You can't park there, mate! Ute faceplants into South Coast creek after common park brake mistake

Croakers Towing Service, a family-run business based in Batemans Bay, prides itself on “challenging and high-stakes” recoveries.

So it’s a good thing they were called to a remote location along Morts Folly Road, near Narooma, when the driver of a white single-cab Mitsubishi Triton ute, with trailer in tow, had stopped near a bridge along the road and exited the car to look at the surrounding bushland.

He’d pulled the handbrake lever on, but clearly not far enough because the ute rolled down the short hill and into the creek, face first. The trailer was left clinging to the bank by its tailgate.

“It’s quite rare to have a vehicle land directly on its ‘nose’ like that and to actually balance in place,” Croakers Towing Service operations manager Jayden Croaker says.

“They normally would roll over immediately after landing in that position.”

Getting it back on the road was a process that “had to be taken slowly” by the tow truck’s two drivers.

“The terrain alone was steep, unstable under foot and littered with thorns,” he adds.

And because the car wasn’t insured, the stakes were high.

“For that recovery to go wrong literally results in the loss of the customer’s car, and with the ever-growing cost-of-living expenses to have to replace a car, some people purely cannot afford it,” Jayden says.

The drivers initially hooked up the winch to the trailer before realising the car was likely to tip over the moment the weight was off it, so they ended up repositioning the truck so they could attach lines directly to the back of the ute, too.

“With very slow winch movements, we were able to pull the trailer and car simultaneously back to all four wheels,” Jayden says.

“From there, it became a simple winch out back onto the road.”

The very relieved driver was able to drive away in his surprisingly intact ute.

Croakers Towing Service was founded in 1948 by Jayden’s great grandfather Rupert Croaker, and today, it takes calls for help from all over the Eurobodalla region and across to Braidwood.

He says there have been plenty of seemingly impossible jobs over the years, including one where they had to pull a 23-tonne asphalt paving machine out of a bog.

“We really do pride ourselves on those jobs where people think a crane might be the only option, but those types of things come with huge cost to the insurance company or the individual if not insured.”

Ending up in the creek might not be such an issue in a modern car with an electronic park brake, which normally applies automatically when you shift to Park.

But the ute serves as a useful reminder to always double check your park brake is on before leaving your car, no matter how brief the bushwalk.