Music, Renos & Subarus

[Scooby2]

Scooby2 was laid up waiting for a new clutch in Brisbane, so her sister Scooby stepped up for the job. After 6 weeks standing, of course she started.

Surprising considering this:

-3 degrees, and re-named Frosty Scooby she was ready for an adventure, as she always is.

Her radio tuned to 106.3.... this girl is BAAAAACK! Saigon rolls discovered in Palmerston... and also Queanbeyan..... gave much needed energy & motivation to a massive painting job my daughter was in the middle of.

Up the highway out of the frosty sunshine from Canberra to wet, cold, miserable Sydney to this:

https://www.eventfinder.com.au/2013/global-battle-of-the-bands/sydney/inner-west

Our Own Extinction gave a fine performance ... but Sunday was not to be their day. Next year I hope to organize a much bigger rent-a-crowd. Wasn't an easy task considering the distance and weather. Great performances by all bands, great event to hear original artists.

The drizzly miserable rain followed us back to Canberra, but I was greeted with this:

There is nothing more heartwarming than Meerkat Coffee made especially for you by your son :ebiggrin:

Lucky he's talented in coffee making... our next task is demolishing his leaky shower.............

Lets hope tomorrow brings some sunshine

 

[Scooby2]

Took a small break from shower demolition and painting, and did a small road trip from Canberra to Cowra/Grenfell & back. Found this great tree along the way in Grenfell:

It was planted by Henry Lawson's daughter in 1927 to mark the place he was born. Henry Lawson is considered among one of Australia's finest writers and poets:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Lawson

Just beautiful country, clearly his origins and surroundings inspired his writing. This was one of my favorites:

Found one of these.... a classy porcelain upgrade to the outdoor dunny:

Back to Canberra for more renovations.... yes, I'm a glutton for punishment.

Another mini road trip... with company this time. And a fishing rod snuck into Scooby "just in case"..... we happened to come across The Mighty Murray:

Lunch at Jingelic pub with this view out the window. The fisherman was late for lunch .... Lunch was grand.. Lamb shanks & vegies. Warming and satisfying especially after the foggy start to the trip. Fisherman had to be dragged away, but I'm sure will be back - with eye candy like like this, who could resist:

 

[Ratbag]

Gidday S2

Nice pics, mate. Looks like a nice trip (and side trip or two ... ).

Having just set up a Flickr account myself, I have worked out how to embed images, rather than just link to them. Why Flickr insist on this stupid approach, I can't for the life of me work out. But there you are ...

Here is Henry's tree embedded, not linked.

To do this:

Right click on the image you want to embed;
Left click on the size you want to embed;
Right click on the image that displays;
Left click on "Properties" in the context-sensitive menu that appears;
Ctrl+Left-click on the image name (will automatically select the entire name including the .jpg extension);
Ctrl+C to copy this URL (lowercase "c");
Come back to your post;
Left-click on the Insert Image icon at the top of the editing box;
Ctrl+V to paste this URL into the pop-up box (lowercase "v").

Voilà! Image inserted.
This takes far longer to type than it takes to do ...

[EDIT]

Somewhat fuller instructions are here:
https://www.offroadsubarus.com/showthread.php?t=4726

[end edit]

 

[mr turbo]

Beautiful pics Scooby2

Regards
Mr Turbo

 

[Scooby2]

Thanks Mr Turbo & Ratbag. I enjoy seeing trip reports and have been educated today how to do it properly!

& on with the journey... back to Canberra again & turned up the heat this time with carpet laying brought forward a full week. Many hands on deck, much "final clean" business going on (who were those cowboy painters?????), much scrubbing and then... (I don't have a picture of this)... but fine dining ON the new carpet... aptly named "Billabong".

Gotta say... I had been a much longer time away from my own digs than I had expected, & my dodgy neck was by now very much in need of my own bed. Packed Scooby up, folded the seats down and set off after dinner in the fog to go as far as I could then pull over for a sleep.

Woke under the Golden Arches in Cowra at 6.30 a.m. ...... It was FREEZING! Lucky I anticipated subzero temps & had dressed for the occasion.

This is the very best and safest coffee for driving, and it has to be large. It's called an Iced Coffee Frappe.... never tried one before, but I now sing its praises

Yes, Scooby does have some mods. I thought that the booklight was a spectacular addition after some years and no fixing of the intermittent dash illumination..... more on that later...

I discovered a lost stash of CDs in Scooby's glovebox, which was a good thing. A drive from Canberra to Brisbane is very ordinary with no tunes. Several hours after the Frappe, things really started to heat up. My garb in preparation for subzero overnight temperatures clearly needed adjusting. I pulled over beside this tree

Adjusted my wardrobe for warmer temperatures and got out to take some pics and stretch my legs.... Thought I was hearing things when I heard music playing (I was in the middle of nowhere.. near Warumbungle National Park, NSW)..... what are the chances of pulling up level with a farmer on the uphill side fixing fences! So I decided maybe this was not the place for a pit stop, took a couple of pics and a deep breath and carried on....

Scooby was clearly enjoying stretching her legs. From time to time, when we came to a town, her check engine light winked at me. I have tried to have this rectified, but... like the lighting on her instrument panel, mechanics and auto electricians put things like that in the too hard basket. I suspect that she has a cracked knock sensor from much reading in this forum, so hopefully her next service she will be fixed properly by somebody who cares.

By the time I found this bush Lazyboy, I was very tempted to climb down the bank and have a relax!

Climbed up the lookout at Moonbi, and was pretty impressed by this:

Scooby was waiting down below trying to blend in with the scenery:

 

[Ratbag]

Well, waddaya know, my instructions work ... :lol: .

Well done, S2.

One surprised farmer ... :iconwink:.

Whoops ...
He was enjoying the "view", while you were enjoying the view ... :rotfl:.

I think I stopped very close to this exact spot last trip up there. I seem to recall taking an opportunity to "adjust my clothing" also, .

On the way back, I was going to stop for a while at Narrabri and take some photos of the Australia Telescope at Narrabri (completely flood-bound ... I couldn't get within 50 Kms ... ), then to Coonabarrabran and the Warrumbungles for yet more photo opportunities (started raining while I was chatting to the lovely young lass in the visitors' centre ... ). Ah well. There's always next time - hopefully in the fairly near future.

 

[Scooby2]

Ha Ratbag... enjoying the view.... Lucky he had his tunes playing or I wouldn't have even realised he was there!

Coming on to dusk, I thought I could smell smoke, and wondered if indeed the intermittent check engine light had finally revealed itself. I started to look for somewhere to pull over to "Check the Check engine".... to find this:

Initially I thought that perhaps a farmer was doing a backburn, but then couldn't see anyone as you usually do "mopping up"... The wind changed making me feel unsafe, so I kept on with the journey. It wasn't long before a bushfire truck passed me heading towards the blaze.

Darkness eventually happened, and I realized that Scoobys instrument illumination (the booklight) had been on all day and was now even duller than the dullest of glow worms. All the other lights on the dash work, but it makes for fairly challenging driving if you want to keep to the correct speed.

To this point, the road had been good. People generally courteous on the road and no dramas. Next minute, a truck travelling in the other direction flashed his headlights. Naturally I thought there was a problem of some sort, and immediately turned on the cab light to check my speed. Next breath defensive driving took over... I swerved & corrected & missed the large black rubber trucking mat that had landed in the shape of a huge black speed hump on my side of the road. Gotta love coming out of that doing 100kms an hour and not winding up sumpless or off the road! Yes, I stopped & went back and pulled it off to the side.

By now I was about 4 hours from Brisbane. My angry cranky useless neck was burning... just because. That's what it does. A complete waxhead in a 4wd pulled in close behind me with high beams on. The signs on the road flashed by.... tired drivers die.... you know the ones. The waxhead persisted with high beam and I surely was in no mood for a fight, so I slowed considerably to let them overtake me. To be greeted with the driver turning the spotlight on the bullbar reversed towards me.

Things settled down for a good while, then came Cunnigham's Gap... most of the road has been affected by flood damage and is under repair. I found myself between two B Double trucks, and just was happy to slowly descend ........ until the truck behind me came hurtling ... effectively sandwiching me in between the two trucks. I thought he must have lost his brakes so overtook the front truck in an overtaking lane. So the truck in front sped up.

By now, I figured these two trucks must have been bored & thought my little old Subaru was sport to scare off the road. I put a fair distance between me & them, until I had to slow for something I just couldn't figure. It was a blinker blinking off the side of the road but level with the ground. A car was nose up in a gully off the road... all that was visible was the blinker. There were people pulled up to help, so I continued on. Just makes me wonder if another truck had their sport with the car off the side of the road.

All in all I had a magic trip, but I just wonder, with a considerable increase in the number of unexplained accidents, whether or not this kind of thing has happened to anybody else.

Best regards,

 

[carljwnc]

Great report and photos Scooby2!!!:ebiggrin:

Thanks for sharing.

 

[Scooby2]

Thanks Carl, I have tried lots of times to figure the flickr picture thingo, but Ratbag helped me heaps with his very valuable destructions.

Regards,

 

[Ratbag]

G'day S2

I had that sort of thing happen to me when I ferried #3 Colt up to Brissy in about 2000. Broad daylight. I threatened the truckie with one of the most powerful weapons ever invented - my mobile phone ...

I waved the bloody thing out the window at him. He immediately pulled right back and stayed that way until I passed the one in front. At one stage he was so close that I couldn't read his number plate! This at around 110 km/h ...

Very frightening.
Flaming mongrels is all I can say.

Coming back from my most recent trip to Brissy (2011), I came down the New England highway. The truckies on that road were far more aggressive than those on the Newell IMO. Could have just been chance alone, however.

 

[Scooby2]

Coming back from my most recent trip to Brissy (2011), I came down the New England highway. The truckies on that road were far more aggressive than those on the Newell IMO. Could have just been chance alone, however.

Gidday Ratbag,

I only mentioned it because I have done a lot of trips between Canberra & Brisbane... this has been the first of what I would say bad experience like that in about 13 years.

The Newell on one trip I was truly grateful for the truckies showing concern & asking if they could help when something went wrong with the dual fuel system on my Dad's ute... consequently basically blew up the air filter assembly.

My trusty 100 mile an hour tape did the job... but I did have to pull over every 50kms or so to re-bandage the blowout. I don't travel without that stuff. It also fixed a hole in my radiator hose on another trip as a temporary bandage till I limped slowly back 200kms to Brisbane.

Best Regards,

 

[Ratbag]

G'day again S2

I discovered many decades ago that if one is to use gaffer tape to fix radiator hoses, one needs to back the pressure cap off so that it's just sitting there stopping the water from sloshing out ...

The slightest pressure in the system causes the tape to blow out.

In fact, I don't know why manufacturers pressurise their cooling systems so high. My older British cars all started off life with 13 psi caps (!!). By the time I was in my early 20s I had discovered that they worked every single bit as well with 4 psi radiator caps, and it put far less stress on the water pump seals, head gaskets, hoses, etc.

I just checked the one on Roo2. It is 108 kpa - around 15 psi!!
No flaming wonder that one reads of more than the occasional radiator having to be replaced here!

I'll have to check to see if I can get a (far) lower pressure one than this.

 

[Gravel_Rocks]

Great pics Scooby2, that tree is very nice.

 

[Scooby2]

Thanks Gravel Rocks. It was a pretty impressive tree. Two tree huggers with their arms both outstretched didn't even come close to circumnavigating it. I reckon its girth would be about 4 adults with their arms stretched right out!

Best regards,