped a pair of socks in the drum, we all used to wash out our socks and underpants in the showers.
WE chased the bugger down the track before fishing the socks out of the "pot".
Never tasted better shrimp in me life! Don't know if I would have been still keen if he'd dropped his knickers in!