farmdoc's blog post number 121

Our Maremma Pete is named after the now 89-year -old Pete Seeger who today I’m adding to the list of my heroes. One of Seeger’s best songs, Waist Deep in the Big Muddy, is a 1967 allegorical anti-war song. But I digress. Last week, as a Mole Creek fire brigade volunteer, I attended a Tasmania Fire Service training course on how to Drive vehicles under operational conditions (National Accreditation Code: PUAVEH001A). Tuesday night was the theory part. The instructor told us 10 students that the course focused on attitudes, not skills, because emergency service vehicles are expensive to repair. Fair enough, I thought. Then on Saturday the practical part started tamely enough: how to do a thorough vehicle inspection. Then the 10 of us set out in three appliances with an instructor in each, first for a gentle drive around Deloraine, then out on dirt roads whose quality gradually deteriorated culminating in a horror stretch: two kilometres of slush, potholes and rocks. We each had a turn driving. All went well. Everyone learned. Experience was gained. Would-be hoons were chastened. And no vehicle was damaged. I can’t say we were waist deep in the big muddy; but we were almost axle deep in it. What we were doing was not, by any stretch of the imagination, ecodriving. But in a perverse way it was fun.