Ute Stripping in Tasmania

"I have news," announced my Tasmanian correspondent breathlessly.

"Oh good," I said vaguely looking around desperately to see where the voice was coming from.  It was true that my tech support had enabled internet connectivity on a wide variety of devices in my home but they hadn't bothered to tell me what they were.  I cooked some toast the other day and accidentally irradiated parts of Greenland.  It wasn't very good toast either.

Eventually I found my correspondent's features peering out of a small screen that had been inserted into my electric toothbrush.  I mustered up what I hoped could pass as a look of interest.

"What's your news?" I asked.

"I was contacted by the police the other day."

I nodded understandingly, it really was only a matter of time.

"Do you need me to post bail?"

"They weren't arresting me you idiot.  If they ever did that I'd rat you out so fast your head would spin.  No they found my father's ute."

"Was it missing?"

"It was stolen a bit ago.  The police spotted it from a helicopter."

"They certainly pull out all the stops for car theft in Tasmania."

My correspondent informed me that the police hadn't actually been looking for her father's car.  They had been doing something else entirely when they looked out of the window of the helicopter and saw a whole bunch of cars in a chunk of bushland not overly serviced by roads.  As to what they were actually doing the police kept a discreet silence.  However possessing a "two birds, one stone" philosophy they sent an officer to look over the cars and in due course invited my correspondent out to the scene of, well not the crime exactly but the crime's aftermath.

Apparently what the car thieves had been doing is taking the cars out to this spot in the bush which involved driving up a rather steep escarpment.  They stripped the top side of the car and then, utilising the steep angle, tipped the thing onto its roof so they could strip the underside.  They were apparently only partway through the ute belonging to my correspondent's father and as the only person under eighty in her family who could drive a manual she was invited to come out and collect it.

There was no mention of arrests or suspects, basically what the police had was a bunch of cars that were now cluttering up a portion of Tasmania's otherwise pristine bush.  Contacting relatives of the owner was as much a responsibility shifting tactic as a service to the community.  Given that getting to this particular piece of bush involved driving through a rather dodgy section of inhabited Tasmania (and likely the home of the car thieves in question) my correspondent grabbed the fittest ex soldier she could find at short notice and set out on a vehicle retrieval mission.

I must admit I was excited to hear what happened next.  In my minds eye I envisioned something like a cross between a bush rally and a scene from Mad Max as my correspondent drove maniacally through the wilderness while her soldier companion manned a machine gun hastily welded to the roof of the ute to drive of ravening gangs of car thieves.  The reality was a sad anticlimax but having got this far I can't really finish the blog entry without telling you about it.

My correspondent turned up on the scene waving a set of keys to be informed by the police that the ute had been partially stripped but she was free to take what was left home.  Or to put it another way the police were inviting her to drive a partially dismantled car along a rough bush track down a steep escarpment where the slightest mistake (or mechanical failure) would likely lead to a messy death.  She politely declined.  The police seemed a little disappointed.

However the disappointment of the police was as nothing to the disappointment of me.

"Do you mean to tell me you bottled out of driving the ute back?" I demanded in outrage.  "Think what a blog entry that would have made.  As it is I've got to make do with this rubbish."

My correspondent indicated that my gruesome murder would make a suitably exciting blog entry and that furthermore she would be happy to write it herself.  I told her I'd get back to her.