This happened a couple of years ago now. But it always amuses me.

*

Many disastrous events in life have a silver lining. In some cases there is no such thing, despite what life coaches, religious leaders and great grandparents will tell you. Fortunately, an event so catastrophic as bellying an 1800 kilo ute on a ridge of sand, is not such an event, provided you can dig your way through several feet of sand to find said lining. This becomes less encouraging when you find yourself without a shovel.

So how does one come to know such a woe? It usually begins, as my story does, with several donuts and a case of wanderlust. By wanderlust, I mean the need to wander to the nearest place suitable for donuts, drifting and general bad behaviour behind the wheel. With the only off road track inaccessible due to tractors, nails and heavy rain, and an aging mother who feared for her aging kidneys, the next best place was the beach.

Getting out there was no problem; the ute runs a two-litre Mitsubishi cyclone engine with over three hundred thousand kilometres of abuse on the clock so, naturally, we could rely on the old girl. The interior of the cab was composed mostly of roughened vinyl and a carpet consisting mostly of sand, stones and some kind of goo that had quite possibly gained sentience. The head liner had long been torn out, so any noises were accompanied with a symphony of metallic echoes. Mother, who had asked for a ride to avoid dirtying her darling Nissan Sentra, huddled in the passengers seat.

We cruised to the beach at a leisurely eighty kilometres an hour, the engine protesting every minute of the way. Trees, fences and escaping cows flashed past as we ambled through the farmland that borders the road to our destination. Mother said nothing; apparently regretting her request to come along before we even made it to the judder bars. She didn't even know about the suspension yet.

The beach car park is a sizable area of sealed gravel that offers parking to the hundred or so vehicles that visit it during summer. Given that it wasn't summer, and that it was raining, we shared this massive space with three cars, all of whom seemed more interested in avoiding large angry black utes, especially the ones driven by unhinged redheads. And they didn't even know about the brakes.

There were two options for getting onto the beach itself, the car park sits up high, built on a wide row of sand dunes that cordon off the beach from the civilized world. The first option was a forty five degree angle slope that was left behind from the great retaining wall that had protected the town from the surf and storms. Over the years sand had piled ever higher, so that by the time I turn forty, it will be on the same level as the car park itself. The second option was a narrow track that ran on a gentle slope at the end of the retaining wall, right next to the sand dunes. It was also clogged with driftwood and other sharp pointy things. There were also children at the bottom.

Now don't get me wrong, I like moving targets as much as the next psychopath, but there were witnesses and do you know how hard it is to pick teeth and innards out of a radiator? It's a nightmare. Admittedly when you scrape little Timmy's spleen off the hood you can tell yourself it was totally worth it, but these children weren't the squishy kind, they would have dented the bonnet, and I'd only just had the catch fixed, (previously it had had a habit of coming loose at high speed).

In the end, we went down the driftwood populated track, it wasn't so bad, the tyres were steel belted, albeit bald, and mother got to learn all about standard farm vehicle suspension. Once the witnesses were safely out of range I gunned the engine, hearing a groan of protest as the ute began to crawl forward. I vaguely remember a sign announcing the speed limit at thirty kilometres per hour. I also vaguely remember my speedo not being particularly accurate, oh well.

It was high tide, with only a narrow strip of hard packed sand to play in and a violent ocean, iron grey, as if mimicking the sky. I had a good time, wandering about the beach, hauling the ute up on two wheels and pulling a few more donuts. I was always more a fan of gravel, but sand did just as well for sliding about. I also had fun with open windows and waves of salt water, I might add that the windscreen wipers weren't particularly effective, so driving became a game of remembering where the rocks were before visibility disappeared. Mother said nothing until the ute came to a halt after a neat 180 and began to sink.

Never fear! The ute is a four gear beast with part time rear wheel drive and part time four wheel drive with a low ratio box! Rock on. Of course, to set it in four wheel drive one needs to get out, sink three inches in two inch heels and wrestle with the hubs of the front wheels to actually lock them. So, my heels caked in sand, I wobbled around to lock the hubs, then wobbled back to the cab, which I noticed was about six inches lower than I remembered.

Mother suggested digging. I gunned the engine. The old girl (the ute that is) groaned and clawed her way out and back into the water.

“Good little car!” Mother exclaimed. I raised an eyebrow. The only similarity my ute shares with a car is having four wheels.

We splashed through the water for a little while longer until I noticed the engine was struggling more than usual. Not having a snork or any of the electrics elevated meant that river crossings were an interesting experience, and apparently so were beach antics. So I pulled onto the dryer sand, using momentum and a great deal of prayer to keep going. By the time the engine dried out, we had come to the river mouth.

The river mouth is about a kilometre wide and is home to driftwood, the bodies of people who annoyed the local mobs and a collection of highly aggressive crabs. The shallows are only about two metres wide before the riverbed drops straight down more than five metres. We stayed away from the water. Around the edge of the river mouth, before the edge of the dunes, there is an expanse of undulating sand often employed by sand buggies, farm bikes and the odd station wagon with an existential crisis.

The trails leading in and around the bigger piles of driftwood had been used before, so I followed in the tracks, keeping to the darker, wetter areas. The engine was still spluttering from time to time, apparently not yet done sulking over the soaking from earlier. We cruised easily along the waters edge, looking for a way through to follow the river back to the road, and found our way blocked by a mountain of driftwood. So we turned around and found our best option was over the dips and rises that ran further in toward the sand dunes. Bad idea.

She went fine for a while, rolling over the bumps and various pieces of driftwood. That is until the engine decided it wasn't quite done punishing me. She sputtered, whirred, and as I dropped her down a gear, I felt that awful sinking feeling. Crap.

In a matter of second she'd dug herself in both ways, her rear tyres dug into the base of the rise behind us, and her front caught halfway up another. Four wheel drive wasn't gonna save us here. Never fear, a shovel! Of course, we didn't have a shovel. Fortunately, nature, in its twisted sense of karma, had furnished us with sticks aplenty.

True ingenuity comes much easier when your ride home is on the line. I stomped around for a while, leaving interesting prints in the sand from two inch high heels. On our knees, we dug, and dug, and dug. And on the second try, we got nowhere. This wasn't really an issue, she had plenty of starts left in her, the battery was from a Subaru impreza, jerry rigged to the rusty mounts with a pair of pliers and some screws for good measure, completely reliable. Of course, the carburetor had a few blockages, and sand was piling up everywhere. Nothing to worry about.

It might pay to mention at this point that there was no one else around. I weigh approximately 70 kilos (yes, I'm admitting it, shut up.), and I sank half a foot into the sand. The ute weighs approximately 1800 kilos, 2000 with two humans, a scissor jack, a set of tie downs, a baseball cap and several seagulls who saw fit to perch on the deck. Yup, nothing to worry about.

The ute has a fair bit of ground clearance, given that most L200s come out with 14 inch rims as factory standard. My old girl was on 15 inch rims, with 205/65s all round and the wheel arches could accommodate almost twice that size. The four wheel drive running gear lifted the cab and deck about three inches and then some crazy suspension work before I'd owned it had lifted it a little higher.

It wasn't until the third attempt that we discovered we'd bellied it. Not just your standard axle bellied, but everything from the running gear to the bash plate and halfway along the underside of the chassis. I cringed, the down pipe had a hole in it, it was probably full of sand by now. A small mountain of sand sat sedately by each of the wheels, the wind slowly sweeping them away, reminding us how little we had achieved.

Then I had a bright idea. What occurred to me where the filthy sheets I had used to cover some furniture I'd moved the other day still in the deck. They'd at least help to stop it digging.

So another attempt went by, not only digging out the wheels, but the underbelly as well. I stuffed the sheets under the front wheels, the slope backwards was higher than forwards, and there was a slope slightly to the left, I hauled the wheel around and put mother in the drivers seat, she found reverse hidden away behind second and revved the engine. Well, at least she didn't stall it. I pushed, and pushed, and pushed, my dainty heels now composed more of sand than of heel. She dug deeper. That was when we noticed that one of the rear wheels was well as truly off the ground, and that the others weren't even spinning.

Ok, so maybe we were in trouble.

It was then that I noticed a sound, a blessed sound, like a trotting pony breaking wind. It was an engine, a little engine, but an engine. Around from behind the dunes came our saviour. Clad only in a bush shirt and rubber overalls he sat astride a big red. To this day, I will never relinquish my awe at the awesomeness of big reds. With curly brown hair and a rosy face, our saviour can't have been more than twelve.

Well, at least he wasn't riding a push bike.

Yay for tie downs! I dismantled one from the stash in the glove box and hooked it onto the tow hook while thanking him profusely. He responded sagely with;

“It’s happened to all of us,”
Damn kid’s not meant to be wiser than me.

He tied the other end to the tow bar of the big red (up until that point I hadn't known they had tow bars) and gunned the engine. I climbed behind the wheel of the ute and started her up, she purred into life, apparently wanting to be friends again, he gave the signal, and rolled forward. The cheap warehouse bought nylon groaned, strained, and held. I felt the pull, the tyres spun, we started to move.  And then we stopped.

There is now a dent on the steering wheel in the shape of my forehead, I think it adds character.

I climbed out of the cab, saying things that no overall wearing, big red riding, twelve year old should ever hear, at least not till he's fourteen anyway. He told me he knew a guy with a tractor. I sighed and nodded. He gunned the engine, leaned forward to take off, and went nowhere.

The big red was stuck.

Now, I'm a fairly powerful sort of person, I haul hay bales and feed sacks, I play tug of war with horses and when the bloody car won't start I push it to the top of the nearest slope to crash start it. I figured between the two of us we might be able to lift it a little and push it down the slope.

Good Lord was I wrong.

It was then that our saviour turned victim noticed the driftwood, and said to find a bit of wood, to give the tyres grip. I frowned, ignoring the chorus of 'DOH's echoing in the recesses of my skull, and went to find one. We found a suitable log and dug a set of molehills to match the mountains. With a good push and a lot of grippy bark, the big red came free.

At this point my mother rang my father, I couldn't quite discern why, as the only thing he had with enough grunt to tow was a two and a half tonne Toyota Granvia with the ground clearance of a tricycle. At this point, our victim turned savior told us that he would go back to his camp (the poor kid was on camp and we lured him into quick sand? Great, now I feel good) and get a shovel. I thanked him profusely. Father tells mother he'll bring some shovels as well.

So now we had a ute thats beyond digging, but all the shovels we'll ever need. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony, malice, colour coordination and maybe even humour.

So we dug some more, then some more, and just for a change we dug a little more. I was on my stomach, scraping the sand out from underneath the bash plate, the thing that was meant to protect the ute, not imprison it. Eventually, our teenaged saviour returned with a heavy steel shovel. I got up to take it from him, noticing the bosom shaped imprints in the sand and then got back to work. About five minutes later, the Gran via arrived. My father, it seemed, was bright enough not to follow us in and parked it a hundred metres closer to the water. When he arrived, he started digging without a word, tossing a spare shovel down. At this point our big red riding friend had just started on the front left wheel when I asked him to try on the rear right, he dropped the scratching of sand he’d had time to take and moved on. I’m not so sure he wasn’t giggling over the boob marks in the sand. I’ve heard of drawing in the sand before, sand porn is something else entirely.

Some moments later, I heard a familiar sound, the proverbial pony was at it again as another big red came flying round the dunes. Driving it this time was not a teenager, not a child at all. Instead, he was pushing fifty. The old geezer came to a halt beside the wellside and sat for a moment. He said nothing at first, apparently not hearing my casual greeting.

After a pause, he hopped off the bike and ambled around to the front of the ute, picking his way through the small mountain range we had constructed. After some thought he summed up the situation in a fashion characteristic of old buggers.

“Well, you’re really in the shit.” He said.

Well, he was right. He ambled about, either thinking or silently laughing at us, I wouldn’t know which, he and our younger saviour didn’t seem to know each other, but we made more progress, first when my father informed me that forwards was not the way to go.

Oh, well, its not like I was gonna do something dumb like that.

And then when he began to break a large log into bits by thumping the ground with it, I sidled out of the way as chunks of wood went flying. Then he used the steel shovel, another large log and much grunting to lever the ute’s front end up high enough for me to stuff a few logs under the tyres. We dug a little more, and when all four tyres were suitably prepared, I had an idea.

What do we have? We have two young’uns, three geriatrics, two big reds, two tie downs, two sheets, three shovels, fifteen logs, a towbar and about sixteen seagulls. Well, the Seagulls weren’t exactly being helpful, instead hanging about more like vultures, waiting for one of us to keel over. Funnily enough, I don’t think they eat red meat.

We tied the two big reds to the tow bar of the ute, wedged some more wood under the tyres of the ute and my father got behind the wheel. The guy used to own a ute, much like mine, in fact almost exactly like mine, but not as awesome and probably more mechanically sound.

“Does he know where reverse is?” My mother asked me. I frowned, my father had driven my ute once before, surely he’d know how to find it. I asked just to be sure, he said he was fine. I shrugged and went back to the front, my heels now discarded for the good old fashioned grip of ten toes. He started the engine, the big reds snarled into life, the wheels started to turn, and the ute began to... push me backwards?

I called a halt, and leaned in the window. He had it in second.

Banishing him from the cab I got behind the wheel myself. Once again, the tie downs groaned, the big reds broke wind, my parents grunted, the ute sulked and all of a sudden, we started to move.

The ute rolled backwards down the slope and then up the next, she had almost peaked it when there was a bang.

Our youngest saviour had, for some unknown reason, come to a halt. And the ute had also come to a halt. On top of the tray of the big red.

Great.

The big red strained and snarled, sending sand flying backwards, but the no avail, 2000 kilos of ute, human, seagull and tools kept it firmly pinned. It wasn’t until the ute was levered up (with much grunting) that the bike came free.

We thought we’d be fine to get the ute out now. But oh no, fate hadn’t finished yet. We gave it another go, straining with the bikes and heaving at the front, we came to another halt as a tie down came loose. The old fullah hopped off his bike to reattach it, not noticing that with the ute on a lean, I couldn’t see him, and neither could my father, who gave me the signal to go.

Fortunately for the old bugger, the ute wasn’t going anywhere without help.

So we gave it one more go with logs under the tyres and everybody but me pulling, (somehow that doesn’t really seem fair, but if no one else can find the right damn gear, so be it).

The big reds snarled, the ute grumbled, the parents groaned, the tie downs squeaked, the seagulls squawked, and we moved. This time they dragged me well out to the waters edge. Freedom!

To this day, I don’t know the names of the blokes who helped us, nor do I know where they came from. I thanked them again as I untied the tie downs and threw them on the deck, then returned the steel shovel to its owner. With a roar and a pop they disappeared round the dunes again. My mother, apparently preferring the mouldy interior of the ute to the comfort of the Gran via, climbed into the cab beside me. I stuck close to the water this time.

The track out to the carpark was more fun going the other way, and mother learned about suspension all over again. Of course, I had to do a few donuts before we left. Just little ones. In the great kiwi tradition of going places nobody else is stupid enough to go, I intend to go back.

In getting stuck there’s a great deal of cursing, a fair whack of wind, a few gallons of rain and a lot of general unpleasantness. But in getting out, there’s a strange sense of fellowship, the problem that belonged to just one or two, comes to belong to five or six. So it would seem that 2000 kilos can be hauled from several feet of sand with only two big reds, two young’uns, three geriatrics, fifteen logs, two sheets, two tie downs, three shovels, fifteen seagulls and about two hours worth of cursing. When you get stuck, it doesn’t matter who the vehicle belongs to, or if you know whoever helps, it becomes everyone’s problem, and when you get out, it becomes everyone’s achievement. Of course, if you get stuck again, you bloody idiot, you’re on your own.