By David Waterworth
The Australian male defines himself as self reliant — think Crocodile Dundee — and competent around machinery, particularly cars — think Mad Max.
Back in the eighties, I drove a Ford Fairmont, T bar automatic with a 4.1 L engine. I was teaching in the tiny country town over 700 km from the coast in the state of Queensland, Australia. Each school holiday, my family and I would leave the town and drive back to Brisbane to stay with relatives. It was quite the race, as the teachers all left and raced each other down the long straight road.
As groceries were expensive in the small town shop, I would fill a trailer with nonperishables (wheatbix, lemonade, peanut butter, etc.) and tow this back with me in time for school to start.
One evening, on the stretch between Roma and Charleville, a 270 k one-lane tarred road populated by oil tankers and kangaroos, the left-hand wheel came off the trailer. The hub dug into the road and bounced the car, which sent the engine fan through the radiator. You see, the engine was on rubber mounts.
As it was too dark to do anything, my wife, two small children, and I slept in the car. Dawn came early, I unpacked the boot, found my tools, and removed the radiator. My keen-eyed wife found the tyre in the bush and we took two nuts from one side of the trailer and put the wheel back on.
I then flagged down an oil tanker (B double) and travelled with a friendly and helpful truckie back into Roma, put the radiator in for repair, searched for empty plastic bottles. Middle of the afternoon, with a recored radiator and plenty of water, I found a ride back to the car and completed the repairs. We travelled slowly into Charleville and arrived safe and sound.
The point is: I don’t think I could do the necessary repairs with my Tesla. Does it make me less of a man?
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Source: https://cleantechnica.com/2021/07/14/are-evs-an-affront-on-the-self-reliant-male-identity/
