Ode to the Beaut Ute.

After a small, whingy digression yesterday, I am back with renewed vigour.

When I first met my man eleven plus years ago, he had a ratty little Toyota twin cab ute which he loved with a passion. He had a bunch of little kids and was building his new house, so it was used for carting all sorts of gear.

He was keen on impressing me (then!), and decided to wash the grubby little thing to take me out for a night on the town. "Hell On the Hill' was in its infancy then, and there were no solid fences around the house.

He left it parked out the front and went inside to get a bucket of warm water. Coming back out again, he was horrified to discover said ute rocking off down the hill with no one in control. Our hills are not to be taken lightly, and she crashed through a rough wire fence half way down, across a disused road, and took off the bank with gay abandon. A second scruffy old wire fence hooked at her and she came to a panting halt hanging precariously over the bank.

My man had rushed out and leaped at the door, managing to get halfway in, but had no hope of pulling his carefree little girl from her chosen path.

If that wasn't bad enough, his brand new oven was sitting on the back, and took a nasty tumble.

He rang me, panting with the drama, saying, "I've had a major!". Not knowing him well enough to understand this often used phrase of his, I said, "A what?"

Now I know what 'a major' is!

The ute was a write-off, and the oven went to be panel beaten and wires reconnected, and still stands in her slightly creased state in our kitchen today. It seems to not understand 'simmer', but I have now learned to appreciate her inadequacies.

So, there have since been many years of muttering about his need for a ute. The government department he works for has recently and unfairly begun to threaten his dogged determining to bring the work ute home, so we asked a local car broker to hunt one up for us.

That was six months ago, and we had pretty much given up hope, until two days ago when our man rang saying he had found what we wanted.

Woo hoo!

It came up to visit last night for us to test drive over the weekend, and my fella was quite impressed. "So, come on!", I said after dinner, "Lets go out for a drive."

Well, he got into that ute and we screamed off round the windies for an eleven kilometre white knuckler. It was like he had driven it for ever (probably in his dreams). We passed many peaceful wallabies out for their dusktime graze on the side of the road, watching them leaping into the bush in fright. "Big cat!" he smirked, recalling the times he had to deal with delusional spotters of lions and leopards supposedly at loose in the Aussie bush.

My stomach was starting to swirl as the oncoming dark lost my contact with the horizon, but we made it home in one piece.

I think he likes it! It's not a big important sort of ute; not the kind you would take to a ute muster, but it will cart wood and feed, and earn its keep.