Geekay

This photo show a Fruit Fly Roadblock on the border at Wodonga (where I live) of New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria. The border is defined by the Murray River. In Queensland (further north) there is a pesky fly that lays its eggs in fruit, particularly tomatoes, citrus etc. When the eggs "hatch" the maggots begin eating the flesh inside the fruit. Trust me when I say it is disgusting to cut into an apparently okay looking tomatoe to find it riddled with horrible little white maggots. In an attempt to prevent the spread of this pest from the northern state of Queensland to Victoria, the Victorian Government set up these road blocks on the main highways and no fruit of any type, no matter where it originally came from, was allowed in. Each car was stopped by the officers and asked if they had fruit to declare. If you said "No Officer" and you looked honest and maybe not the type to have fruit on board, then you were waived through. Or they may just decide to search the vehicle anyway, particularly if you were a family. If you said "yes officer" and handed over fruit, they may waive you through or decide to search your vehicle further anyway. It was quite common to see families parked there with everyone devouring fruit rather than hand it over, where is was just destroyed. Even if we brought some fruit with us when we left home to go on a day trip to NSW, and then return, we had to declare any uneaten fruit and hand it over. The theory was those sneaky Queensland Fruit Fly my have flown in through our car window and laid eggs in our previously pure Victorian fruit. Unfortunately those clever Queensland Fruit Fly spread further south into NSW and on reaching the Murray River at the border to Victoria, realised they could just keep flying and enter Victoria wherever they liked, thus making the road blocks somewhat useless. Now the fruit fly are a permanent menace here and the reason I stopped growing tomatoes. I do not know the make of any of the cars in the photo.

With my recently acquired 1956 Dodge Suburban van "army ambulance" came these lights. Because the Dodge is an ambulance the exhaust pipe has been diverted out the drivers side and the original rear bumper removed and replaced with just a sort of nudge bar on each side (see photo). The lights do not fit the contour of these nudge bars but would fit okay under it on the actual body panel. This allows closer access to the rear floor, for stretchers etc. There are wires for tail/brake lights/indicators to either side at the rear, just not connected. I do not know whether these light housing/lenses were on the ambulance at some stage or whether they are off a Dodge even. On the glass lenses they have "Directional DT 6 G" but nothing else to tell me what they came off.

If you look at the roof on the van you will notice what is supposed to be two slices of bread in a toaster. Ingeneous!

Ta, eyesight not good enough to read it.

The ambulance is mine. Being delivered soon. Even has the stretchers in the back if I feel a little "tired". That makes THREE. I was warned I would not stop at one.

The guy in oz I am buying the Dodge army ambulance from (see earlier post) has shared this photo of himself. Buttercup is a Bread company, who he worked for and sponsored them. He said " We had a 54/55 model which we drove in the Variety Bash in 90,91,92,93 taking it to Burnie, Darwin, Ularu and Bathurst. Considering it was prepared on a very tight budget, the vehicle did really well." The Variety Bash is a fund raiser for Variety a charity started in Pittsburg USA 1928, and in Australia 1975. It raises money for disadvantaged children.

What calibre was Harry?

What year is the 10 day sale?

Thanks for this very informative post and great to see that we can have different opinions, based on our personal experience, without being hammered, like so often happens on some social media.

Excellent work you guys. I could not have got as far as I have without your help (and Desoto Dav's). And I endorse the use of emoitcons..it is very easy for a message to be misconstrued even with the massive choice of words the English language has (and American too..LOL)..and sometimes we think we are just conversing with one person who perhaps understands our "nature" when in fact it will be probably read by thousands, even aussies. Have a great 2017 everyone and may your Dodges et al run smoothly.

This is for sale here in Oz AUD $10K.

Thanks Jeff. Another item on the to do list. Having said that I am happy to progress slowly and allow "things" to develop and fix/restore as necessary.