Photos from Hornby Island / Bob Cain

Backhoe maze

It came back in good running order. However, it’s age was showing. The brakes were going and the bearings were getting mighty loose. It was as if being in the hands of those incompetent mechanics had broken it’s spirit. The business, too, had taken a terrible hit and, after a few more jobs Ted decided to get out of the backhoe business. He offered the machine to me at a good price but I told him that if he was getting out of the business, so was I. The machine went to Walter Schmidt on Denman.

I wasn’t out of the Backhoe world quite yet…

The Backhoe was having serious problems, so that winter we hired a mechanic and his two sons to come up to Hornby, stay at Ted’s summer place and fix the thing. They spent a month taking the whole damn thing apart then persuaded us that we needed to send the machine to the mechanics place in Victoria.

I was very reluctant to do this as I had lost trust in this set of bunglers. No choice though, so the beast was loaded on a truck and we waved goodbye. A month later Ted and I decided to go down and see the progress. NO PROGRESS! We told the mechanic we were taking it back.

The day we brought the truck to take it to the Case Dealer the mechanic chose not to be home. The Case guys told us they knew about this incompetent a**hole and commiserated with us and our troubles. A complete waste of time and money.

Backhoe Slave

Pushing a tree

Re-building Seabreeze-Bishop and Moyles

Re-building the Thatch-that’s too-tall in the ditch

Ernie Toll

I put boats in the water, I pulled boats from the water. Can’t remember whose beautiful boat this was. Oops looks like a need a new camera from Goodwill.