Just after lunch on a sultry, humid, Queensland Sunday afternoon a neighbour came wandering across our lawn. “I wonder if you can help. My tractor’s fallen into a hole”. Sandy’s old Massey Fergusson is a local legend and common sight in our neighbourhood, as he takes on the task of slashing his own and other nearby paddocks. Today he’d taken on a particularly challenging one; thick with the summer’s growth and still soggy from Cyclone Alfred.
We live in an old mining area. Shafts, long abandoned and mapped indistinctly in the distant past, pepper the area. After heavy rain they tend to reappear.
Sandy’s slashing efforts had found one. The small steering front wheel had almost made it across.
The four-foot driving wheel hadn’t. Now suspended by the slasher and front wheel over a hole that we couldn’t see the bottom of, there was no way that he was going to drive out.
I didn’t know any of this when I blithely said ‘Don’t worry, we can winch it out!
On site, I revised my opinions. The weight and position of the tractor suggested that the only thing I was going to do was winch Joy into the hole to join them!
Well, I hadn’t set my recovery kit up and it was an opportunity to get new toys out of the box…
Safety and weight calculations complete, and, with much trepidation, I pushed the winch ‘In’ button. Everyone else looked at the tractor. I just looked at the Land Rover. The winch was supposed to be capable of such a pull. But I had put it all together and, like everything I’d done on these vehicles, there was no instruction book.
As a child all my Meccano models – nuts, bolts and bits of metal – fell apart and, between you and me, I haven’t really advanced that much since then! There was a high chance that the winch plate would go sproinging off down-range to join the tractor, or that poorly-connected 400 Amp cables would start a Heathrow-stopping size fire in the engine bay.
10 seconds winch; 1 minute rest. As per the book.
The Land Rover groaned and lurched forward, but held.
The winch plate didn’t fly off. The engine bay remained smoke free. The cable came in.
Another pull; the cable came in some more. It must have broken.
But encouraging shouts from the other end suggested otherwise. 10 minutes later, much to my astonishment, Land Rover Joy had hoiked the 3-tonne-plus tractor from its earthy nemesis. More than just a joy to drive!
I get real joy when I read about the difference our supported charities can make. Shelby benefitted from The Smith Family’s Catch-up Learning program – one-on-one literacy and numeracy tutoring twice a week.
“It’s like a light switch just changed for him, You could see his mood changed. He was more confident with what he was doing at school. He caught up to where he needed to be.”
Today, Shelby’s confidence continues to grow.
“When I finish school, I want to be a carpenter and I want to run my own business. I want to build my mum a house – it’s a dream goal for me.”
You can read more about Shelby’s story here. And that’s another reason why we want to raise funds to help.