Word: watsons
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Rhino Buggies, the firm Watson runs with his son and three staff, makes cars that out-hum the Hummer. They can drive over boulders as big as a Barina and through water that would flood a Falcon. The $58,000 Blizzard has a Nissan Patrol chassis, engine and gearbox, but nothing else about it is ordinary. It's Mad Max in a suit: stylish, smooth riding, thanks to adjustable shock absorbers, but tough enough for anything, from the Outback to the Apocalypse. That's too tough for Australian transport authorities. "They say it's too intimidating for on-road...
...first vehicles Watson made were happily off-road as well as off-beat: kooky-looking buggies called Stalkers, for which he sold DIY kits as far afield as Poland. As demand grew, so did Rhino Buggies' ambitions. "Clients wanted something they could have fun with in the bush but also drive to the office," says Watson, sitting in an office littered with toy plastic rhinos and model LandRovers and Jeeps. So he and his mates came up with the (road approved) Hammer, a Hummer replica on a Nissan chassis. Then, one day, they sat down with paper, pen and ruler...
...Indonesian Army had asked Rhino Buggies to make a military version of the Blizzard (it wants to buy 100): "They liked the fact that they're really easy to work on and parts are easy to come by," says Watson. Some Australian ex-soldiers saw the prototype and, he recalls, said, "'Can you build us a panic truck?' 'What's that?' 'You know, if anything goes down, you can panic, get in it and go.'" So into a camouflage-painted Blizzard went a GPS navigation system, two-way radio, radar, spaces for food, water, fuel and a nuclear-biological-chemical...
...Darnum's small congregations don't bother lay preacher John Watson, 73, who addresses tinier ones in neighboring towns and isn't one to agonize about making his sermons electrifying. "I'm what I'd call an expository preacher," says Watson, who came to Australia 54 years ago from Northern Ireland. He demands of himself only that he be prepared for each service: "if you don't prepare," he says, quoting Protestant preacher Ian Paisley, "soon you'll be preaching to Mrs. Wood and Timothy Timber...
...Watson nods vigorously, and he and Ruby begin chatting. The eldest of seven boys, Watson says his father lived to 97 and his mother's still kicking at 94: "So I've got good genes." Ruby, the youngest of seven, counters that she had a brother who lived to 101 and "only one of us died under 90," though she's the only one left. "You're lucky," she tells Watson. "You'll have your brothers your whole life. I miss my [siblings]. There are so many things I want to talk to them about...