Dad the cobbler and Dad the mechanic

Tonight I started translating Dad’s emails again. When I started reading his emails I realised how much I had missed him. In his emails it is as if he is talking to us and it felt like I had been away and come home again!

Reading the email about his father (my grandfather) singing whilst he was repairing shoes, reminded me of the time when Dad was fixing our shoes. He used to sandpaper the existing soles and then trace and cut a new sole and glue it in place. The only problem was that the glue never worked too good. I can remember the sole slowly slipping to the side. I would be walking along and gradually more and more of the sole would protrude from my shoe and flap around when I was walking. When I came home I would get a sharp knife and cut around the edge of my school shoes. Then a few days later, I would have to cut more off. In the end, there was nothing left from the sole that Dad had glued under my shoe! And the process would start from scratch.

I guess that the glue and leather that one could buy was not the professional stuff that cobblers used! Or maybe Dad wasn’t quite the professional at this job J

That also reminds me of the home-taught mechanic. The first car Dad bought, the Austin Ute, was quite a wreck. I remember Dad buying the manual for the car and we spent days and days underneath it trying to fix it up. And not just simple oil changes. No…Dad took the thing completely apart, including the entire engine. We had all the pieces lying on a large mat. Every nut and bolt….and then he bought a new head gasket which we glued inbetween the two halves of the head. Then everything was built back into the car.

But it turned out a bit like the shoes. I lost track of how many times we had to replace the head gasket in that car! And as far as I know, head gaskets are only replaced once in a blue moon. So ….something wasn’t quite right J

And Dad used that car as if it was a landrover or other 4wd vehicle. We would go to the most remote places in the bush, where there were hardly tracks let alone roads, to find camping sites that nobody else would get to. One such trip we even jumped across a few creeks. And in the end we broke one of the axles. So ..here we are stranded miles from nowhere. And after we stopped, we still had to walk quite a distance to the campsite. After we had unpacked everything (and I mean EVERYTHING was quite a bit…Mum had everything including the kitchen sink, prams, playpens, tents, pots and pans, mattresses, clothes, bedding, food for 3 days ..you name it oh..and there were 7 of us including 2 year old twins) Dad and I managed to get the axle out of the car, and Dad carried it over his shoulder, we walked and walked until we finally got to a road, then we hitchhiked out of the national park and somehow managed to get to a wreckers yard where amazingly we managed to buy a 2ndhand axle. We hitched back, and amazingly found the place we had left the car and repaired it!

And that reminds me of another time I found myself in a vehicle with a broken axle. This time I was in the Kimberleys, far northwest of Australia, in a truck full of Aboriginese coming home from a visit to Beagle Bay mission. (it was a 3 hour drive between Lombadina Mission where we lived and Beagle Bay mission). We had only just arrived in the Kimberleys…probably a few weeks prior to this experience. It was already late and we were eager to get back home. I think Michael and Peter were both with me. Dennis stayed behind. The truck broke down. Axle broke. And everyone got out. It was in the wet season. Water everywhere. In notime a fire was burning away and the locals managed to find some tucker. I decided on impulse to walk home. Crazy idea. One thing that you learn in the outback, if the car breaks down, stay with it. We took off. And walked and walked. As it started getting dark, it became quite scary. There were wild cattle all around us. And it was quite dark ..no street lights. And certainly no traffic! Eventually we saw headlights behind us. It turned out to be the truck. With a lot of half naked Aborigines. By that stage we were very glad to get back in. And it was literally crawling along. And then I found out that the axle was broken and they had cut down a small tree and tied it to the vehicle using a number of Tshirts. This worked for a short while until the tree would snap in half. So, another tree and a few more Tshirts later the truck would crawl along a bit further. I was beginning to worry about my own shirt. We had almost run out of Tshirts when we finally came close to Lombadina where I immediately got stuck into Dennis for not sending out a search party. But he had been told by everyone…not to worry. If they are not here now…they must have decided to spend the night at Beagle Bay…don’t worry…they are safe!!!