Earlier yesterday, while driving through grade A fire risk territory in country Victoria, my two little girls thankfully dozing peacefully in the rear seats only 30 minutes or so into our 700K schlep back to Gundaroo, NSW, the car decided it was prime time to play its bi-annual game of ‘silly buggers’.
An hour later we’d (inadvisably) limped on to the Woolies Caltex in Mernda. I’d called around 5 different local (and local-ish) mechanics and the best offer of the two that “might” be able to “have a look at it some time today” was the Repco 4-5Ks away in Doreen. Relatively close in distance, but it might have well been 500Ks as the advice was not to drive on peril of the engine doing itself some “real damage” and us not being members of the NRMA. Yet.
The girls were doing their best in the air-con relief of the Caltex, but opportunities for entertainment and distraction were limited and the girls were now entertaining themselves by attempting to catch drips from the slushy machine on their fingers while mum was distracted on the phone enquiring about NRMA fees and how long a tow-truck might be, while the temperature outside nudged past 30 and upwards…
I left the sweat-box of my car to chat with a couple of police officers filling up at the bowser who explained that they could not offer us a tow.
My father-in-law offered to drive the, now, 600+ Ks to pick us up, as impractical as that might be.
Just as Sasch (my wife) was about to part with $4-500 with the youth in the NRMA sales department, into the servo walked Troy and Calan from Jim’s Antennas Wollert.
They caught my exasperated gaze and offered a friendly “G’day” type greeting and then they both listened kindly as I, dripping with sweat and trying to prevent my girls attaining a drip-fed sugar-high, explained why it wasn’t really panning out a too good a day for our little family at the moment.
Without missing a beat Troy and his dynamic duo partner – should I refer to him as ‘Robin’? (y’know as in ‘Batman and…) – had offered to tow us in such a matter-of-fact way that I didn’t quite believe it at first. Sasch bought a tow rope and these two stunning blokes simply got on with the task of pushing our car back to the rear of their van in the blistering heat, working out the towing points and hooking us up. Within 15 minutes of meeting them they were unhooking us outside the mechanics.
I tried to give them $50 each as a thank you, but they refused point-blank.
I offered to get them a crate of beer, but they simply refused and said that it was enough to have helped. Are you employing Buddhist Monks at Jim’s Antennas? Or Angels – where do they put their wings?
As we sat there in the relative comfort and safety of the air-conditioned Doreen McDonald’s, reflecting on what had happened, we just wanted to register what absolute ‘top blokes’ Troy and Calan were/are and to note their ‘random act of kindness’ which, whether our car had ended up back on the road or not, was so very, very appreciated by our little family on an uncomfortable and stifling day so far from home. It’s these ‘human’ acts that let us all hold out a little more hope…
Thanks for reading and many thanks again to Troy and Shane.
Andrew, Sascha, Rose & Carla Sheehan
PS. The car was up and running after a few hours delay and we were back on the road. the mechanics reiterated that if we’d driven the distance from the servo to them – as I was sorely tempted to do – it would most likely have resulted in some major gasket-blowing damage to the engine.
