Ernie Steps Out

Continued From Page 1
There are no cup or takeaway food holders, not even a carpet and don’t even ask about airbags, but I do love the quirky chapel hat peg levers that open and close the two air vents that are located under the windscreen.
My new pride and joy, okay our new pride and joy. The Land Rover Defender, the original 4wd, a design that hasn’t changed much in over 50 years.

 This is the model that opened up countries, built empires, rescue services, armed forces and charity
 organisations thrive on them.

 Explorers would take the Defender into deepest darkest Africa and other such areas of the world.
 Great Archaeological discoveries of lost civilisations and treasures of gold and diamonds would be
 made. The cynics amongst us would say, “Yes and some of them were never to be seen again, eaten
 by cannibals or most probably died of starvation due to Land Rover unreliability” But I like to think that
 somewhere deep in the Congo they survived, and a thriving civilisation of explorers and natives live
 together in harmony. Each morning at sunrise to the sound of beating drums, natives pay homage to a
 rusting, leaking hulk of old Land Rovers.

 1967, England, the town of Loughcaster, the Odeon cinema. Saturday morning pictures, two thousand
 kids in duffle coats running amok. There’s a hopeless and futile attempt by an ageing cinema manager
 to bring calm and order to the mob. "I fought in two world wars to save you lot" The lights finally go
 down, the show begins. Tarzan, Flash Gordon, Tom and Jerry, a hotdog followed by a Zoom ice cream,
 a bag  of chips on the way home. Er sorry I digress, where was I?

 Every Land Rover needs a name, so I’ve christened our Defender “Ernie” in honour of my Great Uncle,
 RIP. I’m not really sure why, but the name has kinda stuck. My Great uncle Ernie was a bit of a loner
 and tended to keep himself to himself, a confirmed bachelor ever since his childhood sweetheart jilted
 him. Rumour has it that he tossed the unwanted engagement ring into the local River. Still rather the
 ring than himself, besides that he wasn’t a very good swimmer, plus the fact that the water is so
 polluted that even the fish refuse to swim in it.

 My Great uncle Ernie didn’t have a car, but seemed to
 love cycling, even though I never actually saw him ride a
 bike. I thought this rather strange as every time we
 visited his house, he always had a pair of black bicycle
 clips attached to each leg of his trousers. Whether he
 was dusting, cleaning, gardening or watching TV, he
 always wore them. Maybe his penchant for bicycle clips
 was a strange fetish and one that his bride to be couldn’t
 quite handle, and quite possibly the main reason why she
 left him.

 I now know that it was just a harmless ploy to save on
 his heating bills, he was on a pension after all and those
 clips would help keep out those winter chills. His idea
 certainly worked, because in the 30 years that I knew
 him, I never seen him with a cold or suffer from chilblains.
 The savings he made on his electricity bills enabled him
 to build up quite a tidy sum in the bank account that he
 kept underneath his mattress. Unfortunately my Great
 Uncle Ernie never lived long enough to benefit from his
 frugality, he died in the most tragic unfortunate
 circumstances, knocked off his bike in thick fog by a van
 belonging to the local electricity board.

 People say that your wife or partner must really love you
 to let you have a Land Rover Defender, especially if it is
 your main day to day vehicle. They weren’t really built for comfort or speed and the sparse interior and
 ergonomics can be quite off putting to some. The cabin can be quite NOISY! This can be a bonus if
 you’ve had a row?

 The Defender is a true icon, and instantly recognisable on the modern road. Owners always exchange
 friendly waves as they pass. I still have to fathom out if this is a wave of "Hey you've got one too" or
 "Hey, I see that you got sucked in as well"
 From the outside the vehicle appears to have been constructed from a child’s Meccano set and held
 together by rivets, strangely enough this installs the owner with the extra confidence that is needed
 to drill a few holes here, and bolt on a few extras as needed. 

 Over the years we have adapted Ernie to our needs, that of a touring vehicle. A bull bar on the front
 helps in protecting us from errant Kangaroo’s and Emu’s not to mention wandering cattle and the odd
 Camel. A satellite phone and a CB radio provides us with some comfort if an emergency situation
 should arise, especially when we are out in the middle of nowhere. A Garmin GPS hooked up to a ipaq
 computer is a useful navigational aid and provides moving maps and more importantly informs us of
 how far away we are from the nearest pub. Just in case there is no pub, we have an Engel fridge that
 keeps the beer and meat cold. A couple of homemade cupboards in the rear provide enough storage
 space for all our camping gear, food and even a place for Banjo to stretch out on.

 Our Aussie Traveller rooftop tent provides shelter and a place to kip for the night. The bed located up
 on the roof is ready made and reassures the English Nurse that she is safely away from Australia’s
 most venomous snakes! The views through the bedroom window can be quite spectacular at
 sunrise. It’s quite cosy sleeping up there on the roof, and after a long day’s travel it is a welcome
 relief to drop into bed. Usually I am asleep within minutes, but sometimes I lie awake thinking did I
 remember to put the handbrake on? Night time ablutions can be quite tricky as a steady approach to
 the ladder is required for it’s quite a long drop to the ground below. In the dead of night and in total
 darkness, you know that you are heading in the right direction, as a Labradors snout provides an
 unwelcome reassurance.

 Compared to the Freelander, the Defender has been quite reliable in the 4 years since we first brought
 it, although in recent months a replacement fuel injector unit and master clutch cylinder has been
 required. I suppose that I can’t grumble too much, who would listen to me anyway? Our adventures
 have taken us along some very rough tracks, outback tracks where in places the corrugations are
 enough to shake out the fillings of even the best dental work in the land.

 Follow our Adventures when this story continues in Ernie Rides again.

         At the side of the Great Alpine Road, Victoria.

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It came from outer space

The Australian outback is home to some weird and wonderful characters, so maybe the rumours are true that aliens have indeed landed and taken over. The above picture is testament to the fact and shows the capsule that they arrived in, circa 1954.

Is it the quirkiness of the outback, or just plain boredom the reason why manmade structures such as this UFO, are to be found all over the place?

But just what was the bright fiery object in the sky that I spotted whilst leaving the town of Lyndhurst in South Australia, around 1.30pm on the afternoon of July 19^th 2006?

I saw it out of the corner of my eye as it came into view on the left side of the windscreen. It was quite low down in the sky a bright silver object lit with sparks and flame, moving left to right as I drove south. My first thoughts were that it was a plane on fire, crashing to earth, but a few seconds later it just burnt up and disappeared.

I obviously wasn’t the only person to witness this strange phenomenon as local radio stations were inundated with callers phoning in to explain, and to gather more information on what they had just witnessed. 

I immediately thought of Charlie Drake’s song “My boomerang won’t come back” and that immortal line “Oh dear I’ve hit the flying doctor!”

Well I now know that it wasn’t a plane and definitely not the flying doctor. Unfortunately experts can’t confirm whether it was a meteorite or space junk burning up on entry into the earth’s atmosphere. The silver colour that I describe makes me think that it was space junk, and from the size of it, was quite close by. It was much larger in size compared to the report of one eye witness who phoned in to explain his version of events. The object that he saw was about the size of a cricket ball and that he heard a thunder like noise four minutes after it disappeared from view. I am pleased that seismologists confirmed this noise and that a sonic boom was recorded on their equipment, unfortunately I can’t help as I’ll explain.

Sonic booms can produce a sound pressure of 133 decibels, that’s loud, very loud! But any chance that I had of hearing the sonic boom was severely negated by the high volume of cabin noise produced by a Land Rover Defender that is doing 80km an hour on a dirt road whilst the driver is listening to a recording of Led Zeppelin’s “Black Dog”.

 I did ring up ABC radio later that day and told them that around the time that the sonic boom occurred, I did hear something, but passed it off as John Bonham being a little too over zealous on the bass and snare drum.