The Steamtug Blog

Part 2 The trip

I left Queensland, trailer in tow and crossed the border to NSW. But the concrete road was so bumpy it shook everything violently. The road looked smooth enough, but the whole trailer was suffering massive vibration. I sped up, I slowed down. Nothing helped. I wanted to stop and check everything was alright, but no place to stop. The trailer really didn’t like these roads without a load on top.

I continued onto the Tweed Valley highway until I finally found a little river side rest area, slowed down and turned in. I was bursting to relieve myself and ran over to the bushes. As my feelings of relief came over me, and before I finished I craned my neck to look around and see if anybody was watching. But instead looked across at the trailer, only to see the front passenger wheel was MISSING!!!!!! What the…..!!!!! Holy Crap! What am I going to do???
What if it had come off and killed somebody? Where could it have come off? Why didn’t I see it fly off? OMG!!! So I checked over the rest of the trailer. Every wheel nut was loose. Even the nut under the tow ball was loose! I tightened up everything I could find, and without knowing what else to do, turned around to exit the rest area back onto the highway. And there… right beside the entrance, just resting gently out of the way with the metal cap still just sitting in there, was the wheel just waiting for me to come and pick it up. Amazing. No wheel nuts, but at least I had not lost my mag wheel. Just when I thought my luck had turned, it came back. But these things come in 3’s, so I did a quick risk assessment on what could go wrong next.
I arrived at Peter’s place where Edelweiss was waiting patiently in her damn home. We discussed the situation, and although John wasn’t going to fly in till the next day, we decided to go ahead and pull her out on 3 wheels. So I set to the next task in the process of setting up the bunks. I was not feeling confident on how this was going to go, but fortunately the old trailer which Pete had borrowed in the past when Edelweiss had to be transported was right there, so we could measure the position of the rollers and transfer this to the bunks.
The bunks were selected on advice from members of the steamboat association, in particularly Mick in Perth who pointed out that rollers applied all the weight to one point on the hull which didn’t matter so much with fiberglass boats, but wooden boats are more sensitive to this and bearing the load over a greater area would be desirable. The bunks were essentially a long plank of treated pine board, covered with synthetic carpet with 4 1 ½ square tubes to support them off the trailer. Of course all the weight would be carried by the rollers under the keel, and the bunks just support her to keep her upright.
I could not make sense of how this was going to work. I could not make the back and front work together. So Pete came up with the suggestion we cut them in half and make 4 independent bunks. We could always replace them later if this didn’t work. It helped to get the front over further towards the centre, as the hull shape rolls up shear vertical and wasn’t going to get much support. Now how are we going to get them set accurately for the heights? It was impossible. After a lot of mucking about, we just decided to leave them down out of the way and adjust them underwater. So we did!
We submerged the trailer in the dam. Cane toads went scurrying, eels jumped, and the leeches all came over to see what tyre tasted like. Edelweiss was led over like a horse going into the float for the first time. She was happy to be coming with me! I mucked about, trying not to get wet, then cracked it and off came the shoes n socks. Then my trouser legs were getting wet trying to walk out on the trailer to attach the winch strap to the bow. I had set up the guide poles so they were in the middle of the mudguards, just so they would look good for Queensland registration. They never even looked at them, but Edelweiss did. There were a little tight, but held her but firmly in line with the trailer centre line, stretching open and keeping the tension even on each side. It worked perfectly, and she glided up with the water keeping her upright from the stern.
Off went the trousers and I was wading around thigh deep in the cool water trying not to think about the eels and leeches. The sun had been really hot, so the coolness of the water was a welcome relief from the heat of the day. I raised up the middle bunks and secured them by bolting them up with a ring spanner, reaching deep under the water to tighten the brackets. Both sides, then she was stable enough to haul out.
Cranked up the old Landy, low range, 4WD and pull. The soft wet grass on Pete’s home made boat ramp offered little traction. So we chained his Pajero to the Landy and gained about 1 metre. The next door neighbor then put his Toyota 4WD onto the Pajero and the great train rolled out of the station onto dry land. Up on level ground the other bunks were set to the hull shape, much more accurately than we could have done with having her on the trailer.
The next task was repairing the flogged out studs on the axle where the wheel had been lost, and finding a new set of wheel nuts. Despite being Sunday, I was optimistic the motor wreckers would be open and I am sure they would have wheel studs and nuts. So a pleasant drive back into town, about 20 minutes away, would fill in the remainder of a successful afternoon, with the air conditioner going and some nice music to relax me after all the stress and hard work.
Greenhills Caravan Park
Coming back into Murwillumbah, right on the old Pacific Highway I past the old Greenhills caravan park. Wow, memories came flooding back of my late teenage years. My Uncle Barry left Geelong many years ago and brought this caravan park and business. We used to go there and spend the Christmas break, Dad towing our caravan up there for the holidays. Wow, I used to have such fun up there. In NSW you could get your drivers license at 16, so my cousin Steve had a car, and we would drive around and run amok. He taught me how to do burnouts in that old clapped out Ford falcon. Then we would go back to the caravan park after dark and have a swim and try to crack onto the school girls that came there for the holidays. If we were really bored, we would steal some corn cobs from the farm next door, and take them to the top of the cutting over the highway and every truck loaded with sugar cane on its way to the Condong Sugar mill, we would throw in a couple of corn cobs. I am sure down at the mill they would have had lots of batches of sugar ruined without being able to figure out how the sugar got corn in it!
One of my many memories is the night the “oldies” all went out and Steve and I got some booze. I thought Southern Comfort was the best thing ever invented! I brought a bottle and we went back to the park where I drank the whole lot in 20 minutes. Wow, talk about pissed! It was great for the first 5 minutes, then the world turned backwards, my legs failed to function, I saw God, then the devil and had to crawl down the stairs and across the car park to my bed. I was comatosed except about every 20 minutes lifting the tent flap up to spew. Which apparently is a good thing because I would have died otherwise. This continued until 4pm the next day. And all my father could do was laugh his head off each time I chucked! Ha!!!
The wreckers were all closed until Monday morning, so I got a pizza in town and for old time sake checked into a cabin in the Greenhills caravan park, showered, at my pizza, drank a 6 pack of beer (not Southern Comfort!) and went to sleep. John would be here in the morning and he would know what to do. Zzzzzzz….
Trust a MOBI to make it work!
John arrived at Coolangatta airport the next morning and we went back to the wreckers and successfully got studs and nuts. But the spline that secures them into the wheel hub was bigger and we would need to get the holes drilled out. So back to Stokers siding where the boat was now waiting on the 3 legged trailer. I pulled off the wheel hub while John looked over the boat. He had not seen her before and was impressed with how pretty she was. He reminded me that old wooden boats never had anything that doesn’t have a curve. There is not 1 straight piece of timber in the whole boat and we both pondered this thought as we looked at her sitting proudly up on her trailer. John was an old pusser. That’s sailors talk for navy man. He was one of the MOBI brigade that did there apprenticeship many years ago as an engineroom artificer and the group he went through naval training with got branded MOBI’s. The most objectional bastards imaginable. They wore this badge with pride and carried that name till this day.
After a little searching, we found an old school engineering works in town run by an old school engineer who was working on welding up the tray on somebody’s tip truck. He looked at our job and loaded her up in his drill press. He got interrupted several times before the job was completed, and when we commented that we had some trouble finding him because his workshop didn’t have a sign, he confessed to us, that the yellow pages people tried to sell him a big advertisement in the yellow pages, but were confused when he told them he didn’t need it. He pointed out that he was swamped with work and already could not keep up. And at his age he wanted to just take it easy, but people just keep coming even with a sign. We showed him the pictures of Edelweiss and was impressed enough to give us a really cheap price for the work he did for us.
Yet another drive down the highway back to the boat. How many more times before we can finally leave with Edelweiss? We drove back this time through the little village of Stoker’s siding which used to have the railway line terminus there. A nice little village, with a few road bumps, and a couple of tight corners, but it was much flatter than the highway and barely a car to be seen compared to the highway traffic; a good route for Edelweiss first trip on the road. We finished off the day getting the wheel back on, trailer adjustments finalised before I let John discover the ambiance of the Green Hills caravan park cabins!