Oh, those crazy Aussies!

I used to think that the Aussie sense of humour was 'drizabone', and that this meant I was surrounding by sublime intentional wordplay and ironic references. But after a while I realised it's not an automatic cultural inheritance. There are those who get the jokes and those who are the jokes.

An embodiment of this is the road signs. There are some good intentional pisstakes, like this one from the south west coast of Victoria, spotted a couple of years ago:





Then there are the ones that I'd love to think are intentional, but somehow reckon just weren't really thought out...



Like this one in Landsborough, Queensland:





Or this in South Australia:



A common tactic is to use road signs to get you to stop and buy a coffee in out of the way towns ... but sometimes they employ some wit to get you to pull over (not sure what's so wrong with Galahs by the way):







They can get be a bit stern about it, too:

They can't think up their own names, though - lots of settlements are named after places in The Old Country.

They're all budding Cub Scouts, really - Be Prepared and all that (sorry for reposting this one):

New Brakes!

Check these out!

A bit lightweight for BOB of course... but it is time for some new brake shoes on the rear, so I got some of these ready to go. If it ever stops raining for long enough to get the wheels off I might get them fitted.

Big flat and dry

... that's South Australia apparently.

Actually there turned out to be a lot more to it.

We had terrible problems with the car, innumerable breakdowns and ended up sleeping in the car in the desert out of mobile range for a week waiting for someone to come by who could help us.

No, not really. We had a great time, BOB behaved immaculately, embarrassed lots of moderns and returned a reasonable 28mpg most of the time, despite being full to the gunwales.

We dropped in on Nick (G-Man on the CT forum) in Adelaide for a night, drank his beer, talked Triumphs and drank more of his beer. Nick's Saloon was having Pi surgery the day we visited and his Mk2 GT6 was hitched up for a bit of rear end attention as you can see.

He started it up for me anyway - sounded fantastic. This car features the coolest James Bond kill switch I've ever heard of... but I'll keep it secret I think.

BOB is now pulling like a train which is handy for overtaking road trains, actually:


Not all of our trip involved driving in BOB, though. We met up with the in-laws for a week, and ventured north into the dirt roads of the desert in their well-kitted out Navarra. Jacques let me have a few drives... good fun on some of the gnarlier roads.


A useful car to have when you've got road signs like this:



We did get off-road a bit in BOB when we were on our own, though... there were just a couple of bottom-scrapes, and some big mud splashes! I can think of a few Triumph owners who'd be devestated to see an engine bay looking like this.

That's it for now ... I'll put a bit more in to The Editor and see if it crops up in Club Torque at some point down the track.