THE WALLABY TRACK WITH LIONEL MUSSELL
CHATTERBOX
IF YOUR TOW VEHICLE COULD
TALK, WHAT WOULD IT SAY?
I was looking back at some of the things I've
written over the years and came across this piece
supposedly written in 2006 by our tow vehicle, a
Ford Falcon wagon we called Gertrude.
“Hello there,” I wrote many years ago. “I’m a
1998 AU Falcon station wagon running on gas
and they make me tow that heavy thing they call
a ‘caravan’ but I call the ‘lump’.
“Recently, they made me tow the lump from
Adelaide to Mornington but instead of going the
quickest way, they followed the Murray River all
the way up to Mildura and down to Echuca. It was
hot! Phew – as if I didn’t have enough work to do
dragging the lump into that blustery headwind,
they kept putting the air-conditioning on, making
me work even harder.
“He had his foot well down so, to pay him back, I
drank more gas, and once he even promised me
a drink of petrol when I started ‘singing’ to show
I was nearly out of LPG. Promises, promises!
“He found a servo selling gas before we got to
Swan Hill! So much for his sweet talk. He even
sold a book to Debbie, the lady who put in my gas.
I heard her say she had been looking at his
website a few nights before. I
Gertrude and Lionel's old Scenic van
62 \
don’t even know what a website is. Perhaps it’s a
place where there are spiders?
“I don’t have much say in where we go but
sometimes I let my wheels stray onto the ripple
strip on the side of the road. ‘Gertrude!’ he says
quite crossly. ‘Get off those ripples!’
“He puts on a much nicer tone when he’s making
me pull the lump up one of those steep hills.
‘Come on, Gertie – you can do it,’ he flatters as
he pushes his foot down.
“I get fed up when we are in town traffic and the
traffic lights keep turning red. He keeps muttering
about idiots taking the safety space that he
tries to leave between me and the car in front.
Sometimes when that happens he makes me stop
so quickly that I have to think of using my ABS
system to stop in time.
“That’s when he uses words I really don’t think
are nice for a gentleman to use in front of a lady!”
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