A BOGGING
by Spinifex
"Well, it's hot, then!" He had a gift for the
obvious. It was stinking, sweaty, under-the-arm rash-making heat and
it'd been that way for about three bad weeks. About 38 degrees plus
some and holding steady.
"Sticky, too", he mused pensively looking up at the thick
black clouds overhead. Oh, spare me these meteorological philosophers.
He looked over at me contemptuously, the great boofhead, and then swept
his vision over the hell of a mess we really were in.
The little Suzuki was up to its back axles in sticky, stinking, sucking
black muck and not going anywhere, either fast right now or slow tomorrow
for that matter, unless we worked something out better than we had up
until now. The front wheels sat up on solid ground, with the arse-end
of the car sunk very, very low - it looked just like a blue dog up on
a fence daring you to come on into the yard and for all that knowing
it couldn't jump the fence and wasn't going anywhere and wasn't going
to bite anyone.
"Did you know," he mused again, eyes lifted to the black and
threatening heavens, "that you can die in this country? Hmmm? Did
you know that? That in these temperatures, with no water, we'd only
last about two days. If we stayed fixed under a shady tree - if we could
only find a shady tree!" His sarcasm oozed.
"You idiot!" I cried. He can't speak like that to me. I had
to fix him up. "Look at the flaming water all around us! Up to
our bloody crotches in it! There's water to drink! We won't die of thirst.
What do you think made us get bogged? There's enough water here to float
Moses' Ark!" I was a bit too hot and distraught to remember Biblical
history perfectly. Moses, Abdul, Jeremiah! What did it matter right
now! I had to state the obvious though. Ignorance cannot know itself.
"Yes," he mused. Unperturbed and a long time between wins.
"Yes, and you drove us into it. You drove us right into it!"
He mused a bit more and looked across at the long line of ridges that
had leaked water steadily for a fortnight, right down across the track
we were on. "Didn't you see that tell-tale green slimy patch on
the track?'
Yes. Yes. In fact I had. But I hadn't thought it a problem. We'd been
pouring very fast along this firm gravel-based little road out to a
mine that someone else had a lease over and we shouldn't have been out
there anyway but we were and now we were up to the axles. Going nowhere
fast, now or ever, unless we got help or helped ourselves.
"Who did you tell where we were going?" he demanded. Easy,
so easy to answer. "I told mum and Les and left it on the answering
machine too. Do you think I'm an idiot?"
"Yes" he muttered, unconcerned. "Go and get some of that
spinifex - a lot of it in fact to put under the tyres and about three
of those white-ant nests for the same reason. Now." Giving orders!
"You drove us into this very obvious bog, you could have avoided
it and now you're going to get us out of it." He ruffled his fat
fingers through his thick though greying hair. Tom Cruise he wasn't.
"Is this car automatic four-wheel drive? All wheels lock in automatically
when you put the gear shift into four-wheel drive?" I asked tentatively.
I don't know much about cars. He kicked the sunken wheel on the vehicle.
"Yeah, I think so," he said. I wasn't so sure.
"Did you bring a shovel?" He cut into my thoughts. A shovel.
To dig out all of the sticky muck from beneath the tyres.
"Yes, yes of course and a long flat board too." Did he think
I was a total idiot? For a flat surface to put the jack on in the mud.
"You're an idiot, you know." Not a question, a statement.
"You didn't look at the road ahead, you assumed that it was going
to be firm, you missed the obvious signs and drove too close to water
where there could be leakage into what looks like hard-packed gravel
and now we've paid the price."
Sweat poured out of me as I flung down three heavy ant nests at the
back wheels. I'd carried them three hundred metres and I was stuffed.
He'd already jacked up one wheel on the long, solid flat piece of timber
so that he could spread the weight and not sink into the sodden soil
and so far it hadn't sunk into the mire. So far.
"Kurt was bogged once or twice too and I've learnt from him."
Sniffing and importantly wiping his nose. He meant Kurt Johannsen, who
used to drive huge home-made road trains and other vehicles through
things worse than this. He smiled quietly to himself. "The true
sign of a bushie isn't that you can get yourself into trouble, but that
you can get yourself out. I've got out of hundreds of bogs like this!"
Pompous ass!
"Get those ant nests under that tire." He gave the order.
Then he said 'Please'.
We played around a bit, quite a bit in fact, getting the other tyre
up and putting another ant nest under the other tyre. Good firm-packed
grip for the wheels. Well, in fact I did it all. He didn't. He didn't
do a thing. He fussed and bothered around and gave orders and told all
about pioneers and himself and other, more spectacular boggings where
it took twelve road trains to pull a mini-minor out and I did all the
work and he gave more orders and sweat ran into my eyes and it stung
a lot and my shirt got dirty, the new one from Country Road, and I wish
I hadn't worn it because I'd wanted to impress Miss Kitty with it and
it was ruined now and we might not still get out and I was getting just
a little pissed off.
"The pioneers used to get bogged too, you know," he puffed.
"Someone got bogged in about 1935 for three weeks just south of
here, a true pioneer, I just can't remember his name and to survive
he had to eat eggs for three weeks from the load he was carrying up
from Alice. They still call it Egg Shell Flats where he stalled. We've
done it all, us pioneers!"
It took two hours all up to get out. Even with a little light-weight
car and nothing happening with the tires gripping into the termite nests,
those things that saved us in the end, for all of that there was mud
all over me from bum to breakfast because he made me push too and then
we were out. Popped out like a cork out of a bottle.
"Wouldn't have happened with a slip diff vehicle." he opined.
"Wouldn't have even got bogged. Go anywhere in the slippiest of
conditions."
I walked over to the driver's door. The engine had been running all
the time we'd been bogged because the battery, his bloody battery, was
stuffed and we'd never have got it started again if it had stopped.
I looked down at the front wheels.
"Didn't you say this was automatic four wheel drive?" I asked
carefully. Something was rising in me, I didn't quite know what.
"Weeell, yes, yes, I think so" he tentatively said. "At
least, I'm not sure."
"And if we locked in those hubs on the front wheels, these ones
here, if it wasn't automatic four wheel drive and because we had to
do it, to make the front wheels grip and work, we'd have just driven
straight out of this shit?" I felt something more rising. Was vengeance
the right word?
I walked to the left wheel and made a simple adjustment and then walked
to the right wheel and did the same. He was standing with a finger on
his bottom lip giggling nervously.
"Yes, maybe," he giggled.
I got into the driver's seat and flicked the car into first gear.
"But you've learnt a valuable lesson," he stuttered. There
was an instinct in him of what was coming. He knew. "You can get
out of a bog now, you can save your life and the lives of others."
Begging.
True. I could now and I possibly couldn't have before. And I reflected
on that fact several times, grateful for it, looking out of the rear-view
mirror on the way back to the main road and seeing him there, red and
panting, me speeding up from time to time whenever he jogged too near
to the car. I could save lives now. And I was saving his too, making
him run off some of those overweight kilos that burdened him down, all
those nine kilometres to where you didn't need free-wheeling hubs, back
onto the firm-packed, never-bog blacktop of the Stuart Highway.