Our last blog left us heading to South Australia, specifically the small town near Mt Barker of Flaxley. Here we were to become the proud owners of a trailer, ex horse float actually. Our family has grown and we now travel with De Trucksta happily towing De Trailer. Gotta keep with the original naming.
If you are wondering if we have decided that we don’t want to carry all our pushbikes inside now, you would be incorrect. We are more than happy with De Trucksta just like he is, he is going like a champion and we are loving our life in our mobile home.
If you remember a few posts ago, I mentioned a couple, Brad and Vicki. Well as we all know life is a funny thing and can throw all sorts of twists and turns, the good, the bad and the downright ugly. Well our chance meeting with Brad and Vicki at that little outback pub in Olary has sent us in a new direction, all good I assure you. We have been given an opportunity to continue our gipsy lifestyle while, hopefully, making a quid along the way. We will attend shows and festivals selling caravan mats. If this all works out, this will become our gig and as a bonus, we will no longer have to look for work. Sounds too good to be true right, fingers crossed and we are confident, that this might be our calling. We have been welcomed into the Camping Mat Warehouse family!
What could go wrong, we get to travel our great country and every now and then meet up and chat with hundreds of like minded people travelling our wonderful country. You all know me, chatting is right up my alley 🙂 🙂
So this brings us back to the trailer purchase; we needed something to carry our stock to the various shows and festivals. After an initial hiccup, an unpleasant couple (I am being very restrained here), ripped us off our deposit and bailed on us last minute. Lucky for us, we managed to source a new trailer and are very grateful to Mark and Belinda, who not only sold their trailer to us but let us stay at there place for a few nights while Fred organised a few modifications required to attach it to De Trucksta. Even though we were reminded that there are real scumbags out there, we try to focus on the positive and believe that there are many many more generous and trustworthy people than scumbags.
At times we are blessed with the luck of the Irish. When we built De Trucksta, we never had any intention of towing. As such when building in the false floor, adding water tanks etc, we never bothered to concern ourselves with the valve and air hose which is there for the specific purpose to attach to the airbrakes of a trailer. We won’t need it, so it won’t matter if we leave it hidden, built in between the water tanks. Well weren’t we so wrong! This was quite problematic, what will we do? Well we knew what we didn’t want to do and that was have to pull the whole place apart, draining and removing the water tanks, tool boxes etc. I never doubted Fred for a moment, I knew he would come up with some amazing work around and that he did, the tanks get to live another day. While he knew what he could do, the next challenge was to source the correct valve so he could run a new line compatible for the brakes to work. After much internet research, phone calls and personal visits to workshops and stores we were coming up blank. Now back to the luck bit – when driving to one of the spare parts stores, I noticed the Adelaide Scania Headquarters on a corner not too far from where we were. Of course, I decided we would walk up there to see if they could help. You wouldn’t believe it but there was an army truck, identical to ours, sitting there in the lot waiting on a service. Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I shoved Fred under the truck with his mobile phone to photograph the said valve and it’s set up. Armed with these photos and our vin number, we headed inside and were able to get great advice and some of the parts we needed as well as the part numbers that they didn’t have on hand to allow us to source them elsewhere. We left with smiles and a complimentary cap each.
We are now headed to meet Brad and Vicki near Newcastle, where we will do a bit more tidy up on the trailer and then fill her to the hilt with as many mats as we can carry. It is so exciting and our first shows are in Western Australia, Busselton and Mandurah, the third in Adelaide, followed up with a show in our old stomping grounds in Traralgon and then a show in Bendigo. All these in October and November. We never do things by halves, so will hit the ground running and this is just how we love it! We have talked so many times about travelling to Western Australia, nothing like a little early shove – here we go!
Stay tuned…..