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I didn't do much today, I just had to take the wheels off some siphon pipe trailers that had shredded tyres from being towed deflated. It was too wet to use the 2 wheel drive ute so the boss gave me the 4WD Hilux to drive.

As you can see it is fairly muddy around here at the moment. I wish I could afford a later model 4WD Hilux, this one is better than my old thing.

I'm planning to go for a drive tomorrow to visit a friend, I have the weekend off so I thought I would stay overnight and return on Sunday.

Edit: Saturday 10:25am,

I've changed my mind, i will stay home and save some money. the trip would have cost me too much in fuel and I need to keep paying off my credit card.

I finished work early today because it was raining and getting too boggy to do anything.

But this gave me the opportunity to install the driveshaft onto the Hilux. I was going to take it for a spin to test the driveshaft, but decided that maybe i would look foolish if I had to ask for a tow. We have had quite a bit of rain today and some area's were still doughy from last week ends rain before todays soaking. Even 4WD's get bogged in this black soil country after so much rain. So I will wait until the week end, maybe go for a drive to Wee Waa(the back way), I have a friend who lives there.

I should be doing my tax return but I can't remember if one of the job's I had last year run into the 2007/2008 financial year as I haven't received a group certificate from them yet. All my tax records are in my caravan which is at my brothers place in Tasmania.

I still don't know what to do with my caravan, it needs some repairs and it cost's me a lot of money in petrol to tow it around, but I don't want to leave it at my brothers place forever.

I still have my Kawasaki there also, I should get it registered because I could save money on fuel by riding it instead of the Hilux, I miss going for a ride sometimes.

Well today went very good, I managed to get the cone washers out(see previous post) and tightened the wheel bearing. I did a search for 'cone washers' on Yahoo and found an article about rebuilding a Toyota front axil, http://www.4crawler.com/4x4/CheapTricks/AxleRebuild.shtml#ConeWasherRemoval  

the internet can be very helpful (& search engines).

Then the spares place rang to tell me the new uni's were in, so I went to town and picked them up as well as a vice and some other tools.

When I got home I went straight to work on the driveshaft (after drilling holes and mounting the new vice on the back of the Hilux). It all went together fairly smooth, with the help of a G clamp.

So tonight I'm a happy chappy, having completed 2 jobs I have been trying to complete for day's and weeks.

The only other problem I have with the Hilux is a minor oil leak, but I will have to degrease the motor so I can determine where the oil leak is coming from.

It rained here yesterday

and so I have today off work.

I started doing something on the Hilux on Saturday but got stuck on some frozen cone washers that I could not remove. I need to regrease and tighten the wheel bearings, but because it is a 4WD I have to dismantle some of the bits to get to the bearings. I will have another go at it today, I sprayed some WD-40 on the cone washers and maybe they will free up.

I still haven't fixed the front drive shaft uni's yet, they sold me the wrong uni's and so I had to order some more. They should arrive today, but I need to get the bearings regreased and tightened so I can drive to town to pick the new uni's up.

When I first became homeless I was devastated, I didn't know what to do.

I had been living in a shared house (all drug users, me too)that became overcrowded with people, sleeping on the floor or where ever. We got behind in the rent and were evicted, I had nowhere to go, Mum& Dad lived interstate and it was about time I stopped relying on them(I was 39 years old).

Luckily I had a car, and so I started sleeping in it and I would just eat take away. After a few weeks I started to buy a few camping things (Dome tent, gas cooker ect) and started to actually enjoy my new found life. I would camp in different spots and I owned everything except the ground that I parked on.

But I had a few problems like where to shower and wash my cloths, I found that a local council playing field had hot showers in the change rooms which I would sneak into at night (climbing through a small vent near the ceiling) and have a shower. I would use a friends washing machine or sometimes use a Laundromat.

But it was hard to get work and to keep a job living like that, and I found it hard to get into rental accommodation because of a bad renting record. It's not good to stay on the dole too long so I started travelling into country area's to do seasonal work, staying in caravan parks and in on-farm accommodation. Eventually I got a caravan which made things a bit easier, although I found the fuel costs were prohibitive.

Now I have been doing this for 11 years, but still don't own much. My caravan is at my brothers place in another state and I just carry everything in my Hilux( with canopy). I've been working here on this farm since February and have work until March '09, then hopefully I will get some work on the Cotton harvest.

But I think that getting away from the coast was the best thing I could've done, I'm seeing a lot of this big country and I intend to see a lot more in coming years. I want to go further west.