We Tried to Do the Responsible Thing

After deciding we were actually going to travel for a while, there were a few things we needed to sort out.

Top of the list was making sure our setup was safe.

We now had Maximus, who was considerably bigger than Loki, and Shaun was going to be towing him all over the countryside.

We had a rough idea of our weights.

But a rough idea isn't really good enough when you're towing a bloody great caravan around Australia.

So obviously, we decided to do the sensible thing.

And as we've established by now...

sensible decisions don't always go particularly well for us.

It started with a dog walk

We were still staying at Kalbar and were out walking Wal and Cheech when I noticed a sign outside another caravan.

I couldn't quite see what it said, so naturally I asked Col to go over and have a look.

He wouldn't.

Fine.

😂

Later, curiosity got the better of me and I wandered over myself.

The sign was for mobile caravan weighing.

Well, that was handy.

Later when we took the dogs for another walk, we 'happened' to walk past and ole mate was there, so we got chatting.

His name was Graham, and before long we'd organised for him to weigh Shaun and Maximus the following day.

Easy.

What could possibly go wrong?

Apparently we needed to pack everything

The idea was to get as accurate a picture as possible of what we'd weigh when we were actually travelling.

Which meant Maximus needed to be loaded as though we were going somewhere.

Everything in.

All our usual gear onboard.

And the water tanks filled.

Simple enough.

You'd think.

First, I flooded the van

Maximus has two water tanks, so I put the hose into the first one, turned the water on and left it filling while we continued getting everything ready.

After a while, I went inside and checked the touchscreen that shows our water levels.

I watched it climb.

90%.

95%.

98%.

Beautiful.

One tank done.

I moved the hose over to the second tank, turned the water on and went back to packing.

After a while, I noticed water coming out from underneath the van.

Didn't think much of it.

I'd just filled the first tank, so I assumed it was overflow.

Or was it?

😂

I left the hose running and kept pottering around getting things organised.

Eventually, I went back to the door and looked up at the touchscreen to see how the second tank was going.

0%.

Hmmm.

That's odd.

I called out to Col that something must be wrong.

Then I went around and checked the hose.

Still in.

Still running.

Water was still coming out from underneath Maximus.

So where the bloody hell was it all going?

I climbed into the van.

OH.

There it was.

Water. Everywhere.

I yelled for Col.

He took one look, bolted outside and turned the water off while I started grabbing towels and whatever else I could find to mop up the bloody flood.

Then we opened up underneath the lounge.

Full of water.

And, of course, underneath the lounge wasn't empty.

That's storage.

So everything we'd stored under there had to come out.

Wet stuff everywhere.

Towels everywhere.

Us trying to work out what the hell had happened.

So much for calmly packing Maximus ready for his weigh-in.

Eventually we found the culprit.

The hose connecting the water tank to the outside water inlet had come off.

So while I thought I was filling our second water tank, the garden hose had actually been pumping water...

directly underneath our lounge.

For quite some time.

Excellent.

🤣

It was all hands on deck.

Everything came out from under the seat.

We dried what we could.

Threw out what needed throwing out.

Mopped up the floor.

Mopped out the storage area.

More towels.

More drying.

And Col reconnected the hose and made sure the clamp was nice and bloody tight this time.

Eventually, Maximus was dry again.

Our belongings were either dried, thrown out or packed back under the lounge.

We finished packing.

And somehow, after all of that, we were finally ready to go and get weighed.

At this point, perhaps we should have recognised the warning.

The universe had already had one go at us that morning.

We went anyway.

😂

Enter Graham

We drove over to a nice flat piece of ground beside the caretaker's office.

Remember the location of that office.

It becomes relevant shortly.

Wal was tied to the railing outside the office.

I had Cheech on his lead.

And Graham pulled his ute into position.

Then he opened the back.

Honestly, it was a bit like...

TA-DAAA!

😂

Out came scales.

Ramps.

Equipment.

Laptop.

The whole mobile weighing operation was apparently living in the back of this ute.

And away we went.

On. Off. Move this. Move that.

There was quite a bit involved.

Col had to drive Shaun and Maximus onto ramps and scales.

Then off again.

Scales were moved.

Different things were weighed.

Back on.

Back off.

Graham was tapping away on his laptop.

Meanwhile, I was sitting on the grass beside them with a perfect view of the whole operation, waiting until I was required.

At some point, I needed to get into Shaun so my weight could be added to the equation.

Until then, I was quite happy sitting there watching the boys do their thing.

Wal was tied up.

Cheech was with me.

Everything was under control.

It really, really was not.

Then it was time to unhitch Maximus

This was when our nice, sensible weighing exercise went slightly off script.

Maximus needed to come off Shaun.

And somewhere in that process...

Maximus started to move.

Then he rolled.

Off the Maxtrax.

I was sitting on the grass watching the whole bloody thing happen.

There are moments when your brain takes a second to catch up with what your eyes are seeing.

This was one of them.

Because our very large, very new caravan was moving.

Without Shaun.

And directly nearby was the caretaker's office.

Now, I'm sure the caretaker's office was perfectly nice as it was.

But for a brief moment there, it looked like it might be getting a rather substantial extension.

A Maximus-sized extension.

🤣

Thankfully, there was one very important thing still connecting Maximus to Shaun.

The safety chains.

They did exactly what they're designed to do.

They caught him.

Maximus stopped.

The caretaker's office survived.

And our jockey wheel...

did not.

Excellent. Now how do we get him back on?

Stopping Maximus from joining the caretaker's office was only the first problem.

Because now we had to get the bloody thing back onto Shaun.

And the jockey wheel was bent.

This meant Col was trying to wind a bent jockey wheel up and down while also somehow getting the heights of Shaun and Maximus to meet again.

It was not going well.

There was pushing.

There was winding.

There was adjusting.

There was more winding.

There was Col putting considerably more effort into that jockey wheel than any human being should reasonably have to.

At one point, I was fairly certain he was going to strain his phoo-phoo.

🤣🤣🤣

Graham was standing there watching the whole performance.

And I remained in my very important position on the grass...

providing commentary from the sidelines.

I feel every operation needs someone in this role.

Col may disagree.

😂

Surely we can just make Shaun taller?

Shaun has air suspension.

Maximus has an onboard air compressor.

So we started trying to use every bit of height available to us.

Airbags up.

More air.

Higher.

ALL THE AIR.

We pumped everything we could to its maximum trying to get Shaun high enough to meet Maximus.

Still no bloody good.

At some point, you have to admit that your carefully considered engineering solution of "make everything taller" isn't working.

So we admitted defeat.

Then somebody had another idea.

We'd been using Maxtrax.

What if we drove Shaun onto one?

Up he went.

And...

BINGO.

🤣

Finally.

After all the winding, pumping, manoeuvring, phoo-phoo straining and extremely helpful commentary from me...

Maximus was back on Shaun.

Thank Christ.

Except we still weren't finished.

Now get the bloody jockey wheel off

The jockey wheel was bent.

Maximus was finally safely hitched.

And now we had to get the damaged jockey wheel off.

Because apparently this weighing appointment was determined to give us the full experience.

Eventually, though, we got it sorted.

Maximus was attached.

Shaun was attached.

The caretaker's office was intact.

Nobody required medical attention to their phoo-phoo.

Success.

Sort of.

Oh yeah... the actual weighing

With all the excitement of nearly installing Maximus into the caretaker's office, it would be easy to forget that we'd actually gone there to find out our weights.

And overall?

They were good.

There was just one issue.

Shaun's rear axle was 99kg over.

That wasn't a massive surprise.

We'd already suspected we might be sailing pretty close to the wind.

Now we knew exactly where we stood.

We talked it through with Graham and decided we'd work out what to do about it.

But right at that moment, we had a slightly more immediate problem.

We needed to go home.

And once we got there...

we didn't have a bloody jockey wheel.

Quick. Ring Mitre 10.

We still had to get Maximus back to our site and unhitch him.

Normally, that's where you'd use the jockey wheel.

You know.

The one we'd just bent.

FFS.

😂

So we rang Boonah Mitre 10.

They had one.

Excellent.

Except Shaun was currently attached to Maximus.

Thankfully, ole mate Robert came to the rescue and lent us his car.

Off we went to Boonah.

And because nothing in this story could possibly happen without just a little extra pressure...

we arrived three minutes after closing.

Three.

Bloody.

Minutes.

Thankfully, we'd called ahead and managed to get ourselves a replacement jockey wheel.

There was just one small problem.

It wasn't actually rated for the weight we needed.

Of course it wasn't.

😂

But at this stage we weren't looking for the perfect permanent solution.

We just needed something that would allow us to get Maximus set up back at camp without the front of the van ending up on the ground.

So we took it.

Back at camp

The replacement jockey wheel got us out of trouble.

But because it wasn't rated highly enough for Maximus, there was absolutely no way we were relying on it by itself.

So once we had Maximus back on site and level...

we borrowed an 8000kg jack from Robert, who had loaned us his car, underneath as backup support.

There we were.

Living in our beautiful, almost-new caravan.

Supported at the front by a temporary jockey wheel and an 8000kg jack.

Luxury.

🤣

All because I'd gone for a walk with the dogs, seen a sign outside somebody's caravan and thought:

Ooh, I wonder what that's about?

Sometimes I really need to stop being curious.

One more decision

That night, Col and I talked about the weights.

Everything had been pretty good.

Except for that rear axle.

99kg over.

We'd made the decision to travel.

Shaun and Maximus were going to be our home and transport for the foreseeable future.

We wanted the setup safe.

We wanted it legal.

And we didn't want to spend our travels constantly worrying about how close we were to the limit.

So we decided we'd fix it properly.

Shaun was getting a GVM upgrade.

Simple.

Find someone who does them.

Book it in.

Get it done.

How hard could that possibly be?

...

You know us better than that by now.

🤣