Great Escapes. Or, how to live to tell the tale

[fred99999au]

Thanks Zane, that made me laugh. A lot.

[pokey]

Damn ants
 The rotten creatures had eaten almost every blade of grass in the front yard leaving it a barren desert of sand.I lived opposite a beach in a southern Newcastle burb and getting grass to grow was hard enough with the salt from the waves.

The Mrs was working this particular weekend so i was chilling and listening to my albums and improving my knowledge on the nuances of scotch distilleries. In my more than elevated state of self confidence i pondered the sand that had dragged into the lounge and looked at the ants nest and thumbed my chin , i did after all have a few 4 litre cans of toluene in the garage and that stuff takes skin off..

Grabbing another scotch for the trip to the yard i poured an entire can of toluene into the numerous holes and chuckled with glee at my my sinister plan. "that should kill the $%^&ers" i thought.
Sergeant Lance , the ex cop next door, gave me a wave and asked me what i was doing. He said he had been trying for 40 years with no joy. 

Sunday morning,, well okay it was 1 oclock when I woke up and those damn ants were still doing ant things and that lit my fuse so why shouldnt I do it to those mongrel ants? i grabbed another can and repeated the previous day and thought. Hmmm i better lay a trail as a fuse just to be safe.
 
Getting a glass guy on a Sunday isnt cheap and neither is 5 metres of garden soil . Im sure it rained ants and sand for 5 minutes. i had managed to disintegrate every window in the front of the house including the 4 x 3  metre in the lounge. the front yard was literally MIA as i had managed to top dress every neighbours yard with most of it being on the road separating me from the beach. Lance had managed to call  his mates and inform that apparently the Japanese were again shelling Swansea heads so we did have  a few colourful lights to offset the sandy decor.

 The mrs (ex#1) loved that i had  decided to landscape the front yard and to this day doesnt know what happened. Damn ants came back though.


 

[VMX247]

Thats Pokey....      long live the ants   

[FourstrokeForever]

Classic Pokey  And as for the Ants, they say the meek shall inherit the earth.......

[ty4]

pokey...you sir are a legend 

[80-85 husky]

the tears are dripping on the key board as I type, that's sensational!

we were drilling in the bush back in the 80's and the driller was an evil b@stard who took every opportunity to create havoc.

he would scour the proposed drill hole sites for ant nests then poke the hole down next to them. (these were 1 m diameter holes) so we had to brave the ants to measure the hole. He was fine he was up 2m off the ground in a comfy chair with an umbrella.

His moment of glory was having the field assistant standing on a bullant nest till he was black below the knees with them. watching him race off through the scrub ripping his jeans of at 30 kPh was memorable. only got 4 stings.

Revenge was sweet, a big hornet cruised around the rig (they love hydraulic oil) and the driller went into a panic. we gave him 15 minutes to calm down then poked a little stick from the other side of the rig and touched the back of neck.

Classic road runner scene of a bloke 2 metres up, running in fresh air before splatting on the ground.

it was agreed it was 1 all and hostilities ended.

[pancho]

I think most of us have had our stupid incident involving petrol to some degree (second degree in my case, lets leave my apprentice stupidity out of this) however this page would have been good in the 'funnies section!
cheers!

[GMC]

Lets jump in the ‘way back machine’ and go back to the mid 70’s.
Our property backed onto the Plenty river and had a reasonably steep descent down. We had a walking track cut into the side of the hill but being an industrialized sort of family one of my older brothers decided to use our small bulldozer (Cletrac) to carve a path down so we could drive the 4WD down, hell, it sure beats walking.

He was doing well to cut into the side of the hill but about 100 feet along struck rock. It seemed to be a major problem for him that I couldn’t understand. All he had to do was to level out the track for fifteen feet and then continue the descent again but this rock somehow seemed to be a reflection on the size of his penis and so it had to go so as to maintain a perfectly controlled descent.

He dragged out every extension lead we had and managed to get power down to the rock and using Dads big mother electric drill and a masonry bit drilled a ¾” hole into the rock. It was hard going without a hammer drill as they were a rarity in those days, nowadays it’s hard to find a drill that doesn’t have a hammer option in it.

Then he used a short extension lead that was left over and took the female plug of the end and wound the 2 main wires together which were then inserted into an old shotgun shell. This was then filled with gunpowder that was used to reload the shells but with no ‘shot’ being loaded left room for lots of gunpowder. A bit of sticky tape to hold it all together and then down into the drilled hole it went.

Now, I know that you’re all probably thinking that this would be a really dangerous thing to do but as long as safety procedures are meticulously maintained then all is fine;
# 1 With the leads plugged into power; drill hole
# 2 Walk back up to shed and turn off power
# 3 Walk back down to rock and insert loaded cartridge into hole.
# 4 Unplug drill and plug cartridge ‘detonator’ lead into extension lead.
# 5 Walk back up the hill to shed
# 6 Switch on power and watch ‘Kaboom’ from safe distance
Then simply repeat process from step #1 until rock forfeits its hold on the hillside track.
Simple really and quite foolproof for anyone that can count their way through a few simple steps.





Except;
Some said he just lost concentration.
Some said he was fatigued from drilling into the rock with an ordinary drill.
Some said he was a just forking stupid idiot, although it was really only Dad that said that, but then he used to say that about all of us.
Whatever the reason he somehow forgot step #2

My brother had been giving me a ‘hoy’ whenever he was about to blast so I too could watch from a safe distance. Several explosions into the process I heard another go off. Disappointed that I had missed the explosion I walked over to the viewing spot but no one was there. I looked down the hill to see my brother weaving his way up the hill in what appeared to be a drunken state.
He was shouting something but it wasn’t till he got closer that he became more coherent
“DID YOU TURN THE forkING POWER ON’ he was shouting.
“No, wasn’t me” I replied but he just kept going on and on while walking up the hill. Wasn’t till later I realized he was had been deafened from the explosion and couldn’t hear anything. As he got closer I noticed he looked like he had been bitten by a thousand wasps all over his face and arms. His work clothes were also bit more ratty than I had remembered.
The detonator lead that he was inserting into the shells was a round 10 foot long at the start but he was losing a foot of it with every explosion. He was about 5 feet from the rock when he plugged the charge into live power.
Despite being in his twenties at the time Mum somehow managed to ban him from playing with gunpowder again.
Ten years later a track was finally cut into the hillside but it started in a completely different spot, the original track still remains unfinished to this day which made some good embankments for my Trials riding practice.
Brother – 0
Rock – 1

[80-85 husky]

just superb Geoff! ive seen some good mishaps with crackers but that was just hilarious....

[FourstrokeForever]

Great yarn Geoff...reminds me of another classic moment in time.

A mate of mines parents had an old shack (holiday house) down the south coast of NSW that we used to use as a party/surf shack. Many good times were had there discovering the virtues of wine, women and music.

Anyway, another mate was big on making pipe bombs. They were crude. A piece of water pipe folded over with a hammer at 1 end, stuff with a bit of paper, drill a hole for a wick and feed the wick in, get some powder out of the fireworks and fill the pipe, more paper then fold the open end shut with a hammer..... I never stood anywhere near Phil when he was making his concoctions.....

He though it would be fun to let one off at the base of an old gum tree that was near the shack. "It will make heaps more noise if it's close to the tree" he reckoned.

So a few of us stood well away while Phil planted his device near the tree and lit the wick. Well, this thing was huge....We actually felt the shock wave before the big boom was heard. Faark it was loud. Next thing amongst all the laughter we could hear timber cracking just before the tree started to fall, aiming for the house of course. In slow motion, down came the 40-50 foot gum tree and took out the roof over the what was the lounge room......

Roscoe's old man was not happy and insisted that we return next week with tools and timber to fix the house, which we did. But made Phil do most of the work.

[Tossa]

Back in the army days we did a Unimog conversion course and I as a member of the cadre staff (regulars) got to finally have some fun with one.  So given a route card and an ARes offsider (extreme newbie) took of into the hills.  Had a great day.  Got to the top of one hill, card said to fit tyre chains to the vehicle.  Me 'don't need tyre chains to go down a hill.' suitably imporessed the new Ares dude.  Waited until everyone else had left then took off down the hill (about 1km descent).  Yep didn't need tyres chains, needed a bloody anchor.  It was wet clay and we slid in first gear all the way down.  The offsider had his hand on the door handle ready to jump at any time, me well I was just like f**k this is fun I have no bloody idea how this will stop.  Got to he bottom of the hill was a small river crossing, one Unimog stuck in it (give the Ares practice at removing it), two other vehicles lined up on our side of the river awaiting their turn.  Unbelievable the vehicle suddenly decided to stop 1 metre from the vehicle in front this was while the Waftam was throwing himself out the passenger door, screaming (I think it was his first and last army camp).  I calmly composed myself and jumped out the vehicle.  This idiot was busy telling everyone what I had done.

Needles o say the boss came over, took me aside and gave me a right bollocking, then pointed to another part of the river and told me to get in the vehicle and take it over there, without tyre chains and if I got stuck I had to get it out myself.  So with the other 40 people working on the other vehicles and watching to see what would happen, I took off into the river and believe it or not made my way across, there were cheers from the Ares and the boss was seen to throw his hat on the ground.  Toot of th horn, finger out the window and away I went back for a cuppa.  My work here was done!!