We were sitting under the best bit of shade to be found, it was bloody hot; pushing 42-4 Celsius, Toolkit was singing 'Stuck in the middle with you' in his broad Italian accent, for good reason, we about 80 kms into the settlement we were heading to, with about 60-70 to go. Toolkit was an interesting character, a chubby [ well I would say, "hey Tooly your getting chubby" he'd reply "Maria [his lovely wife] she says I'm acuddly and I like being cuddled"] Italian immigrant who had been a mechanic in the Italian army, told me "you knowa them Italian tanks, they gotta 5 gears in reverse, buta that's nota enough to match the forward speed ofa them other tanks, soa my job she was to put in the sixth gear, then they cana win in reverse" that was his story and he stuck to it. He'd helped out quite a few broken down locals, he'd say "un momento I getta my toolkit" and so Toolkit be came his username and he loved it. 20 or so minutes later we see some dust and start to hear some noise, as it got closer the noise got worse, finally out of the dust came a clapped out Holden ute, and we could see Stevo driving and his brother Mick with him. "Heyyy bros what you's doing here". "Waiting for the rains, catch some fish in the creek over there". "Awww bro rains along time off, Naaaa you's broken down wanna lift". Threw our gear in the back, hid the key to the Toyota [so the local mechanic could collect and work on it [this one was 'bigger than my kit' as Tooly would say when he couldn't fix it]. We were off, very erratically, Stevo and Mick hadn't just gone just to pick up the milk and papers, they'd been partying, and still were I noticed, didn't really matter to much out here, no other vehicles to speak of, and at the speed we were going plenty of time to miss the odd tree, anthill, rock, bullock. There was one section that had us thinking a bit, it was a fairly rough, dry gully stretch of road. But before we got there we ground to a halt, with the motor still turning over. "No accelerator boss" "Un momento I will have a look, open up the bonnet Stevo" Tooly disappeared in the engine compartment, "accelerator cable shes abroken what we got to use". I started going thru a pile in the corner "Tow rope , length of chain, different thickness's of wire of various lengths, lengths of bailer twine". "Piece of tie wire, anda the string that will do it".
Ten minutes later we were moving again, the bonnet was in the back with us, and Stevo was driving with one hand sort of out the window, holding on to the string that was attached to the arm of the carby, if it had been erratic before, it was now like being driven by someone with a broken ankle, fast slow fast jerk jerk jerk, we were however getting there, but now we entered the stretch of dry gullys. Imagine a roller coaster ride with no rails, and a fairly drunk driver whose one arm is controlling your speed with a piece of string, and with the other, not only steering, but trying to drink his beer as well. It wasn't long before we ran off the road and smack into a big pile of softish dirt, pushed up by the grader/bulldozer. On inspection, it was decided the damage wasn't to bad, the radiator had been pushed into the fan, but hadn't holed it, so all we needed to do was to pull off the fan, and clean the dirt off the front. The other problem we found was we had some how punctured a tyre, and this had to be changed before we could push it out of the dirt to be able to work on the radiator. Simple one would rightfully think, simply jack up the ute and "Heyyy bros I just remembered I lend the jack to my uncle and don't have it back" "ten outa ten for kindness Stevo" "thanks bro" "Ahhhhhh". We were fortunate enough to find a long stout tree trunk [care of the road works] and by 'placing' a pile of Awakes in the appropriate spot we were able to lever the ute up some, and then build up a pile of Watchtowers to rest it upon, and in this way we finally got the wheel changed, and after what seemed like a generation of the overlapping kind, we were ready to go. But this time Tooly and I were in the front doing the driving, wise man was our Davo. As we were leaving Davo had asked if we would leave the piles of mags there so "I can show peoples how them Awakes lifted us up and them Watchtowers held us there" "no problem". I said to Tooly as we drove away "next wirly wirly will scatter those mags over the country side, reckon we should count every dingo as witnessed to" "it isa the way she goes" matter closed.
We made it to the settlement and made camp,they had been out hunting, fishing, and collecting 'bush tucker', and tonight was feast night, which made Tooly very excited, I see him talking to an [tribal] elder, "he says I can cook them some spaghetti!"
At this point I should introduce you to toolkits 'red pack'. Where most men's wife's" would say "you got your bag of cloths and your water bottle" Maria would say "you gota the red pack" most would say "you got plenty of underwear" Maria says "you gota plenty pasta!" most would say "you got the esky and your bible" Maria says "you gota Plenty olive oil!" most would say "you got your fishing gear" Maria says "you gota...google Italian cooking ingredients, and you will get some idea of the checklist. Never went short of a good feed, and that night was no excepetion,with all the local food plus spaghetti and a few beers.....next very late morning after a fine brunch we were making a beeline for Anne's place, an elderly lady we had talked to before, and yes Macca had taught Tooly and me well, she had aircon. We talked about the food last night, family, the weather, the trip in with Davo and how we used the mags. "you got plenty more of them magazines like last time" "heaps Anny,whys that" "I got something to show you, come on" She lead us into her bedroom, there was a bed, a dresser, and a built in wardrobe, the rest of the space was taken up by a huge paper mache pyramid , approaching half built. "I read in a magazine how one of these would make me sleep better, so I is making me one, I need lots more paper to finish". We did the right thing and left her all we had. I only wish I knew then what I know now, I would have told her how happy Charley [Russel] would have been to know that the mags were being put to a 'proper use'. FF