THE LESSONS

I ASKED Jo what the lessons were.

He replied: “I’d had a good look under the vehicle a couple of days before, as a general inspection of everything, but annoyingly not that time when we were clearing spinifex from the radiator; it was a bad oversight! I was a little complacent as I was now in a diesel!

“I did things like the Gunbarrel and the Canning in a petrol 1998 Prado and was much more vigilant. We had just passed the burnt-out FJ Cruiser, which I commented was petrol and then the old Land Rover, which suddenly freaked us out as my daughter pointed out that it was probably a diesel.

“I had our Prado programmed previously to show when it was doing a burn of the DPF. It had started one prior to the fire but I couldn’t tell you if it was an hour or 20 minutes. We timed a couple of the burns on this trip at 25 minutes!

“Interestingly, our replacement vehicle is a 2021 VX Prado and the DPF handbook says, in red, not to drive on long grass while it’s doing a burn, and comes with a manual button so you can do one on safe ground.”

When asked if there was anything he would change or carry next, Jo answered: “Absolutely. A 4kg extinguisher instead of a 1kg unit. A grab bag; we lost a lot of small expensive things, like cash.

“I’m also trying to think of a way to make a deluge/soaker extinguisher for just this purpose. Maybe a 20-litre jerry can-size with a battery and suitable pump, big hole so you can fill it as it’s operating and a long enough wand/ sprinkler head to poke it under your vehicle through the brush/spinifex ...”

There are a few good ideas there!

This was the first victim of a spinifex fire we came across this year, just south of Lake Cohen on the Gary Highway. It wasn’t there in June 2021.

The bigger the better – the smallest, most common ones are essentially useless!