SUNDAY 13th Oct 2013. Bundy - Dalby
The crew were up early for breaky at Alexandra park at 7am provided by the Rotary Club of Bundaberg, the first of many great bacon & egg breakys for the week.
Simon (AKA The Boss) requested a new Team Afro calendar as someone took his from Saturday night's dinner under the pretence of having a look , and it just didn't return.
Treens parents came to see the noisy parade off lights , sirens, bubbles, smoke and noise down the main street-being a quiet town on a Sunday there were not many locals to see the parade.
Heading out of town - car 22 (Fred& Barney) blew up their engine - put on tow truck to be repaired. Rumour had it that Fred carries a spare motor in LUG truck - so on to Dalby to change over the motor for the guys.
Out of town and on 'road to the dirt - this section certainly sorted out the cars. After a very rough patch of "road" and huge ruts we heard a horrible noise in the front end of our car - pulled over to check ,Darren couldn't see anything -so on we went. No , still grating - other cars had to pull over waiting to get up a quite steep,slippery hill. We pulled over to check the noise again- jacked up the car and checked , noting to see. MV3 suggested reversing and whatever was caught should hopefully flick out--- alas it worked and on we went.
808 had trouble starting after the stops- said they would be OK, so we kept on going toward the lunch stop at Hivesville.
The mornings tracks were really rough .
At one stage Darren mentioned that the road surface was really soft and sandy and the car was hard to steer..... onto the bitumen , oh the problem showed it's self , a flat tyre. Three years driving around Brisbane and 2 EsCarpades on the original tyres - now with new tyres , just 1 month old we got a flat. Pulled of the road ,MV3 to the rescue again to help jack the car up , as our jack wouldn't get under the car. Darren & Laurie tyre changed and all good.
Just before getting to our lunch stop , Tony from 808 phoned to tell us that their distribtor had packed it in and they were bing towed to Childers.
They were going to try to get the part there, with local knowledge from Ross (Mudrats) hopefully they would be able to met us in Dalby that night.
Tony also told us that Kermit had rolled their car and written it off, what had happened and were the guys OK?
Onto lunch at Hivesville Hotel, a very small town. Lovely BBQ lunch and live entertainment.
Booger mobile had started having what was going to be an ongoing fuel problems they were getting a hand to get to Dalby.
Our first day on the road was tough start to the week , we were looking forward to what the week will bring.
We made it to our Motel , with a quick freshen up it was off to dinner at the Dalby sports club.
The staff had set up Army manovures for us to participate before dinner. with tyre running,footy boot throwing and giant connecy four.
Dalby local had written an EsCarpade song which he sang for us, great words but the tune and singing needed a bit of work.
After dinner , Andrew from Team Ryan spoke about his families journey with Camp Quality. Andrew's son Ryan passed away a year ago and it was for him that Andrew gathered his team and planned for his first EsCarpade. Andrew's car , falcon ute painted in Ryan's favorite colour , green would be the focus at tomorrows school visit in Gaton. Andrew's wife is a teacher at the school and daughter is a student at the school where Ryan also attended. Hearing Andrew's story ,the EsCarpadians were well and truly reved up to make it the school visit ever.
The first day was a tough one , but the with this group of car-azy escarpadians , it was going to be an awesome week.
