The worlds leading surgeons were gathered at their annual conference which was held this year in Monte Carlo. With the day’s business and forums completed, it was time for some serious relaxation and fellowship over a few quiet beers.

Pretty soon, they started bragging about how good they were and what great achievements they had made.

One surgeon from America boasted that he was that clever that when eating a hot dog one day, he found a finger nail in it. He took it back to his surgery, ran all the appropriate tests and then built a finger for the nail to go on. He then made a hand, an arm and the rest of the body for that finger nail. When he had finished….the man he had created was that efficient….he took the jobs of 3 men.

Then the English surgeon recounted how he was having high tea with the Royal Family and half way through a cucumber sandwich, he found a hair in it. He took the hair back to his surgery and after testing it, built a scalp, filled it with similar hair, then built a head and body and because he had worked from the top down…….when he was finished his creation put 10 men out of work.

Of course then it was the Aussie surgeons turn and he said “As good as your creations are….they are nothing compared to mine. I was walking down the street and smelt a fart…..I caught that fart in a glass jar and then took it back to my surgery where I built an arsehole to wrap around it. I called it Kevin Rudd and before you knew it…he had put a million Australians out of work”.

We have all experienced it….driving along and all of a sudden some clown coming the other way decides to pull out of a line of traffic and overtake them, forcing us to take evasive action.

We can reduce the risk of this occurring by making ourselves much more visible to the on-coming traffic. The simplest way to do this is to drive with our head lights on low beam both day and night. As well as making it so that we can be clearly seen from a much greater distance…..it also makes judging that distance much easier for the oncoming vehicle. This is even more effective in less than ideal light situations.

Don’t believe me……then start to take note of which vehicles are easiest to see on your next trip……The ones with lights on….or lights off!!!!

Paddy & Mick were heading off to the pub for a few games of 8 ball and several pints of Guinness. As they walked down the road, they came across wee poor Mary O’Rielly sitting on the side of the road crying her eyes out.

Paddy said “Mary O’Rielly….why you be sitting on the side of the road crying your eyes out?” and Mary O’Rielly said “I have a puncture in me bike tyre and can’t get to church”.

Paddy said to Mick, “You go on ahead Mick and set the 8 ball table up and have a couple of pints settling on the bar….. I will fix Mary O’rielly’s puncture and be along there in a bit”.

Well Mick headed off to the pub, ordered the two pints of Guinness and racked the balls up ready for the game. He then looked out the front door of the pub and saw Paddy coming along on Mary O’Rielly’s bicycle. Mick said to Paddy “why you be riding Mary O’Rielly’s bicycle?” and Paddy replied “When I fixed her puncture…. she was that gratefull that she took her pants off and said I could have anything I liked…..so I took the bike”.

Then Mick said “To be sure, to be sure….You have done the right thing….her pants wouldn’t a fitted ya anyway.”

Every now and then we come across a situation where we can’t get the recovering vehicle close enough to the stuck vehicle for the snatch strap to reach, without jeopardising the recovering vehicle as well. The simplest solution to overcoming this is to join 2 or more snatch straps together to increase the reach.

Safety Warning  Never ever use shackles to join straps together. This is asking for someone to get killed, because if a strap breaks, you have just created the worlds most lethal sling shot and that shackle then becomes a bloody dangerous projectile.

To join the straps, simply feed the top end eye of one strap through the top end eye of the other and then head to the other end of the strap and reverse the process. ie take the trailing end eye of the strap that has the top end eye fed through it and feed that through trailing end eye of the other strap. Then simply pull the straps through each other, making sure that all twists are out of both straps. Repeat the process if you need more straps joined up. So far the most I have had to join is 3 straps.

Very Important.  Due to the pressure that will be placed on the straps during the recovery exercise, the joined eyes will mesh together and you will not be able to get them undone unless you put a spacer in between the loops. This could be a rolled up newspaper, magazine or short piece of wood, although it is preferable to use something that has a bit of give in it. I always carry an old pair of deck shoes with a semi soft sole in the car, which I use when walking water crossings. These are ideal in the loops as they squash when the pressure comes on and then spring back into shape when it comes off.

Pre – Departure Check List

Mechanical

As our tours take in some hardcore remote area 4WDing, please ensure that your vehicle is fully serviced by a mechanic that understands the type of driving that you are going to be undertaking, and that any on-going problems are sorted out prior to departure. A mechanical failure down at Sandy Cape or on the Saw Back Range Track amongst others can lead to a difficult and expensive recovery. As it is highly likely that we will encounter deep water (ie above bonnet height), a snorkel is a must and extended diff breathers should also be considered.

Electrical

Due to the likely deep water issues, please ensure that alternators, starter motors, fuse boxes and computer management units are in good condition as well as being sealed and protected from water ingress as much as is possible. Carrying and using a tarp or water blind will also help to reduce this potential problem.

Using Roothy’s Love Potion (Lanotec) to liberally spray all parts electrical will also provide a measure of protection for leads etc.

Spare Parts              Due to the nature of the driving you are likely to encounter, carrying a ready supply of oil is essential to an enjoyable trip. We recommend you carry the following quantities as a minimum.

                                    Engine Oil – 5 litres

                                    Brake Fluid – 1 litre

                                    Power Steering Fluid – 1 litre

                                    Gear Box & Diff Oil – 1 litre

            Belts                Carrying a full set of replacement belts can mean the difference between an easy track side fix and an expensive time consuming trip for your fellow travellers to obtain replacements. When having your pre-departure service, ask your mechanic to replace all belts and then retain the used belts for you to keep as spares.

            Hoses              Carrying a full set of replacement hoses is also excellent insurance. The same philosophy for belts should apply to hoses. Get them all replaced and keep the old ones for spares.

Filters              To avoid potential contamination problems, ensure that you carry spare filters.

Other Considerations

            Salt Protection

Beach driving and subsequent river crossings are going to subject your vehicle to exposure to Salt Water. I regularly get under my vehicle (at least once every 3 months) and give all under body parts a serious coating of Lanotec or Fish Oil products to Salt Proof it. Inside door panels also get done.

This is where those that don’t understand the joke try to gag those of us that do…so they won’t feel inadequate.

Hardly a joke first up…..more a theory on life…and probably one I don’t subscribe to all that often…..

But here goes……”You are far better to keep your mouth shut…and let every one think you are a fool,

than you are to open it and remove all doubt!!!!!!”

They will get better….I promise.

This will be our first item of merchandise. Details will follow soon.

These are simply the best tyres I have ever driven on. When I purchased the Patrol, it was running Bridgestone Duellers and as they were nearing the end of their life, I decided to go for the Coopers. These were 31 inch tyres on standard issue 16 inch steel rims. I stuck with the same tyre size in the Coopers LT265/75 R16 and the improvement in on road handling was enormous and off road was even better.

85,000 kilometres without a flat tyre, much of that in serious off road conditions says it all. If you want a first class all rounder,  I recommend the Cooper ST Discoverer.

This is without doubt the most disapointing purchase I have ever made. When looking for a GPS that would give me the best mapping off-road as well as being a good street directory, the Magellan Crossover offered the best potential at the time. What attracted me to it was that it came with both Topo and Street maps on separate SD Cards and if required, I could also purchase Marine Charts as well.

I have persevered with this thing for almost two years and quite frankly, it does not deliver. With a purchase price up around $1200-00 when I bought it, you would expect a better result than it provides. Back up service from Next Destination who are the Australian Distributors is also very ordinary. The mapping is out of date and on many occasions when driving on roads that had been in place for several years, the GPS was showing me in the middle of a paddock.

Problems Experienced.   

Set up a trip in the trip planner and after a while it would just hang itself. The reset button wouldn’t work and I would have to wait for the battery to go flat (8 hours) before it would reset itself and start operating again.

Loading addresses to navigate to was anything but user friendly. You had to know exactly where the address was including the exact suburb or the street address would not be in the data base. eg Loading an address for Mt Isa and it wasn’t there. After doing some more searching, I found that the suburb entered should have been Mt Isa City…… not Mt Isa. The option should be there to enter the street names and then the processor should throw up suburb options to match the address for us to select from.

You need to be an absolute computer geek to get it to talk to your computer. Personalising the unit is far too difficult for the normal person because of this lack of user friendly interface.

Whilst out on the Canning Stock Route last year, we had Hema paper maps and 3 GPS units with us. Whenever we did comparisons on position readings at the various wells enroute, the Navman unit showed exactly the same reading as the Hema map, the Tom Tom showed a variation of a few minutes and my Magellan was anything up to 20 minutes out.

I have tried to store track info for future reference and it will only hold 8 tracks. Without the ability to down load these, it ended up full and hung itself again so all info was lost.

All I can say about this unit is that I am looking forward to trialling the new Hema Navigator. I wish it had been available when I purchased the Magellan.