Time to Roam Magazine Issue 12 - December/January 2015 | Page 13

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Police D shackle checks no hoax
In July/August we were holidaying at a
caravan park outside Bundaberg and one
Sunday night went to the Brothers Club for
a meal, then stayed for the entertainment.
During a break in the evening, our group
started chatting to a man who had kindly
let us sit at his table and in the course of
the conversation we told him we were all
holidaying in our caravans. He promptly told
us his mate had just got back from a trip down
south and coming through Gympie had been

pulled over by the police and he was booked,
supposedly for having incorrect D shackles.
This caused us all some concern, and the next
morning while I was attending a physiotherapist’s
appointment, my husband walked down to
the Jayco yard at the end of the street.
He asked the sales person if he’d heard
anything about people being booked for having
non-standard D shackles (and yes, from memory
there was a colour mentioned) and my husband
said the salesman immediately looked over at

another man who was waiting to purchase
something. This man came straight to the
counter and said it was him –he’d been pulled
over outside Gympie and in the process was
booked for having non-standard D shackles. My
husband said this man was so overwrought he
didn’t think it was an act and the man repeated
the whole thing to my husband. So we bought
another set of D-shackles, which, incidentally,
were exactly the same as the ones we already
had on the van, just to be on the safe side.
We could only conclude that this man,
given his anger and distress, was telling the
truth, but there are many types of D shackles
available, some from the cheap shops like
the Reject Shop, and if he’d put one of those
on his chains, it wouldn’t have sat well with
police. In hindsight, it is likely that there were
other reasons he was pulled over, but he wasn’t
about to ‘fess up and his apparent distress and
insistence that he was booked for having non
standard d-shackles lea