Transcript of AE 1256 - The Goss: My Folks' 4WD Trip to Mallacoota & the Huge Storm

G'day, you mob! Pete here. And this is another episode of Aussie English, the number one place for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English. So today I have a Goss episode for you where I sit down with my old man, my father, Ian Smissen, and we talk about the week's news weather locally Down Under here in Australia, or non-locally, overseas, in other parts of the world. Okay.

And we sometimes also talk about whatever comes to mind, right? If we can think of something interesting to share with you guys related to us or Australia, we also talk about that in The Goss. So these episodes are specifically designed to try and give you content about many different topics where we're obviously speaking in English and there are multiple people having a natural and spontaneous conversation in English. So it is particularly good to improve your listening skills.

In order to complement that, though, I really recommend that you join the Podcast Membership or the Academy Membership at AussieEnglish.com.au where you will get access to the full transcripts of these episodes, the PDFs, the downloads. And you can also use the online PDF reader to read and listen at the same time. Okay, so if you really, really want to improve your listening skills fast, get the transcript, listen and read at the same time. Keep practising. And that is the quickest way to level up your English. Anyway, I've been rabbiting on a bit. I've been talking a bit. Let's just get into this episode guys. Smack the bird. And let's get into it.

All right. Welcome back. Dad.

Hey, Pete. It has been a while. In fact, I think this might be the first one for the year.

Oh, easy. It's only been a month and a half. Two? Almost two months. Almost. And this year's a leap year, isn't it?

It is.

Far out. I know.

You got friends with leap year birthdays? Um, no.

There's 1 or 2 people I know of, but I don't know who. Like, I just. I know that I know them, but I can't remember their..

Yeah.

Who, who it is specifically, but I. Definitely have friends who are like, I'm only five.

Yeah. It's one of those things that you sort of remember, but you don't remember who it is.

Yeah. So.

My, my sister died four years ago on February the 29th.

Okay. So it's only the first anniversary.

The first. Well, it's not the first anniversary. It's the first "quadra-versary".

Yeah. Quadra-anniversary. Yeah. As her husband said, only Jackie could die on February the 29th, but,

Well, I'm sure there would have been a few..

I'm sure, there were a few others!

So you recently went on a trip to Mallacoota. Did you want to chat about that?

Yeah!

Because that just seemed like it was a lot of fun.

And then there was a bit of an interesting incident at the, um, towards the end of it. That I guess all Victorians kind of experienced.

Pretty well, most did. Yeah.

Yeah. So well, I guess the update is that you bought this van. We did an episode on it a while back on the van that you, you had imported from Japan, or it was getting imported and you bought it?

Yes. Yeah. Well, it was um, there are a couple of importers that bring in vehicles from Japan that are not normally sold in Australia. And this one was, on the books to be imported. But when I found it, it still hadn't hit the ..

So it's kind of like..

I basically. Yeah, I basically bought it before it arrived in Australia.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So they just list it with all the photos and info and the price, you pay for it. And then is it only after you pay that they're then like, 'Okay, now we'll bring it in.'

No, they're bringing it anyway because mostly they're selling from Australia. Yeah. Uh, but I just saw the ad for this one and went, um, it's pretty much what I've been looking for and in really good condition, so.

And it's, uh. What brand is it again?

Mitsubishi Delica.

Yeah. So it's these Mitsubishi vans, but they're like, raised, have like raised suspension.

Yeah. And they're four wheel drive.

They're pretty cool little things. But, um, I guess the news is that you finally got it all kitted out and finished off.

Pretty much. Yeah, there's always a few little bits still to go, but you never finished with a modification on a vehicle.

Do you want to mention what it was that you modified about the vehicle and why? You know, briefly, and then maybe the things that are waiting for you to finish.

Um, well, it came with raised suspension and off road tires, which I was going to put on and do anyway. So that was one of the reasons I liked this one, because that's, you know, a couple of thousand or more dollars to do,

And it's already in the model.

Already in it. Yeah. But I put a spare wheel carrier on, took the spare wheel out, which gives me, firstly, the spare wheel carrier also has a space to put a Jerry can. So you can either carry fuel, extra fuel or water.

Do you want to explain what that is? The carrier is the metal thing at the back of the car?

That holds it on the frame. And it holds the jerry can on the outside and the spare wheel. It also moves the spare wheel out from under the vehicle.

Yeah.

Which means that you've got a bit more clearance, but when you're doing four wheel drive, doing four wheel driving. But also it means that if you get into trouble and you need to change a tire, and you're in sandy or muddy or whatever, you don't have to be scrambling under the car..

Digging it out..

To get digging it out to get the spare tire out.

Do you want to explain what a jerry can is? People may be like, 'Why is the can called Jerry?'

Yeah, well..

Who's Jerry and why is he..

It's called Jerry can. And why has he got a can under- I don't know, but it's a 22 litre, in this case, plastic. You can get 20 litre steel ones as well. But I prefer plastic because they're lighter. And of course we live by the beach. So yeah. Doesn't matter how well painted or covered or whatever they are, they are going to rust. So..

And is this for water or fuel?

I mostly carry water. I put a, one of the other modifications I did was put a larger fuel tank on. So, it carries an extra 50l of fuel. So.

So how far can you get on it?

On a tank, about 800km.

Okay. Awesome.

Which is pretty good. And then, yeah, a bull bar at the front just to protect it if you're driving, particularly on country roads. You, not that you run into many bulls, but..

Kangaroos will give you a run for..

Kangaroos. But also just if you're off road, you know, it just protects the front of the vehicle. If you get banged into rocks and stuff like that. Not that I'm intending to take it terribly off road.

Is it the, The Craic, that movie, C R A I C, that had the truck driver in it. It was like, she said something like, 'Oh, you hit a cow once. Fucking thing exploded!'

Yeah, I think it was that.

Yeah. She had this huge truck with a massive bull bar on the front of it.

Yeah, yeah.

And he's like, I think it was like that sort of idea of 'Why do you need that?'.

Yeah.

And she's like, 'You want to know? Yeah. I'm not slowing down. I'm just driving along at night time.'

Well you'd think, the thing is, particularly with big trucks. Semi trailers or road trains.

The engines right there. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. Right up the front. And you can't slow down in a hurry.

It's too much mass..

.. Walks out in front of you at night. And a lot of truckies drive at night because it's, you know, the roads are less busy, so..

With, with less people on the road, but more animals.

Yeah. Well, exactly. Exactly. Particularly around dawn and dusk. So then I did some internal modifications. The vehicle comes with three rows of seats. I took the middle row and the back row out.

It's like a minibus, yeah?

Yeah, it's basically a seven seater van. Took the middle and rear rows of seats out and put a drawer system in with a fridge in it. Drawer, fridge and a big drawer for all the kitchen items, and then built a bed on top of that and in front of it so it'll sleep two people comfortably. But of course, getting out of the vehicle- if you're the person lying away from the door, then you got to scramble over the other person to get out.

Who's worse off, the person who gets woken up, or the one who has to crawl over the other one?

Yeah, well, you're both going to get woken up no matter who wants to get out. So.

So the rule is don't drink anything before you go to bed.

Well, you know, when you get to my age, you you've got to get up at least once during the night anyway, so.

I'm pretty much in that boat already. I think it's just I drink too much water anyway.

Caffeine as well.

Well there's that. Yeah. So that was pretty much everything you had done to the van.

Yeah.

And then this was the first sort of test run, was it?

Well I'd had a sort of brief three day camping trip by myself down to Wilsons Prom, which is sort of camping light, I call it, because..

It's a lot of amenities.

It's a very, well, established camping ground, but they have a big shop there that is not just has takeaway food as well as frozen food and a whole lot of sort of little sort of camping hardware type store. So if anything goes wrong, you can sort of find most things to fix your camping stuff anyway.

It's kind of like a tiny town where it's BYO tent, right?

Yeah. Well, it's a tiny town of one shop, but that shop is large enough to have enough in there to keep you going. Yeah.

Wilsons Prom is awesome. If you guys want to go camping.

Yeah, it's my favourite place in Australia. It really is.

Didn't Squeaky Beach win this year's Australian Beach of the year?

Yeah. Most beautiful beach in Australia.

Squeaky beach is a beach at Wilsons Prom. Wilsons Promontory, which is a what? The southernmost point of the mainland of Australia.

Yes it is. Yeah.

In Victoria here. And it's called Squeaky Beach because?

Because the sand squeaks when you walk on it for some bizarre reason. And, you know, I've studied geology, but I cannot work out why that beach has. And it squeaks because the beach is. But the sand is round, quartz grains.

And they're all about the same size.

They're all, they're all about the same. Well, they have the beach will be sorted according to size, just with the wave action and wind action.

Yeah. True.

And so when you walk on it, the little round balls, if you like, just roll across each other and squeak. Whereas..

It's friction, right.

Yeah. Whereas every other beach is what we typically see in southern Australia is calcareous.

Lots of shells, smashed up shells..

Smashed up shells. Squeaky beach is white because of the quartz. All the other beaches are sort of that pale yellowy colour. And I have no idea why Squeaky Beach has that, and none of the other beaches do, but it does.

You wonder if it's a geological thing or if it's more perhaps the- Well, I guess it could be geographical, right? Well, like how the beach is set up and the way in which the rocks are eroding by a river or whatever there. And that's that the, they're not getting washed out to sea. The sand isn't getting washed out to sea. Instead it's piling up on the beach.

Yeah.

Whereas other beaches along there, perhaps they're just, it's whatever quartz is getting washed away. And the calcareous stuff..

I know there's all sorts of hypotheses, but I have yet to see a sensible explanation for why it's only that beach on the..

It's weird because I remember going there the first time. Well, probably not the first time, but going there as a kid, because we used to always go down to Wilsons Prom and camp and just, yeah, walking out into the beach and just getting there. (makes squeaking noise)

Yeah, exactly.

Every single step you take, it just goes, (makes squeaking noise)

Yeah, yeah. It's funny.

And it's got really nice big granite rocks. Right. That you can sort of, quartz granite rocks that you can climb up on, jump into the water.

Yeah.

It's a beautiful place anyway. So you'd already gone.

Yeah. So I went down there to just do the, you know, a very light shakedown just to make sure that I had all the bits and pieces worked out. There's still a few things to do. But mostly they're just, you know, like, I've taken the centre console out of the front of the vehicle between the two. The little sort of plastic thing that, you know, opens up and contains a, you know, cigarette ashtray, which is completely useless these days. And certainly useless to me. And it's very small, and I wanted to make a bigger one, so I've pulled that out but haven't built the new one yet, because I'm still trying to test out what I want to store in it and how easily to get to it, and how many sort of compartments and doors and bits and pieces. So. Or whether just make it one big bin with a lid on it. And so yeah, I've still got to work a few of those things out. But then the big test was to see if your mum and I could both travel in it and sleep in it comfortably, comfortably. So I've got a little, you know, camping pop up tent, you know, little two person tent..

A swag, a jumbo swag.

Yeah. Well, it's much lighter and smaller and folds up than a swag and an air mattress that is, you know, again, very small. And I slept in that for the first couple of nights, but then thought, all right, last night when we were there, we'll both sleep in it and see how we go. And I thought it would work okay. Your mother was a lot less confident, but.

She said, I'm out.

She said 'No, that was good!'

Oh, really? Oh, okay. I wasn't expecting.

She's like, she slept..

.. she tapped out..

She slept in it for the first few nights.

Gotcha.

By herself, with me outside. And then a couple of nights we went to Eden as well, in southern New South Wales. And the reason for the trip, apart from shaking down the vehicle, was I wanted to go on a pelagic birding trip. Pelagic as in, on the sea. So a boat trip out to look at seabirds.

As opposed to benthic. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, you don't see too many birds on the..

Under the water, yeah.

And, that was cancelled because of the weather, but, and that was going to go out of Eden and because I was going to be out all day on that. I thought, well, rather than me having to wake Jo up at four in the morning to get out of the vehicle and stuff, we'd stay in a motel there. So we stayed a couple of nights in a motel.

Yeah.

And, but that got cancelled, so we had a good time a couple of days in Eden and then turned around and came home.

What makes Mallacoota so special?

Well, it's isolated. Because it's, it sits in a national park, right on the far eastern corner of Victoria, right on the..

It's like the tip of the pizza slice. That is the.

Pretty much. Yeah, shape of the state. Exactly. And if you're standing on the. And it's got a big inlet as well. So. So, two rivers run together. Just further up the, you know, a little bit inland from the coast. And there's this huge shallow water inlet.

Yeah.

Which is A, it's pretty, and B, it's got lots of birds and, you know, dolphins, dolphins and, all sorts of things around there. So, that's always good to see. And from there you can actually see, well, technically you can't see into New South Wales because the line of the border sort of runs almost down the ridge of a mountain range. If you get to the top of the mountains, go over the other side. You're in New South Wales.

It's weird, isn't it, because that top part of the Victorian border is like a weird squiggly line that traces the Murray River..

The Murray River, yeah.

And then once it gets to the, what's it called again? Where the river starts in the mountains. What's the word for that?

I well, at least the source anyway.

Yeah. The source of the river.

Yeah.

It's then just like this dead straight line, all the way to the ocean.

They basically take a line to a point on the coast, which was. Which is the predetermined spot, and I have no idea, and I'm ashamed to say, my geographical history. I probably learned it one day deciding where they thought the point on the coast was that New South Wales became Victoria, but then they just drew a straight line between that point and the source of the Murray River.

So yeah, that's interesting.

Which the. I haven't been to the source of the Murray. You can get to the point where it is just a little trickle. But it's, you used to be, there used to be a four wheel drive track through there years and years ago, but they. It's in a national park, and they've closed it.

Yeah.

So now it's, you know, it's about a 20 kilometre walk.

So you're probably not up for that from..

A main road. So probably not up for that. Up in the mountains.

You could be in and out in a day.

20km on a flat would be fine. But you know, up and down through the mountains.

Your knees wouldn't handle that.

No, neither would the feet. But, um. Yeah. So. So that was fun. Yeah. But as you intimated early on the on the way home, we stopped at Lakes Entrance, which is about halfway home. And..

This is East Gippsland.

Sort of Central Gippsland, they call it East Gippsland, but it's really Central Gippsland. And it's the opening to the Gippsland Lakes, which is a big lake system that some of the major rivers that run off the high country, the mountains in Victoria running south towards the coast. And they create these big freshwater, you know, and estuarine, lake system and the entrance from those lakes that goes out to, well, it's an exit or an entrance, depending on which way you're going.

Which way the tides..

Out to the sea. And that's an artificial opening. The natural opening was a bit further, about 3 or 4km east of where the, you know, the current, and now maintained opening years. But it was on a very shallow estuary, and a fairly big dune system around it. So it closed off too often and it was really hard to get large boats through.

So what, they just opened it up.

So they made about 100 and something years ago they made a new opening.

Oh, okay. It was that long ago.

Yeah. They just made an opening and said, right, this is where it's going to be. And then the town sort of popped up around that.

Okay.

Lakes Entrance. So we spent a night there, in a caravan park. We weren't sort of wild camping or anything, but, and went on a boat trip. I've never done a boat trip on The Lakes before. I've been to Lakes Entrance a lot and always thought, Oh, it'd be good to do that. But, I had never done it before, so I just went on, like a three hour boat trip around the lakes and, you know, the commentary on, you know, and it was actually very good. It was, the commentary was a sort of combination of geography, history, sort of, you know, biology, the natural environment, as a company with a few sort of personal stories about the, you know, guy who was doing it, had been there all his life.

Yeah.

So it was very good. So sort of suited everybody. I think if you're interested in just the, the biology, you got to know a bit about the lake system. You got to know about the forest around it and stuff. If you're interested in the history, we'll tell you about that. If you're interested in the physical geography of where the rivers came in and silting up and where the, you know, the tide, you know, comes into and stuff, we sort of hit that too. So that was good.

Oh, cool. And then you had a fun time coming.

Yeah. Fun time coming home. So that's normally about, Lakes Entrance is probably three and a half to four hours drive from Melbourne. But of course we're another hour and a half out of there. So we're originally going to just drive to Sorrento and catch the ferry across the opening of the bay, rather than go all the way around through Melbourne, which when we were going, it would have hit around peak hour traffic anyway. And so that would have added an extra couple of hours to the drive. And we got about half way back a bit more than halfway back and the storm hit and. It was a like, tornado style storm. It was very rapid. Yeah. Intense winds. Not the big whirly, twister type tornado.

Vortex. Yeah.

Slightly bigger than that. But, you know, seriously strong winds. Only lasted about ten minutes.

Well, to interject there, this is where I think I sent you guys that video, right where I went outside the house. Because it was a really hot day, wasn't it? So, obviously. Is that a low 35 degrees or high pressure, when it's hot?

High.

Maybe it's hot. Yeah. So high pressure when it's hot. And then the cold front was coming through, which was the storm. And it was like it went from like 35, 36 degrees here to 20 all of a sudden within like five minutes.

Yeah.

It was insane. And I remember the wind just going absolutely ballistic.

After the wind, the rain.

Yeah. And it was just all within five minutes it had come and gone.

Yeah.

It was like wow. That was effectively the, those two pressure systems, the energy passing from one to the other right. In this location.

Exactly.

And that it just that was how much, there must have been such a differential for it to be that fierce.

Yeah.

Because I hadn't seen winds like that. They, I think they said that it gusted up to like 120 ks an hour.

It would have been more than that, I suspect.

Yeah.

Because the well, we, you know, driving along the South Gippsland Highway and which is, you know, it's a major road, but it's only a two lane highway, through a forested area.

Yeah.

And trees, you know, large branches were coming down and a tree just fell across the road about 100m in front of us.

That must be horrifying if you're just, well, ongoing.

I know, yeah.

And you were driving along the road.

Exactly. And we, and so there was a truck in front of us and a car in front of that, and the tree literally fell a few metres in front of this car.

And this is a large eucalypt, right?

Yeah. It was a large eucalypt. And so it fell completely blocked the whole road.

Yeah. And there's no pushing it out of the way.

There was no pushing it out of the way. It would have been a serious, you know, effort to get, to get rid of it. And we thought, well we don't really want to sit here in this storm. So we did a U-turn and drove back, chucked a U-ey, and drove back to the nearest town, which is about ten minutes drive normally, but it took us about 20 minutes because you're driving slowly. Because by then the rain had hit. And the rain was so strong that you couldn't see more than ten metres in front of you. And you're constantly just dodging branches and things on the road and and trying to look out for trees that might be going to fall. Yeah. So you're just hoping that you made it. We got back to the the nearest town and just drove into the sort of main street there, which is only one main street. Which doesn't have a lot of big trees on it. So we just sat there and thought, we'll just sit here and wait the rain out.

Hopefully the roofs don't come off the building.

And that lasted about probably 40 minutes.

Really. Okay.

Till the rain, to dissipate.

So yeah, you guys really did like because yeah, we were chatting during this, you were, I think messaging us saying, Oh, we're probably not going to be home.

Yeah. Who knows when..

Take care of the home. Dogs and cats. Can you get any to my sister? And we were like, yeah. But yeah, it was over and past here within 20 minutes. And you guys obviously got..

Probably lasted an hour.

Yeah.

Where we, the wind only lasted about 5 or 10 minutes.

Yeah.

But the rain was just horrific.

Yeah.

And so there was no point in it. We could have just sat there and waited it out, but it probably would have taken 2 or 3 hours to get the road cleared. And, I never looked up how long it did take, but we looked at it and went, well, there are other ways around. And so I worked out, you know, quickly decided which way was the one that had the least forested areas to drive through. That was a lot less likely to have trees across the road.

Yeah.

So we drove north up to the main Princes Highway.

Good thinking. 99.

Yeah, exactly.

Good. What was it? Get Smart reference. There's a TV show from what, 50s? 60s?

60s. Yeah. And so, yeah. So we got home, but probably three hours later than we expected to.

Yeah, it was one of those. Interesting. Like there were trees down near us, over the fences near the main road, going up towards, the roundabout on the way to yours and just the neighbour's tree bloody snapped and half of that fell on my car. It was so funny, blowing Noah's little mind when he saw me dragging it off the car and pushing it out of the way because he was like, oh, dad's got superhero powers. He's picked up a whole tree! I'm like, yep, all in a day's work. Never skipped legs day. So yeah, that was a good trip, though, all things considered, at least I hit at the end, right?

Yeah, it was great fun. And yeah, we didn't get any car damage. A couple little scratches, I think, from branches hitting it, but there was no major damage on the car, fortunately. Yeah. When we were driving back to the little town, we did go past a place where a tree had fallen on the front of a car. Fortunately, it had fallen across the bonnet, not across the..

Or while people were in it.

While people were in it, dragging on the road. Yeah.

I thought you meant like it parked.

So, yeah. At that, to the point we got there and it obviously just happened because there was only probably 100m of traffic on both sides that are, you know, being backed up, but there was no emergency vehicles, no ambulance or whatever. But it didn't appear that people were hurt and there were already 3 or 4 vehicles where the people who had stopped and had got out and were helping. So there wasn't much point in the rest of us doing the same. We just would have been cars parked all over the place, getting in the way. So we made our way around that. But yeah, that's the fear in those things, of a tree just falling on the car.

Yeah, it's I think it's that it's like being. What I would imagine it's like being in war, right? Where you just you could get blown up or shot at any time. You just don't see it coming and it's that kind of anxiety around it. Whereas like, you know, if it's a bushfire or something else, you can at least kind of see 'the enemy coming'..

You can see the danger and think you can control it.

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Whereas yeah, with, with something like a, just a tree falling on you whilst you're driving down a road, it's kind of like, well what, what kind of reaction time are you going to need. Yeah. You'll see it coming whilst it's coming down and it's a few feet above you.

Exactly. I've only ever actually seen a tree falling while I've been there and close to it once in the forest where we used to live up in Kallista in The Dandenongs, just walking through one of the tracks in the national park.

Was it during a storm or something, or was it just randomly?

No. Just random. It had been very wet for a few weeks beforehand.

So the soil or something.

And it just the tree just fell.

Yeah.

Like 50m in front of me. Just like. And this is a tree that's 60m tall. Yeah.

Yeah. It's some of the world's largest trees. Right?

Tallest trees. Yeah.

Yeah. That must have made a noise.

Oh, yeah.

You wonder. It must be like an egg struck by lightning in terms of probabilities, right? Like how few people would actually ever see a tree just spontaneously fall over falling like that. Yeah. And getting to experience that, you know, because that must be such a it's such a natural part of the environment, especially those forests. And because it, like, clears up heaps of space for new shoots and new plants to grow up and everything like that creates all these homes for animals to live in. So it's, you know, an important process. But it must be so rare because these trees as well live for hundreds of years.

Yeah, yeah. Cool.

So did you go and check it out after it fell down? You were just like, what the.

Oh, yeah.

Get out of here.

Walked down and went, um.

Tap out. Now turn around.

Go back, watch the next one.

Because of course, when one tree falls over, not only is it knocking other things down, but it's also loosening all the whole..

De-stabilising it..

And it loosens it and de-stabilises the ground around other trees. So yeah.

It must have been so crazy back in the day, working as a lumberjack. Right. Taking down the largest trees in these old growth forests, whether in Australia or places like California. Right. With the Californian red redwoods. Redwoods, like some of the photos are just fucking insane with the the size of the trunk would be like the width of my house. Right. And they've used a saw to go through and it's probably taken them 3 or 4 days.

Yeah.

Just to get to the point where they can wedge it up and then just let the tree fall down. And it just must have been such an insane thing to experience with something so large, and knowing, too, that it was just you and another man and some wooden metal. Yeah, that that took the tree down. And those things are thousands of years old when they get that size, right.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. Just just ridiculous. But anyway, so are you planning any, any other trips coming up soon with the van? And is it what you wanted? Is it what you expected from when you first got it?

Yeah, yeah it is. And it took a long time of thinking. About what? How to design the inside of it.

That's part of the fun, though.

It is.

Isn't it?

Yeah, it is, of course, thinking about it and then the building part and working out what materials to build it out of. Because I'm no carpenter, but the trouble with timber is easy to build in, but it's heavy. And so I ended up building all the internal stuff with aluminium framing.

And was this stuff you bought and then sort of put it all together, right?

Yeah. Yeah. And you sort of. Yeah. You either buy the lengths you want or you buy the longer piece and cut it. Yeah. You know, cutting aluminium is easy, but it's actually difficult to get it without sharp corners. You use a karate chop. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. So, um, where's the next trip?

Apart from sort of day trips and a weekend here and there, we going up to, I'd say up north how we use these terms, it's sort of it's as much west as it is north, but we're going to the Adelaide Hills are going to a bird photography conference in Hahndorf, which is in the middle of the wine country up there.

That sounds like it was probably colonised by the Germans who migrated out here.

Exactly right. Exactly right.

Including a lot of them around South Australia, including some of your relatives.

Yeah.

So, yeah. So we're we're going up there for a few days before Easter.

Yeah. And then just pottering around the coast on our way home for a few days. So rather than just drive straight home.

And how did it go off road? Did you take it off road and actually try any four wheel driving. No?

Yeah. We've been on, you know, dirt tracks, but I haven't gone on any serious tracks yet.

Would you take it on some?

Yeah. But not, you know, not mountain climbing like I used to do in the LandCruiser and the Prado that, we've still got the Prado. Because it wasn't bought for that purpose. And it's, it would be perfectly capable of doing it. But I don't want to wreck the vehicle, you know? Yeah, I like it. I didn't buy it for four wheel driving.

Yeah.

Serious four wheel driving. I wanted a vehicle with four wheel drive so that if you end up in mud or sand or whatever, you're not going to get trapped. Yeah. It wasn't bought to, you know, go out and doing the, you know, Victorian high country, the serious tracks up there happy to do some of the lesser ones and, you know, river crossings and things really what I want to be able to do rather than climbing cliffs.

Yeah. I guess it's just about having less restrictions, right, than if you took out a Commodore wagon or something. Yeah.

And it's more just for security as well, you know, that you can go. Ah, this is a long dirt road. I got no idea what the condition is going to be like. I wouldn't take a two wheel drive down it. I still, I'll take a four wheel drive down it. The other thing, too, is that four wheel drives handle corrugations and rough roads a lot better.

Yeah.

Because the the suspension and the chassis and the frame and things are built to handle it, whereas your average two wheel drive is made to be driven on tarmac.

It shakes itself apart.

Exactly.

All right. Awesome. Well, I'm glad to glad to be back. And yeah, we'll see you guys in the next episode. We're going to smash out a few today, hopefully.

Yeah.

Yeah. Rack up a few weeks.

See what's going to come down the pipe. See ya.

Bye.

That sounded like a fart. You just. He's on the leather chair, guys..

I'm on the leather chair! There wasn't..

Never trust a fart, dad.

It wasn't a parting gesture!