A look back at Kangaroo Island
A bald tyre, a broken tail-light or a few slashes of rust on the bodywork and the defects man is there to slap a notice on the windshield, a defects notice which dictates the vehicle must be taken off the road immediately and kept off it until... The defects man is the hapless South Australian policeman rostered at random to make the half-hour flight from Adelaide to spend a few days checking island vehicles for mechanical defects. Traditionally, the islanders used their CB grapevine for a few days to track the defects man and travelled the back roads to avoid him. If there's one thing everybody fears on Kangaroo Island it's the annual visit by the defects man. On Kangaroo Island almost nobody has a vehicle without some kind of defect. The salt air and the rough island roads are very hard on cars. That's why everybody ducks for cover when they know the defects man is around. One truckie had four trucks from his fleet of five in for repairs while farmers waited angrily for their wool to be hauled to the island's freight terminal in Kingscote for shipment to the mainland. But this time he stayed for six weeks, and when he left hardly anything with wheels and an engine on the island's 1600 kilometres of roads had escaped his attention.
Australian Geographic on 16.06.10 | File Under Garden Tools | Comments
