Part 2
Ice Tales from Tassie
Chapter 2
The first snow at the new place was unexpected .... I thought we were below the snow line .... apparently anywhere south of the mainland was past the snowline
Couldn't get the car out of the driveway because it sloped down to the house .... rang the bus yard, someone came out and picked me up, my apprentice .... didn't he have a laugh, ribbed the hell out of me and naturally all 26 bus run drivers, 15 school bus drivers and 20 tour bus drivers all got in on the party But all in good fun, they were really great to work with and apparently, I was the best mechanic they had work there in 3yrs ..... I knew nothing about busses, they were just long bodied trucks for people as far as I was concerned .......
The boss man gave me the 5 tonne International truck he bought with a heap of other stuff from an auction .....
I drove home in my new to me work truck, feeling like the king of the world, and parked in front of the house on the flat road section ......
Next morning, can't get the truck to move forwards or backwards water has run down the gutter, then frozen ..... more laughs all round as the apprentice had to pick me up again
The next week was really just rain and more rain ..... but I'd taken to parking the truck down on the lower road, I wasn’t going to get caught again.
The rain over the weekend had turned to absolutely freezing cold ..... carefully made my way out to walk down the hill to the truck …. Got about half way and over I went …. Rolling and sliding the rest of the way down the hill.
Some what battered and wet, I arrived at the bus yard ….. they took two looks at me, then decided they wouldn’t say anything, but told me the bus over the pit needed to have the brakes adjusted and was already late to start the passenger run to Adelaide….
Off I went a quick skip down the steps, swing off the bumper and bang …. I look up from the bottom of the pit, the whole crew of bus drivers are there looking very worried and very sheepish …..
The rain had filled to lower section of the pit and then frozen solid, they thought it would be hilarious to send me down into the frozen pit and watch me slip sliding around ….. they didn’t allow for the fact I usually swung down over the last two steps to land with my feet planted in the bottom of the pit, the water was up to the second step from the bottom, so instead of dropping down, I slammed forehead first into the front axle I beam, momentarily knocking myself out and ending up flat on my back on the ice ….. they took me off to casualty at the Royal Hobart hospital, I had the next week off on compo and they had to explain to the boss just how the accident had happened, yet they were all there at just the right time to see what happened …….
I was blaming myself for being so stupid, when I got back to work, they all apologised and took me out on a pub crawl that Friday night to say sorry ….
Never took any surface for granted if it wasn't warm and the whole area dry after that ......
T1 Terry
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