We have a new touring rig and it’s name is GUS BUS, it’s madden voyage is one that we will not forget in a hurry. We set off from Port Macquarie to QLD for a show at the Coolangatta Hotel on Friday it was raining pretty heavily, extremely Windy and there was talk of flooding from Grafton to Ballina, but we had to try to get there. We got about 1 hour down the road when I turned my blinker on and it was blinking twice as fast as it does when you have blown a bulb, so I pull over and ask Jarin to get out and check the blinker “there’s no blinker” he replied “jump in we’ll have to stop at the next servo and get another bulb” I said “no there’s NO BLINKER” so I jump out to find a empty blinker socket, the whole blinker assembly had blown out, so we pushed on to the next town a found a wreckers which luckily had one, so we put it in and off we went.

There was a lot of water on the road all the way and everyone was predicting the levy bank to break at Woodburn at about midnight but we had to push on, we got to the show and everything went well, after the show we decided to drive back to Ballina that night and sleep behind “The Big Prawn” (as Gus Bus has 3 double bed’s in it, quiet comfortable), so by the time we loaded out and got back to Ballina it was 2am and blowing a gale at 6am we were up because there was a cyclone going on outside, we set off down the HWY and got nearly to Woodburn, we were stopped, as Woodburn now had a river running through it, so we went back to Ballina and tried to go around it through Lismore and out to the NEW ENGLAND HWY, the road to Lismore was closed too, so we had to drive back to the GOLD COAST to get on the NEW ENGLAND HWY that way but once we got there we where told that the Lismore way was open (which is much shorter) so we turned back again. Any way after a lot of back tracking at 1pm (7hours later) we were back outside the "Big Prawn" (lets just say this was a low point in the trip) we stopped for some lunch and in true Barrel House spirit saw the funny side of it and we picked up our spirits and set off again through Lismore, Casino, Tenterfield, Glen Innis, Armadale and Walcha and we where making the best of it, stopping every now and then so Jordan could eat some of the local plants and animals (he likes to really get to know he’s surroundings), 16 hours later we are driving through the Walker mountain rangers which is an ordeal on a good day, let along howling winds and torrential rain. We are all talking about the rang of emotions we have experience from excitement to frustration to anger to acceptance and back to excitement. When the trip was interrupted by a 2 tone tree straight across the road with no way around we where about 1 hour from home it was heart braking (we decided that if we had to cut through it with the back of a claw hammer over 6 hours we would) 10 cars eventually came after an hour they all watch Jordan unleashing the furry on this log with the back out our claw hammer, it was hopeless but everyone admired his spirit so we let him vent his frustration. Luckily a guy came along with a big 4WD and all the gear you would ever need to perform pretty much any recovery mission he almost looked exited to see the obstacle so he hooked up the snap strap to the back of his car and started pulling away madly, (if you remember that Sean in Jurassic park where the 4WD is trying to stop the caravan from going over the cliff, that was about it) we had to dismantle the guard rail and lift the log up onto one of the post it couldn’t get past so about 10 strangers all banded together and manager to lift the end of this log about 4 inchers up onto the post and after about 20 goes we finally got 1 lane clear, soaking wet and very relived we said good by to the friends we just met and gave them all a CD, we got about 5 mins down the road and found one of the fella's (Nathan) we just met, had hit a boulder and shot straight off the cliff his car was very precariously perched on it’s side, on the cliff with a small tree being the only thing from stoping his car from falling into the 20 meter ibis below him, his car was still running and he was trapped because the car was on it’s side he couldn’t open the door so he very carefully popped the boot and managed to climb free grabbing his bag on the way out, we all sat there in disbelief at what had just happened and how lucky he was that he got stopped by the tree, so he climbed aboard "GUS BUS" and we dropped him off at the police station once we finally got back to Port Macquarie at midnight, so we had just spent 18 hours driving and I’ve never been so happy so see the lights of Warchope, I have a felling this won’t be the last adventure we have in "GUS BUS" but we will let you know.

Cheers Dwaine