Waiting by the Roadside

By Des Dugan

All good things come to an end, especially when it comes to services past and present.

From midnight Thursday, after 81 years, Murrurundi’s roadside assistance will be no more. Why?

Because Ashwood’s garage will no longer have the roadside services contract.

With neither phone call nor telegram Ashleigh is wondering why he should be so lucky?

No more midnight call-outs. Ashleigh can almost have a private life and his wife Robin can have a partner to accompany her on social occasions.

You see, the NRMA has been re-organised into two groups: insurance and services.

Roadside assistance came to Murrurundi in 1937 under the guise of the Automobile Association when the garage was run by Campbells, the once big retail chain.

In those days cars and trucks were few and far between, out here the horse and Shanks’s pony was still a major means of transport.

What’s changed? Well, between now and then the motor industry has boomed, computers do most of the driving and the result is the biggest part of the “assist” bit has become “blond” reaction when a tyre’s only flat at the bottom, the starter yields a deathly silence or the empty gauge bounces off the side of the instrument panel.

The result is the fun’s gone out of it.

There was the time when Ashleigh had to break into an aged person’s house so she could get the car keys.

Many is the time he has had to go on to a property and jump start a car so mum could take the kids to school.

Buy ’em a skateboard.

However, today the roadside assist almost always relies on either a tow or a piggyback to the nearest service centre.

Crawling under the car roadside is a no-no; health and safety put paid to that.

Mind you, everything is run by noughts and ones these days, computers and repair work is often as simple as pulling one board out and putting another in, to us neanderthals the engine bay is now just a metal ocean.

Midnight or midday, Ashleigh Allison-Wood for the last 26 years since buying the business, has been the smiling face helping mothers find car keys, restarting dead batteries and changing tyres.

Due to NRMA wishing to amalgamate the areas a different service provider will handle the road assistance cases.

Although undecided at this stage, the roadside assistance could be coming from a far afield as Quirindi, Wallabadah or Scone.

Get ready for the long wait as the new centre balances its workbooks embracing a larger area of coverage.

“We still have our other NRMA services and we still offer assistance to customers renewing their coverage and insurance; it’s just that we no longer will be assisting on the side of the road,” Ashleigh said.

The end of the month, on Thursday, is Ashleigh’s last callout.

And so another service goes the way of the butcher, the baker and of course, the candlestick maker.