A Dark Highway, a Cop and a Gum tree

So I know normally one blog a day is enough…but I really need to share something with you…tonight I had what I would call a ‘real country’ experience…and I thought it was super cool.

Tonight on my way home from Ballarat I was driving along minding my own business...keep my eyes peeled for roos and other wildlife (cos that’s what you have to do in the country) when up ahead I saw some yellow whirly lights, the kind that you see on the top of pick-up trucks, so I assumed that someone had just broken down, but it appeared it was all under control. Anyway, as I go closer I saw another light…a torch light waving frantically so I thought to my self maybe I should slow down a bit and check this out…and it was lucky I did coz as I got closer I realised that there was a gum tree that had fallen down and was now blocking the hwy. So I pulled my car over, and jumped out to chat to the man with the torch. It turned out the torch man and his friend were actually wildlife rescuers and they happened to have whirly lights on their van. They also had some old saws, so they were trying to cut the tree up so that it could be moved. So I decided I would help.

They were chopping the branches off and I was moving them to the side of the road out of the way. Eventually a truckie came along and he was helping too, and all was going well except that once we had removed all the branches we still couldn’t move the tree, so we had to call backup. Once the tuckie finally got the person on the other end of 000 to work out where we were…apparently they hadn’t hear d of Castlemaine or Daylesford…the told us they would send some one out. By this stage though, we had cleared enough of the tree for traffic to go through, so the truckie told me I could go if I wanted…but I told him that ‘I only just moved to the country, and so this kinda thing just doesn’t happen to me so I wanted to see how it panned out’.

Eventually a police man came along and out of the back of his van he grabbed a chainsaw which, to my disappointment, isn’t standard issue for country cops, he just grabbed it when he heard what he was going to. So the Cop removed the rest of the tree and everyone went on their merry way.

It was really quite exciting…and part of me feels like I really am from the country now, but I think my excitement about the whole thing probably just shows how city I am. Oh and I discretely took some pictures...they are a little dark, but you get the idea.

I guess that's just all part of the adventure!