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2000 Miles On The Smell Of An Oily Family - part 2 In the previous instalment, the Tyndale-Biscoe family, confronted with flood and evacuation warnings, in a stew of indecision, had boldly decided to meet the weather head-on, guided only by their native Victorian innocence, and Ken the direction-finding Kiwi. (Read part one here) Now read on.
We were clearly heading right into the storm, and inside the car, all was quiet (apart from the ABC radio, and the odd interjection from Ken to “Keep going. In 900 metres, go straight ahead.” Even the kids in the back were silent, although this was probably because we had finally relented, and put on their grandparent’s farewell gift — the DVD player. By now, the rain was coming down by the truckload, but the Hilux moved onwards inexorably, although we were down to about 30 km an hour. The biodiesel-powered windscreen wipers swished backwards and forwards with little effect, and then, suddenly, it was over. The sun came out and the road dried and it was like we had simply driven out the back of the storm. Of course the rivers were still rising so we had to keep moving. In a town called Maclean we stopped for lunch. The sun was shining and there was an almost festive atmosphere in the main street. The river was lapping at the levee banks and SES vehicles were scooting around everywhere. After a fine meal at a café that had a mixture of Japanese and Australian food (sushi and chips — go figure!) we headed out of town back towards the highway. We were stopped by a woman in uniform holding a sign that said “Slow” near some floodwaters partially covering the road. A small petrol pump was hopelessly trying to pump the water back over the levee bank into the swollen river whilst it bubbled back up the drains in the gutters. I made eye contact with her as if to say “Is this the way to go?” and she nodded and waved us by. When 150 metres down the road we had to do a U-turn because the road was completely blocked, I unkindly wondered whether the sign referred to her intellectual capacity. She gave us the same blank look as we drove back the way we came. Skirting Lismore, which was flooding and closed, we made it to Byron Bay where we set up camp in a camp-ground. That night after the kids were in bed, we toasted ourselves at having got this far, on biodiesel, and having made it through the storm, and to our first night camping. As we drained our glasses, however, mother nature had her last laugh by whipping up a wind and dumping another few inches of rain on us. We spent the night awake whilst the camper trailer shuddered in the wind, listening to the tarpaulin and all our camping gear blow around the campground.
Bill and Cliff’s turned out to be Billen Cliffs, and was not, as we had assumed before getting there, started by a couple of gay guys back in the 80s. It was a beautiful spot nestled in the hills, very kid friendly, and we were sorely tempted to put down anchors for a few days. However we were due to be in Brisbane by the next day at the latest, and the river we had forded to get to the community was rising because, believe it or not, it was still raining. It was still raining as we reached Brisbane, and we gratefully descended on my cousin’s place to unpack and dry out a bit. It was here that I tipped the last 40 litres of biodiesel into the car, which I calculated would get us approximately 250 kilometres (a bit more with the residual fuel in the tank) up the road. And so it did; we bought our first fossil fuel in Maryborough, 2664.2 kilometres from Melbourne. We had consumed 445 litres of biodiesel, giving us an average fuel consumption of 16.7 litres per 100 km (6 km per litre or 16.9 mpg) — not too bad given the amount of fuel, kids, and stuff we had on board when we left. We were approximately one third of the way to Darwin. * Biodiesel purists will be reeling in horror at my admission that we were running on unwashed biodiesel. Washing biodiesel (the process of running small droplets of water through the fuel) removes various unwanted by-products, stops the reaction that produces glycerine, and is a necessary production step to make fuel that meets Australian Standards. However, in older diesel engines such as mine, there is a school of thought that says washing is not necessary so long as the fuel is allowed to stand for several weeks before use, to allow 99.9 per cent of the glycerine to settle. |
For the next few hours we made our way northwards with steadily increasing rain. Around Coffs Harbour, the local ABC radio was transmitting evacuation warnings for most of the towns in our vicinity — the same message read over and over by an SES spokesman in a deadpan voice for each little town and hamlet, advising people to stack their furniture in the roof space and get the hell out. (This is my interpretation of their message.)
The next day, sodden and exhausted, we headed up into the hippie hinterland to visit a friend on a community near Nimbin — a place called Bill and Cliff’s. Since Lismore was closed, Ken guided us up and down every back road in northern NSW — truly beautiful country, but slow going with a trailer. The water alarm on the fuel filter went off at one point — the reader will be forgiven for thinking that water had got into the fuel. In fact this is a periodic event running on (unwashed) biodiesel as glycerine (the by-product of the production process) builds up in the fuel filter. Eventually enough accumulates to set off the alarm. When it first happened I thought I had stuffed my engine, but by now I had the response time down to a few minutes.*