Sunday 2 February 2014

Outback Mechanics: Stranded on a Christmas Morn

February 2nd, 2014 - Vernon, BC, Canada

Orion here.

It was hot.  So hot, dry, and isolated.  The highway itself was busy enough compared to the Red Centre, but it felt empty.  There were vehicles, but they seemed to blast past with rocket engines, with not a care for anyone or anything, leaving a wave of hot air in their wake.  I was collapsed on the baking concrete next to our faithful steed, Xavier.  Marina was sprawled across the passenger seat, feebly trying to hang up sarongs to reduce the sting of the merciless sun.  My clothes, hands, and mouth reeked of petrol.  We were in the middle of an outback breakdown.

Rewind... The day prior, we were happily rolling down the freeway, oblivious to the challenges that awaited us, when suddenly the van began lurching and losing speed.  Again and again it surged, and we knew from our experience with engines that ours wasn't getting enough petrol.  We tried to push it, riding the gas pedal to create different pressures, but finally it died.  We found ourselves stranded in the middle of nowhere, without a clue of how to isolate the problem.  Sure, we crawled around under the van plenty, but on the surface, nothing was wrong!  After some trial and error, we found that if we let the van sit for about an hour, we could go about a kilometre (at about 50km/h on the shoulder) before Xavier would sputter and die again.  And so our schedule began: sit, wait, attempt to drive, sit, wait, attempt to drive...and so on.  And so it went for most of the day.  We managed to keep our spirits up by listening to good music and focusing on the goals ahead,  however, our goals were much further ahead than we realized!  Evening found us about 500 metres from a rest stop, the signs counting down in hundreds of metres as we slowly got closer.  The van had died completely by this point and I was pushing the van up a gradual hill as Marina steered.  And then it started to pour.  It seemed like the worst situation possible (although on the bright side, the rain was incredibly refreshing after pushing a heavy chunk of metal for some time!), when like a miracle, headlights shone up behind me!  A tow truck had seen our pathetic efforts, and at the end of his shift before Christmas weekend, took mercy upon us.  Thanks to his Christmas spirit, he towed us for next-to-nothing, straight to his friend the bush-mechanic.  With that "lucky" turn of events,  the first night of our adventures ended with us sleeping on an amazingly peaceful farm far away from everything, eagerly awaiting our appointment with the vehicle hoist and expert eyes in the morning.

The next day, everything appeared to go perfectly smoothly.  The mechanic thought that the problem was some decaying rust in the fuel tank getting caught in the old pump and filter.  Long ago, the original fuel pump in the tank had been replaced by an electric pump on the outside.  Rather than spending heaps of money and taking the fuel tank down, he blasted the fuel lines with compressed air, thinking that would solve the issue.  We thanked him for his opinion and insight, and bade him farewell.  Back on the road again, we were elated! Until we had gone about a hundred kilometres...  The dreaded surging began again, and within a few minutes we rolled up to the side of the highway, this time under a lone tree, a manoever that we had gotten fairly accomplished at by this point.  

What now?  At least we had narrowed the problem down somewhat.  The compressed air had done something initially, which gave us a slight glimmer of knowledge that could possibly help us down the line.  We got back to our previous schedule of driving and waiting, and also called our mechanic mate in Fremantle and our friendly tow truck driver from the night before to ask their opinions.  We were starting to piece things together, but definitely needed to see a mechanic or at least borrow someone's hoist and get "right in there" to find the root of the problem.  The road signs continued to taunt us with a never changing distance of twenty-or-so kilometres to Yass, a random outback town.  Yass became our beacon of light, the shining goal before us.  Having started the day early, the mid-day sun hadn't yet begun it's reign of terror, but the warmth of the morning promised temperatures of over 40 degrees to come as a side dish to our lunch.  

If we thought the day before had been testing, we had no idea.  The landscape had become hilly, the trees had disappeared, and we found it difficult to make it more than a couple hundred metres before our sometimes hour long breaks.  We tried to use these periods constructively by meditating, staying positive, and diverting our attentions, but the heat had become hard to bear.  The hours ticked by slowly and the temperature rose quickly. 

It was during one of our "restful" breaks that I had a revalation.  A memory flashed in my mind of a story someone had told me about some aboriginal bush mechanics, and the genius ways that they rigged up their cars in the midst of the inevitable outback breakdown.  They used plastic water bottles, strips of cloth, dental floss, straws, and other random items to substitute fuel filters, pumps, or whatever part may have broken or overheated.  From our previous observations, we knew that the problem was somewhere between the fuel tank and the carburator.  So why not just run fuel straight to the carburator?  It was a pretty dirtbag idea, but it would work.  Using some old hose and a two litre water bottle, I siphoned some petrol into the bottle and attempted to rig up a similar siphon from the petrol bottle straight to the carby.  What followed was a lot of spitting, gagging, and swearing under my breath as I tried to set up a successful siphon without wasting all our petrol, spilling it all over the engine, starting a flash fire in the intense heat, or drinking too much of the toxic liquid.  This plan proved to be much more difficult than I had expected.  Our length of hose was very short, so getting the gravity flow started was tough if not "impossible", and things were not going well at all.  We took a break and I crumpled on the pavement, my head spinning from the fumes.  This brings us to where I started this tale: me on the ground, Marina in the passenger seat, and the unforgiving sun beating down on us from directly overhead with complete abandon.  

In my fume-induced haze, frustration began to creep in.  I knew that what I was attempting to do would work in theory, but why couldn't I do it?! Tensions rose in my body and mind as two parts of my brain warred against one another, each with the same objective, but with very different mindsets.  I managed to calm myself and sat quietly for some time, remembering my reverence of the desert in which we were forgotten.  I thought of the aboriginals' attitude towards the great outback: "Country will take care of me. Country always takes care of us."  I found some peace in that ancient thought, and not long after I stumbled upon the skull of a small marsupial in the ditch near the van.  This was a sybolic and reassuring find to me, and with gratitude, I tied it to the roo-bar on the front of the van. I asked the spirit of Country and whatever small animal this had been to guide us to safety, and to teach us to live in harmony with the land rather than fighting against it.  Then I remembered our spare fuel pump.

Since I had done some fuel line modifications in the past with swapping and moving our electric fuel pump, I was familiar with the set up, and got to work immediately.  I quickly disconnected the electricity from the new pump I had installed recently and put the old pump back in. In short, a small length of hose was plugged into the carburator, which was plugged into the old greasy pump, which had some wires running to the battery, which had another length of hose running into a two litre water bottle full of petrol.  We were good to go!  Praying that a flash fire wouldn't start and hanging out the window so that I could reach the bottle of petrol with our insignificantly long piece of hose, Marina turned on the ignition, the pump started, and then she turned the key the rest of the way.  Yew! The engine started without a hitch, and we were on the road, the side of the road, that is. 

We attempted to get up to highway speed, but with only two litres of petrol, it was going fast.  We coasted in neutral as much as possible down hills and tried to conserve, but eventually our bottle ran dry.  We sputtered to a stop.  Although we were stopped again, we had made some significant headway, mentally even moreso than physically.

Interestingly, as our fuel bottle drained, our fuel tank filled up!  I didn't realize how efficient engines were at recycling fuel until I watched the needle steadily rise as the levels in our bottle disappeared.  The bottle emptied shockingly quickly, and we were worried until we noticed the levels in our petrol tank!  We already had two thirds of a tank, so we also had to keep an eye on our fuel guage so that we didn't accidentally overflow!

The next part of our adventure involved my trekking off to a random farm in the facemelting heat to try to find a longer piece of hose.  If we could rig up the same system with a longer hose, we could siphon out twenty litres into our jerry can which would surely get us to Yass.  As I walked on the cracked and sunbaked dirt, I contemplated simply cutting a hose from their irrigation system, but my healthy respect for karma helped me decide against it.  I arrived at a weird farm with heaps of buildings.  After wandering for a while, I saw an old woman and I approached, saying, "G'day!" as cheerfully as possible.  She jumped with a horrified, "Ah!" and proceeded to glare at me and demand what I wanted.  She turned out to be a horrible, whiny, selfish witch, but I eventually sweet-talked her into leading me to her son, who was a classic Aussie gentleman, happy to help.  I followed him, explaining my woes as the old bag's wails echoed behind us.  After some time, a left victoriously.  I had a long length of the same irrigation hose that I had comtemplated stealing, some random parts to help with siphoning, a spray bottle, and various other farm equipment that might help in an outback "situation" such as the one we found ourselves in the midst of.  

A side note: to all of those people who are grumpy and selfish, just think of what would have happened if this situation had gone differently!  If the hag had turned me away, my first order of business as I exited their property would have been to cut one of their most obviously used irrigation lines and take the hose I needed.  Instead, I got what I needed without any damage, and the farm owners got some major appreciation from me and their own good karma.  

I trudged back to the van, the sweat evaporating off my skin as fast as it accumulated.  Though my body was dragging, I was stoked.  I showed my conquest to Marina and we celebrated by sitting in the shade for a few minutes before resuming the battle. 

After some more petrol drinking and fiddling, we were set!  Our new and improved set up included the long hose which dangled dangerously near the tire 'en route' from under the slightly raised hood, through the window, to the jerry can at my feet on the passenger side.  Marina was in less of a fume-trip than me, so she took the wheel while I held a surgical glove around the tube entering the jerry can to try to stop as much of the fumes as possible from "hot-boxing" the van.   And off we went!  Everything ran perfectly, and as we descended the hill into the tiny town of Yass, we whooped with exhausted joy.  We ran out of petrol at the exact moment that we coasted into the town's only petrol station.  

Phew... The danger was past.  Henceforth there would be challenges, but nothing as intense as being stranded in the outback.  We filled up the jerry can and contemplated our options. It was the 22nd of December, and it was Friday night.  After several phone calls to everyone in Yass and several people from Canberra, we found that no mechanics would be working.  Everyone got off work in about twenty minutes, and wouldn't be back until after the Christmas weekend.  Many of them had New Years in their plans as well, so things were looking pretty bleak.  It looked like we'd be spending Christmas with the other Yass locals at "The Australian," the popular pub/hotel that reminded me a bit of the Prancing Pony from The Fellowship of the Ring.  We had made some rough plans and had gotten about as far as where to spend the night, when we thought it might be smart to ask some locals for help.

A man had pulled up next to us to check his oil, so I said hello with a classic, "How you goin'?"
The man looked up from his car. "Yeah mate, good! Yas all right?"
"Yeah, yeah, mate," I continued, "just havin' a bit of a bit of engine trouble.  Do you know much about fuel lines? Or have any mates that are mechanics? Or semi-mechanics?"
The man thought for a minute, then set down his tools and picked up his phone.  Holding his pointer finger up, he dialled a number and leaned back against his car's grill. A short conversation later, he beckoned, "C'mon." 
We  locked up Xavier and hopped into his Holden.  He mentioned some things about mechanic mates, a guy with a hat and big white beard, and "The Australian," where we were headed.  We parked and followed him into the most Aussie pub EVER.  There was a solid age group from 18 to 85, and everyone knew everyone!  Our guide said hello to practically every person in the pub as we pushed through throngs of drunken locals to reach the bar.  Nearly there, we ran into Jay, who turned out to be the dude with the big white beard.  He had already had a couple rounds, and didn't seem too keen on helping with the van.  He pushed us over to his son Peter, and our guide's introduction of, "Peter, how's your Christmas spirit feeling?  A'right?" seemed to do the trick.  Apparently Peter's Christmas spirit was full-on, and he gave us directions to his shop and drawled, "I'll see yas 'round nine or ten in the mornin', depending on how many stubbies I get my hands on tonoight, mate!" 

We were so grateful.  To shorten this already long tale, I'll abbreviate.  We hopped back in the car with our friend, got our van, then followed him with our sketchy setup to Peter's shop.  We camped outside his shop and were grateful for the toilets and showers, despite the gigantic spiders. 

After all this, the problem was a cheap fuel filter that had been added onto our new pump without my knowledge.  It clogged up right away due to its shittiness, and caused all of our problems.  Such a simple thing caused so much pain! And yet it all worked out in the end.  It always does!  We got everything sorted in no time, hit the road once again, and soon found ourselves in Canberra with our lovely friends and a roof over our heads.

Until another time,
Orion (& Marina)

P.S. As you can see from the date above, we're home! Keep your eyes and ears and social medias out for upcoming gigs and our highly anticipated new album, The Tipping Point! A few more travel blogs entries, and we'll be back in BC business...

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