Borthwick - May he rest in peace... Part 6 (conclusion)

After church and lunch and fellowship and what not we were still trying to figure how we could get back to Darwin.


It's not like we had money. 


But thanks to some friends in Darwin who bought us Greyhound tickets we suddenly had a way back. 


We stayed the night in Katherine with a family, watched kids bull riding (yeah, really!) and then slept on the floor, on couches, in beds... Until the next morning when we woke up to rain. 



Now rain in the tropics is not just rain. Usually it's a lot of rain. 
But it's also not the random event like we have it here in Las Vegas now. At that time we were in the middle of the wet season and rain was to be expected. 
But this was A LOT of rain. So even driving from the house (outside of Katherine) to the bus station (Centre of Katherine) took several trips and quite a while because streets had started to flood. 


When we got to the bus station we found out that our bus was cancelled. The road out of Katherine was flooded. 
Panic set in, as we had tickets to fly to Indonesia in 2 days. We HAD to get out. Fast. 


There was a bus. There was a driver. But the road was flooded and we couldn't get out. 


We huddled together as a team and did the only thing we knew how to do... We prayed... 


10 minutes later the driver came up to us, told us to put our luggage in the bus (where the seats are, not underneath, because of the flooding) and told us to get in. Shortly after the bus started moving and we started towards Darwin. 


The driver kept on saying that the road was still considered closed but that he was gonna try to get through. Since us and our luggage were the only ones on the bus we all claimed 2 seats and started praying like crazy. 


It was still raining and there were parts of streets that you couldn't see anymore. Flooded with brown water, half the area on the way out of town was already not visible anymore. 


But we made it out. 


Now that doesn't seem like a big deal. But it was.... 


Turns out this storm and the rain was the worst in decades.
We were on the last bus/vehicle that left town for the next 10 days. The whole town flooded. As in REALLY flooded. Water up to the roof, people hanging out on top of the roof, getting picked up by helicopters - in short: Water everywhere. 




Now why is that story so amazing?

* Well, we made our flight to Indonesia and saw hundreds of people come to Christ.* We wouldn't have made that IF we would have had our own vehicle (Borthwick), as he wasn't high enough to pass through the flood waters, like the greyhound bus was able to. 

So Borthwick died so that we could go on outreach... 
Rather like Jesus died so that we can have life. 


Basically the same thing. :)

Borthwick - May he rest in peace... Part 5

Half the town seemed to show up to our departure. First of all we had to choose any extras we were gonna take. Everything else was gonna be left in this small town (together with Borthwick - may he rest in peace).
Then came the packing. At first we all helped, but then we placed people into the car and loaded them up with stuff. Added another person and loaded them up, until we were all in the car with all luggage and camping equipment. It's good to have played tetris a lot.


That trip I hardly remember. We all slept a lot and finally got to Katherine. You'd think that would be the end of the story. But it's really not. There's more. And there was a reason for Borthwick's death!


In Katherine we were able to shower, eat and sleep and then go to church the next morning. Katherine is about 300 kilometers south of Darwin and we kind of had to be back in Darwin soon, since we had tickets to fly to Indonesia in a couple days.


So while we are prepping for church we are also trying to figure out how the heck we can make it back to Darwin with no money and no van.


When we got to church we were surprised to find some YWAM Darwin staff that had taken a weekend to hang in Katherine. We told them our story AND were able to pile our camping gear in their car. That way we were travelling a lot lighter.


To read the conclusion of 'Borthwick - may he rest in peace', check back April 2! :)

Borthwick - May he rest in peace... Part 4

We rode back into town and delivered Borthwick to the mechanic. He promptly pronounced him dead. The whole floor underneath the driver's seat and steering column had disappeared. Apparently Borthwick had a bit of a rust problem, so when we collided with the cow we left half the van in rust on the street.


The time in this town was interesting. The bad thing: no rental car company at all. The good thing: everybody knows everybody. So the cousin called his wife, who knew a friend who had a van and nothing to do that day. So he said he would take us the several hundred kilometer trip to Katherine.


You see, we kind of were scheduled to appear in church that day. Since that wasn't gonna happen, we cancelled that day's performance and said we'd definitely be there the next day in the morning. (This is generally known as a faith statement)


Couple things you might not have considered:

• We didn't really have much money
• Most of that non existent money went to the tow truck and our new van driver (who also had to drive several hundred kilometers back)
• Borthwick was dead and not really our car. It belonged to the YWAM base, which meant several phone calls with them just to sort that thing out right. Not like we wanted to come back to this town.
• We were 8 people with one piece of luggage each, plus guitar, plus camping gear for 8, plus food. I think the van we were taking to Katherine was maybe a 12 seater without a roof rack???

To read about the next part of the 'Borthwick - may he rest in peace' adventure check back tomorrow.

Borthwick - May he rest in peace... Part 3

The first road train pulled Borthwick off the road. By then we had a closer look at what had happened. The horn of the cow had popped out the radio from behind and deposited it on the front seat. The front seat was EXACTLY the size of Lisa now. No wiggle room. If it'd been me, I would have been crushed a bit. All she got was a scratch. And you also couldn't move Borthwick anymore. You know, without the help of a road train.


The second road train that came by was going the right way. I'd also like to mention that this was in 1998. Cell phones were rare and well, we were in the middle of nowhere anyway. the next town was 70 kilometers away. Oh and road trains are not allowed to take passengers. So for all intents and purposes, we seemed pretty stuck.


But the second road train driver helped us out. He took Lisa on and drove her to the next town. (Looking back, maybe that was a bit scary, but at least we didn't send a student!)


I stayed back with the students, Borthwick and maybe 4 liters of water in the dessert with no way of knowing when she'd be back.


But she came back. With a towing truck. Let me tell you what she told us what happened. So they got to the town (still pretty early in the morning). They found someone who was awake, who then found the mayor/town leader, who's cousin owned the towing company and woke all these people up. And then she came back with the tow truck... Sounds easy? Well, maybe you should ask her for her side of the story!


We were just hanging out in our broken van, trying not to die. (Obviously we survived!)

The tow truck got Borthwick on the flatbed and then there was the question on how to get all of us back as well... Only one or two people would be allowed to ride up front in the tow truck... But the tow truck driver made another exception from something completely illegal and let us all ride INSIDE Borthwick on the back of the truck. One of those rides you wish you had photos of.




To read part 4 of 'Borthwick - May he rest in peace' come back tomorrow. 

Borthwick - may he rest in peace... Part 2

So you see... Borthwick was important. And we were on our way back up to Darwin to catch our plane to Indonesia. We stopped on the way to overnight at Devil's marbles. It's this really amazing rock formation in the middle of nowhere.
We fought the BILLIONS of flies that night, slept on picnic benches and then started driving again at around 4ish in the morning.
Remember? Borthwick had trouble with the whole overheating thing and we were trying to give it a break from driving in the dessert heat during the day.


The plan seemed to work. Although it's hard to tell because about half an hour into the trip the accident happened.
Lisa was driving along Stuart Highway, we are still in the middle of nowhere and it's freaking dark outside. So.... We kind of hit a cow!

Yes, that's right. We hit a cow. She just never had a chance. (the cow AND Lisa). There was a big bang, we all scrambled all over the place and one of our students ended up with liquid something all over her (Borthwich wasn't airconditioned, so the windows were open)
At first she was shrieking because we thought it was blood. Turns out it was poop... Not sure what's worse...

We didn't see a sign like this!

We all got out with torches (flashlights) and some tried to find chase away the cow. Some of us tried to move Borthwick off the road. It was kind of in the middle of a dark highway. No biggie....


Well, we didn't find the cow or were able to move Borthwick. So we tried to light it up as well as we could and then stationed people up and down the road to warn any cars or ROAD TRAINS (those are scary and huge) about Borthwick in the middle of the road.


To read part 3 of 'Borthwick - may he rest in peace' come back tomorrow.

Borthwick - May he rest in peace... Part 1

Ok, no need to be sad or anything. Borthwick was a van. An Australian van that was totaled in an unfortunate incident with a cow.
I thought it was time to tell the story...


Once upon a time sometime back in the nineties when I was on staff with Youth With A Mission Darwin, we were crossing Australia in our trusty old van 'Borthwick'. (The photo has the same model, but ours didn't look that nice)


The name Borthwick was a name I had heard from one of my friends (Donka, to be precise. remember, this is in Australia). We baptised him with cordial (it's like kool-aid) which made his rear view mirror sticky (which we didn't clean forever).


'Trusty' is also a very generous word to describe Borthwick. I learned early on that if visiting friends I was never to leave last. That way there were always gonna be enough people left to help push-start Borthwick. We even tried in reverse once. (This is also the reason why I'm a CHAMP at letting the clutch come slowly)


So Borthwick had it's problems and already during the trip down (from Darwin to Adelaide) - a mere 3,000+ kilometers - Borthwick tended to be temperamental. Since we were a Discipleship Training School with YWAM and on outreach, that just meant we had lots of opportunities to pray for the van. LOTS of opportunities.


To go up the hills in Adelaide we had to stop and take a break before we'd attempt it. Just so that Borthwick wouldn't overheat.


The overheating was a real problem.


But we also had other problems. Running out of gas was a regular problem as well, but we always filled the billy can and were good on that. And so we usually took those stops to make sure everything else was secure.
One of our guys would climb up on the roof and check all the ropes. The leader of the school, Lisa, and me would make sure that Borthwick was doing ok and getting petrol back into it.
And then we'd all climb back into the van and get going again.


Except one time.


Somehow we didn't quite count and had forgotten Bill on the roof. Luckily his wife remembered that he was missing and stopped us from going so that he could climb back down and into Borthwick.
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For part 2 of 'Borthwick - May he rest in peace' come back tomorrow.