I know it’s hard to believe given the trip I’ve just taken you on but the rest of our second last day was excitement free. We of course had a few laughs at different things, things we saw along the roads, things we didn’t see, that sort of stuff but honestly had it not been for Henry’s early call and our usual banter on the road I think I would have fallen asleep. There was a few times I called Corey on the radio where I was sure he had fallen asleep given how long it took him to respond to the call.

Sure enough I did hear from Henry again by the end of the day because issues like the moron driver in his Commodore just don’t go away. See the weird thing about such situations is that if there was a legitimate incident and something that happened was our fault we’d give our accounts, pass the information over to insurance and we’d usually not hear about it again. Occasionally there might be requests for signatures, or on the odd occasion their might even be follow ups from the legal eagles but at the end of the day things got handled.

When it came to idiots like we had in the Commodore shit just didn’t die even when they knew they were in the wrong. Blood sucking arseholes that think they can bleed a few bucks out of someone when they aren’t entitled to try so hard to keep their lies alive. It’s like the old saying, about needing lies to cover up lies. These people lie about what happened because they see a quick buck for little effort, then by the time they are proven to be the leech they are, they are too embarrassed to back down and just keep creating more lies to try and convince people they aren’t lying. It rarely works, especially against evidence like we had but that doesn’t stop some people.

Anyway but the time we were parking the trucks up for the evening Henry had called again. He’d done as he suggested and palmed the entire thing off to legal and tried his best to forget about it. When legal next spoke to him the idiot was predictably denying any wrong doing, denying that he’d forged doctors bills and still pushing for payment.

One thing about lawyers is they love a word fight but according to Henry even our legal guys had given up with this moron. They entertained his lies for the best part of the day and when it was clear he wasn’t going to back down they passed the case onto the local police telling them it was a blackmail case. The last Henry had heard the police we discussing the case with the guy and the legal guys had told him that he wouldn’t hear about it again unless the guy didn’t drop it and the police needed further evidence for a fraud case.

So there you have it, even on a quiet day we can be entertained.

It was hard to escape the isolation when we pulled up for the night. As I’ve told you we were well and truly in the Aussie outback and heading towards a town that was only a town because of the mining operation that was operating there.

Our sleeping area for the night was a large open area of red dirt with enough room to park about ten trucks the size of ours. They weren’t uncommon sites in the outback and most of them were quite well utilised by truckies and travellers alike. They provided a nice flat area where any vehicle could pull off the road and give the occupants a chance to stretch their legs or catch forty winks.

Because we were self sufficient with all our gear in the trucks and the ability to feed and water ourselves, the lack of facilities didn’t worry us greatly. While some of the parking areas had toilet facilities, be it a stainless steel silver bowl on a wall or just a long drop, which I’m sure you can figure out by the name, the one we stopped in had none of that. There was a few large shrubby bushes and three trees though, which meant we didn’t have to wear and Occupied sing around our necks while we were busy.

The other partially good thing about being in the middle of nowhere was no phone reception which meant no hassles like moron drivers, pushy clients or angry bosses calling us up and interrupting our evening of relaxing under the star. Obviously it would have been nice to call home and say hello to Sam and Zakk but it was only one night. Such times of no communication were expected when travelling in the Aussie Outback and our families knew it. There had been talk getting satellite phones in the trucks for several years but it was something we never really bothered to do.

The following morning we all had a little spring in our step because we knew it was our last day of escorting this big load. And the end of the day’s journey the trailer would be parked and waiting for the large site crane to lift the sub station off it.

That wasn’t a deliberate effort to make light of the crane driver’s ability or the site crew, what they were doing was a feat in itself but once the crane was hooked our responsibilities were over and we’d breath more than one sigh of relief.

Of course it wasn’t our last day on the road, we still had about a day maybe a half to get home depending on how we travelled. However the run home was a bit more relaxed because it was done with the trailer back to normal size, Corey’s tractor on the trailer with the dolly and the two of us sharing the driving.

Previous Heavy Haulage story here.