Friday, Jan 23, 2009 at 13:46
I agree with all that's been said above.
I add another observation. You don't know what you don't know - meaning they think they have it all covered, research, experience, maps etc yet they still get into strife.
They get asked are you experienced in trekking
Yah yah they say
do you now how top drive a 4wd - they answer Yah yah say
Have you got maps Yah yah again they say
They get out in the bush and find that tarmac driving in a 4Wd in Germany, the piddly glossy map out of a brochure and the planning they have done just doesn't cut it is Oz.
Here my help stranded tourists story.
A number of years on Boxing Day we were fishing east of
Esperance WA near
Poison Creek. It was a very hot day, over 40°C, so we decided to stay put until after lunch when the sea breeze would come in and we could have a more enjoyable drive back to
Esperance.
It was now mid afternoon and as we were approaching the exit point off the beach we could see a vehicle on the beach ahead of us, as we got closer we could see it was hopelessly bogged.
We couldn’t stop near it because the sand was very soft so we continued onto firmer ground. A lady came racing across from the stranded vehicle, she was very agitated and in a bad way. She and her
young son had been lying in a hole in the sand under the vehicle to keep cool and out of the blazing sun; when she saw us drive passed she thought we weren’t stopping. In a mixture of broken English and German, she said they had been stuck for about 5 hours and that they tried to use 4 wheel drive but it wouldn’t work. She added that her husband had earlier walked off for help, whilst she and her 11 year old son stayed with the vehicle.
She said he had been gone for hours and the only liquid they had to drink all day was two litres of lemonade. We didn’t say anything to her we however feared for his life, after all the nearest populated place, was about 100 kms away and we hadn’t seen anyone else in the area all day.
Our first thought was to calm her down and give her water slowly. We then decided to sort out the bogged vehicle before the tide swamped it. I noticed that the hubs weren’t locked and the tyres were
rock hard. After locking the hubs and lower the tyre pressures, we used a hi-lift jack to raise the vehicle and used sand to fill the holes under the wheels. Once that was accomplished we then drove the vehicle out. It took us all of 10 minutes.
She was flabbergasted; she couldn’t believe it was so simple. “They didn’t tell us that when we hired the vehicle”
Our attention then turned to locating the husband. Leaving her with the vehicle on high ground and with drinking water and some food, we headed towards a tall dune hoping to raise help or emergency
services via the CB. We had only travelled about 2 kms when we saw him stumbling along the track towards us. Upon approaching him he struggled to open his mouth, his lips were dry and stuck together, his feeble words were “May I please have a drink?
After giving him sips of water, he recovered somewhat. He then told us that he wasn’t told about locking the hubs when he hired the vehicle 4 weeks earlier in
Darwin. They only came out from
Esperance for a 3 hour drive and were flying
home from
Perth in a few days. He couldn’t believe how lucky they were that we happened along.
I have no doubt in my mind that we saved their lives that day, no one knew they were out there, we were the only other vehicle in the area, it happened during a heat wave, they had very little in the way of water and there was no one in town to miss them.
cheers
Phil
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Follow Up By: Geoff (Newcastle, NSW) - Saturday, Jan 24, 2009 at 15:07
Saturday, Jan 24, 2009 at 15:07
Hi Phil,
This is the guts of it,
"They get out in the bush and find that tarmac driving in a 4Wd in Germany, the piddly glossy map out of a brochure and the planning they have done just doesn't cut it is Oz. "
There are an element of these overseas tourists that think because a map of Holland and a map of Australia are printed on the same sized piece of paper both countries must be the same size!
As I said to one of them in an obscure corner of Australia after a lengthy and enlightening session over a map, "just remember fish aren't the only thing that have scales!"
Geoff
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Grey hair is hereditary, you get it from children. Baldness is caused by watching the Wallabies.
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