I’d just done my shopping at Aldi and Woolworths; I’d picked up a few frozen and fridge goodies and then I thought that I’d fill up the car so that I wouldn’t have to do it in the morning. I was going to hike Mount Edwards. The car was running really rough on Petrol, I normally use LPG, and I had put in a bottle of injector cleaner in preparation.
I put in 30Lt of Petrol and about the same for LPG. The next thing I see is a pool of petrol appearing on the concrete. I didn’t realise that there was a problem. It did happen last year, but I thought it was because I had overfilled the car and the petrol on that occasion went everywhere. I paid for the fuel and then headed off, switching to petrol before going. The car was running as rough as a badger’s arse; it was even Pinking. I went onto the motorway to try and give the car a blast and also to use some fuel to save it from just pouring out everywhere. I then realised I had my weeks shopping in the boot and it was hot outside; I had to go home.
At home I put the car in the garage and unpacked my shopping. I looked under the rear of the car and there were no drips of fuel, excellent!
I checked after about 15 mins or so and still all was well. About half an hour later I went back to look and I could smell the fuel before I got downstairs. It was slowly dripping onto the floor and then it had gone down the expansion joint of the concrete. I put the car outside and then put baking soda over the spill. The place was stinking. The last time this happened it took weeks to clear and my health suffered because my bedroom is above the garage, the vapour just comes up.
I shut the windows upstairs, opened everything up downstairs. I ran the fan in the room to keep the air moving. That worked really well and over the next few days the smell dissipated to the point where there was just a whiff.
Of course, the next morning, Tuesday after this drama I planned to take the Olde Ford for a jaunt to Moogerah Dam and I was climbing Mount Edwards, and so we did. Got there around 9am. I opened the back windows and had the air con on and the air stayed fairly fresh upfront; I only got the odd whiff of petrol. It’s about 70km to the dam and me Olde Ford was still not happy and coughing a fair bit by the time we arrived.
The Mount Edwards hike is only 6km, but it is steep. You climb to 634m over a fairly short distance and the track itself is good, however there are sections that are really steep and the ground has a lot of loose rocks on it and this became more of a problem for the descent. I really should have taken my walking poles with me; they would have been ideal and made it a whole lot easier.
It took around 90 min to get to the top and I was running out of juice by the time I arrived. The view is absolutely spectacular. The weather was perfect and you could see for miles. I don’t know about you, but sometimes there is an urge to get too close to the edge and then wish that I could fly like a bird over what lies beyond and that of course would be the last thing I would have done.
I was soaked by the time I arrived. I sat near the edge on a flat rock to admire the view, eat my muesli bar and to dry out my trousers because my arse was feeling quite soggy by this point. Glad I took the muesli bar because my guts were asking for food, I was running on empty.
Oh, I forgot to mention that half way up I heard a noise and the next thing I see is this bipedal Ibex running down the track, absolutely mental. I was surprised by the speed of him and he sailed passed and was gone. I have no idea how he could do that because when I was coming back down my boots seemed to catch every pebble and I was sliding everywhere. Mind you he was about half my age.
I got down safely and then headed to Boonah, which is about 23km away and had lunch before taking a rather large detour home. I went via Aratula and turned onto the Terome Road and headed for Rosewood before heading back to Ipswich. By the time I got home I had driven close to 200km and the Olde Ford was no longer coughing, in fact she was running very smooth indeed. Very happy about that. I usually use petrol one day a week, however I think because I had been on holiday and she hadn’t moved for three weeks and maybe I had picked up some dirty fuel the last time was reason enough for her cold!
Click the link to get more info on the walk…..