...what's going on? Have I stooped to bad puns? Things must be getting pretty shallow here. Oh well, must be the weather. (Cold, wet, windy, in case you were wondering. At least it's not flooded like Northland; the cousins up north have no power at the moment...)
I spent a few days last week in Australia doing a vehicle survey in Bandiana, which is out the back of Wodonga (there's an engineering training barracks there). Started with an
ASLAV AS4 (at Vic Barracks in Melbourne actually), then an
M113, and finally an
M1A1 Abrams and an
M88 Hercules (which is in essence a big tow truck). The pictures linked really don't do justice to these things, the latter two particularly are bloody huge. Read the stats, then go pace out how big that is...
Unfortunately we spent a day and a half with the latter vehicles waiting for the proper security clearance (which had been promised in advance) to see inside the vehicles. This is a fairly necessary part of what we were there for! Even the staff accompanying us weren't supposed to look in them...
We weren't supposed to look in the engine bay either, but that's a bit hard when every Abrams we saw (about 6 of them) had the engine out and on the floor, and we were standing on top of the turrets half the time. (You can see what the engine unit looks like at the bottom of the M88 page linked above - it's a gas turbine, sounds awesome on startup, which happened a couple of times while we were there. Not as cool sounding though as the Herc's engine, which is a massive V12 air-cooled diesel; loudest motor I've heard this side of a top doorslammer...)
By the middle of Wednesday, we were given an official "no" (which was probably just a lack of an official "yes"...) so we cut short the trip a day and flew back to NZ on Thursday. I think by then we'd had our fill of huge country pub meals anyway... Not sure what they put in the water up there, but I'd hate to see the size of the chickens that those parmas came off...
Not much exciting to report since then. Jo caught up with Anne (the fellow Aussie psych) again last week while I was away. I've got some mudguards on the bike now, so consequently it's rained every day. But they do work very effectively. We hired a tip truck last weekend (it was the only thing on the lot) and picked up a sofa bed last weekend from up north a bit, so now you have no excuse to come visit! (except maybe that weather...)
love to all.
matt and jo.
