All’s well that ends well – that’s what I always say. I started this trip with a can-do attitude, which is well enough by my standards, and that’s how I plan on ending it. This approach has gotten me out of numerous sticky situations in my time, and it’s the reason I’m not currently sobbing into an empty box of mangoes on the side of a Queensland road.

 

Once I’d come to terms with the fact that no kindly passer-by was going to stop and help me of their own accord, I set about constructing a trap of sorts, which would force a passer-by (kindly or otherwise) to pull over. To do this, I gathered a bunch of spiky plants from around the way – some kind of menacing thistle that clearly doesn’t belong here – and tied them around my tyre iron.

 

I placed this on the road, strategically covering it with some roadside dust to make it less obvious. Then, I waited, continuing to munch through my box of mangoes and flipping through an old diesel tuning catalogue I found in the glove box. Darren must have left it there while he was going through that 4×4 phase.

 

Finally, some fool drove over the trap, punctured a tyre, and went skittering over the road, coming to rest just in front of my parked car. Phew! I’d been worried, for a fleeting moment, that it might go worse than that. After I’d convinced the driver that the very same thing had happened to me, he agreed to call for help on his phone.

 

What choice did he have? The guy needed a tyre service. Near Toowoomba, it turned out, there was an auto shop willing to send someone out to us, but only because it was a double job. My plan had worked!

 

I realise this plan of attack sounds a bit questionable, now that I see it all written out like this. What would you have had me do, though? My phone was out of batteries, my car wouldn’t start, and not a soul showing up to help. I just did what I had to do.