The laughter and tears came from me making enquiries about getting ‘The Beast’ re-registered in Victoria. Having bought it in Sydney, it still has the New South Wales registration on it. This needs to be changed to Victorian. Because of the overall mass of ‘The Beast’, it needs to be registered as a truck, rather than a car, necessitating the special truck licence to drive it. I had hoped, for Becs sake, that Vic Roads might assist us by administratively registering it at just under the 4.5T truck mass, making it a car for registration purposes. Unfortunately, they won’t do this. Hence the laughter and tears, when I told Bec that she would need to be getting her truck licence. Not only that, but this all needs to be done in the next couple of weeks. At the moment, the driver training centre we use offers one day courses for a light rigid, but from the start of March, this will be increasing to a four day course. It is hard enough for Bec to get one day off of work, let alone four. So, as for everything else, it will be a last minute rush to the gates.

She was not happy to say the least, but to her credit, she has sucked it up and started to study the ‘truck and bus handbook’ from Vic Roads. We even got her out in ‘The Beast’ beginning to learn the intricacies and oddities of driving a vehicle which is about 3 times as big as what she is used to. I did tell her, and she admitted after going for her first drive, it is really just like driving a big car. Thankfully, she can actually do her test in our truck, just so long as I get it registered in Victoria first. So that’s yet another job for this coming week.

BEC. Master of ‘The Beast’.

I also managed to hook up the van and go for a short test run this week. It was only across to Campbellfield to get the annex looked at, but it gave me a chance to check it all out as a complete rig. Naturally ‘The Beast’ handled it with aplomb. It barely felt the extra weight of the van, cruising along as if nothing was there. Driving was easy, with no noticeable swaying from the van and the swanky swing up towing mirrors mean that we don’t even have to worry about messing around with clip on or strap on towing mirrors. And it all looks fantastic. I just need to play around with the weight distribution bars a little. Having expected the rear end of ‘The Beast’ to sag a little with the van hooked up, I set the tow bar up a little to high. The expected sag in the suspension was next to non-existent however, so the front of the van sat up rather high, with a correspondingly low hanging rear end that threatened to take the top off of any speed humps we encountered.

Hooked up and ready to go (for a test run).

Of course, we also had Valentines Day to celebrate this week. Now being the kind and sensitive bloke I am, who wholly supports the notion that Valentines Day is a day of love and sharing your feelings, rather than just a way for retailers to fill their shelves with overpriced flowers, chocolates, cards and tacky lacy lingerie (I still haven’t worn that frilly G-string again from last year!), I made sure to get Bec a card at least. She was happy with that, saying that “card” and “car” sounded similar, so it was a fair swap of gifts. I reminded her that ‘The Beast’ is actually a truck, and that she could have had something that sounded like “truck”. But really, what were we ever going to do with a duck! (Oh, come on now, what did you think I was going to say?)

Valentines Day gift?

We also took another day out of our planning schedule to spend it with some dear friends, who had invited us over to their place in South Morang. There’s 6 of us, who spent some quality dining time together on a cruise a few years back and we catch up all too infrequently these days, but have a grand time when we do. We enjoyed a fantastic lunch and afternoon tea (Thanks Liz for the lemon meringue cheesecake), reminiscing about past travels, and dreaming of future ones.

Finally for this week, I have updated ‘The Rig’ pages with some more information on ‘The Beast’ and I am in the process of setting up our E-mail accounts. Mine is already live, and I can now be reached at marcus@myramblingtales.com so update your address books, although my other E-mail accounts are still active and will be checked regularly. Rebeccas new mailbox will be up and running in the next few days I hope and her address will be rebecca@myramblingtales.com.

Until next time, stay safe, have fun and don’t forget to write.