Wednesday, October 15, 2008

That's so Aussie I

Just watched a programme on TV about Emergency hospital cases. It's a real-life, fly-on-the-wall show.

In the wrap up they told how everyone was going. The second last one was about the truck driver, driving a B-Double, which crashed. He was in an induced coma for six days with fractured ribs and a badly broken collar bone. He's decided that he's finished with truck driving. They showed him looking through photographs of the accident scene. His truck rode up an embankment and rolled. Beer kegs everywhere.

It was reported that of the 200 odd beer kegs, 60-odd were missing.

I laughed.

That's so Aussie.

8 comments:

Boy on a bike said...

When I was a kid, I used to stay with my Uncle and Auntie on their "farm". On one edge of the farm was a rail shunting yard, and nearby was a Coke bottling plant.

One day, a shunter got a bit too keen and smashed up 4 wagons of soft drink. We heard the smash from half a mile away. We took the ute down to the yard, and loaded up with as much unbroken softdrink as it would carry (the bottler couldn't sell it once it in that condition).

So did everyone else.

When the front end loader finally arrived to clean up the mess, you could have done the cleanup with a shovel.

kae said...

You know, nothing useful ever fell of the back of a truck* anywhere near me...

(Note to Non-Aussies... when someone in Aus tells you something "fell of the back of a truck" it usually means it is hot, ah, was, er, aqcuired illegally. Though it can also mean that something was very cheap.
Or that something really did fall of the back of a truck... trap for the unwary!)

Anonymous said...

I predict quite a lot of that missing 60 will never be consumed.

kae said...

Hi SATP.
Is that becuase spearing a keg is a skill and you need other equipment as well as the keg to make it work? (Else you just get cold, flat unappetising beer.)

Just asking, thanks in anticipation.

*Do you still "spear a keg"?

Anonymous said...

Some mates once arrived at my place with a "hot" keg.

Since we lacked a spear and cold plate etc, we simply hired a second keg, along with spear and cold plate (and ice) and drank the two in one go.

Improvise! Adapt! Overcome!

kae said...

LOL Anonymous. (Anonymous who? I won't dob, promise....)

The hot keg fell of the back of a truck, huh?

So, there were two kegs for the price of one.

Don't tell SATP, but.

Minicapt said...

In one of Suvorov's Soviet Army stories, a motorcycle is consumed by fire on exercise. By the time the accident report reaches the General's desk, the fire has accounted for almost all lost kit in the Division, including two other vehicles.

We had a vehicle accident on exercise once, and before the meatheads arrived to investigate, four or five QuarterMaster were surveying the wreck for kit to be 'recycled'.

Cheers
JMH

Anonymous said...

20 odd years ago spearing was replaced with tapping.
Correct bayonet tap fittings will be required to get beer out.
The easiest (probably the only) way to get one's hands on these fittings is (as mentioned above) by hiring another keg.
Cutting open a stainless steel keg isn't as easy as it first seems.
A good option: Sell to a pub (for cash or kind)

Usually the kegs turn up one by one over several years, dumped, abandoned, found in vacated rental properties, etc.