"God said 'Eddie, you've got plenty of engine oil, use a bit of that. Who cares if it roars a bit," Edward Furtak told reporters in Forrest, a township on the edge of the Nullarbor Plain some 130 kilometres north of Eucla. When the tyre blew, the born-again Christian and courier-company driver again invoked help from Heaven. "I'd said 'God, give us the strength to lift this thing up,' because it was really, really heavy, and I did it," the 43-year-old told Australia's AAP news agency.
Furtak set out six months ago in his red six-wheeled vehicle to seek spiritual enlightenment, give up a serious smoking habit and have the holiday of a lifetime. After his family had given him up for dead, he re-emerged from the mighty Nullarbor earlier this week to ring his mother and apologise for sparking an extensive search over a desert the size of Germany.
Furtak, who lives with his parents in a Sydney suburb, was a novice bushranger whose survival skills were sorely tested. "I'm a city boy, never been in the country, never put up a tent, never boiled a billy," he said. Furtak ventured forth without any mechanical training and refused to carry along a satellite phone because he didn't want his odyssey interrupted by calls.
