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| My Mother's Opinion of Our 1959 Road Trip Around Australia Don't Worry It's Not Loaded |
Decades can have the same golden hue. In 1959 on the cusp of two decades, one of post-war optimism and recovery, and the dawn of the fabulous and amazing 60's, I was seven years old. I was also at the cusp, passing from the age of magic thinking to that of full comprehension. It would mark the end of my spectacularly happy childhood as I moved on to the greater complexities entailed in just growing up, but my childhood went out on a high.
Dad took my mother and I on a road trip; a very long road trip. His family had just sold their national news magazine, The Bulletin, to Frank Packer of Australian Consolidated Press. At forty Dad found himself unemployed after years of being a journalist and caricaturist under his editor father. Prior to this he had served in New Guinea as a lieutenant in World War 2.
He needed thinking time, not that I was aware of it at the time. I did know that the family had lost its crown jewel and even I felt sad about it. What my mother felt she never said but it must have been a huge disappointment for her.
It was June when we set off in a 1959 FC Holden Station Wagon. It was a big, comfy car with a sun shade over the windscreen, quadrant windows that gave a fantastic breeze and bench seats front and back. It was a cream colour with tan contrast. There was no silly luggage guard separating the rear seat from the back.
The rear seat could be folded down to make a large area able to sleep two people. The car had no air-conditioning and basically we didn't need it except in one hellishly hot outback town when the temperature reached well over 42' C (105'F) in early winter. Nonetheless we survived nicely without it. I don't think cars had air-conditioning then anyway.
I was in the glorious mindset of total parental trust at that age and I must also have been born a nomad. I didn't question where we were going, I was just happy to go. What a lovely thing it is to have no expectations.
Dad and Mum shared the driving while I sat in the back seat, mostly, and looked at everything we passed. I am the perfect tourist. I just love watching the landscape change around me. Years later when I drove my son anywhere he wouldn't even look out the window. I don't think he would have enjoyed this six week tour.
We went clockwise from Sydney and so headed south. I don't remember too much of this part of the trip as I'd been this route before. I also have an anathema to heading south or anywhere that is colder. Mother dressed me remarkably well during the trip and she could have been a Vogue model on a travel shoot. as the photo below shows.
Mum, Myself and a local in the Outback
I have a thing for rocks. I took two little suitcases with me. They were no more than 30cm, or 1 foot, wide. I saved rocks that I found in one and shells in the other. Somewhere near Canberra, I think, was a hill covered with Mica. Its flaky, mirror like pieces fascinated me so I took a couple of pieces for my collection. The journey mustn't have impressed me much at his stage. I remember we drove through some snow in the Australian Alps and had to put chains on the tyres but nothing really impressed me until we reached Adelaide.I have no photos of the Twelve Apostles rock formations of the coast of Victoria from this journey although I saw them on a number of other occasions. Another family, the Browns, travelled along with us in their matching, but different coloured, Holden Station Wagon. They were made up of Gordon, a man the size of a mountain, his wife Molly, who was a severe diabetic, Prue their daughter, who was twelve, and Penny their Corgi dog.
Molly's illness meant the family sometimes had to go ahead of us to get to a pharmacy in a township for Insulin but she seemed to be fine throughout the trip.
Somewhere in the Snowy district Prue and I plunged into a cold stream. That much I remember.
Not Platypuses but Water Nymphs in the Snowy
We may have been smiling but, boy, was it cold. I know we reached Adelaide but only one thing there rings a bell. My parents stopped at the Penfold's winery. Had I been eighteen you couldn't have stopped me going inside with them for a tour given my love of wine. Instead I stayed outside on a lovely patch of grass that was covered with buttercups. I haven't seen those pretty yellow flowers for decades now. I wonder what has happened to them. Perhaps they are a victim of progress.
I also wonder if I woke fully from my early childhood on the journey and that it was the catalyst. After Adelaide I seemed to become totally immersed. My memories really start from this time. I also swear from the photos that I grew taller in those six weeks. From Adelaide the fun began and the terrain really caught my attention. I think it did for Dad too, for the earlier photos are sporadic, while the later ones were many.
The car was put on the Ghan, the famous train that runs between Adelaide and Alice Springs and, these days, to Darwin, but not then. I think we spent three days on board. I awoke one morning to find Dad already in the salon car. Above us on a slight hill a spectacular sunrise was unfolding. The hill was black against the sky and on it a lone windmill was silhouetted against a pink and orange sky. The sight took my breath away. Dad and I watched it together. That vision has never left my mind.
My parents made friends with an Italian film producer and his wife on the train. I seem to recall he looked like the film star of the fifties, Louis Jourdan. He was on board to make an advertisement about the Ghan. It was to be shown at cinemas leading up to movies.
This was real excitement. I helped him as we spent an entire morning sticky-taping yellow cellophane on the dining car windows to get the right light. I was even given a small role in the advertisement where, when eating with my parents, I had to say a line. I can't have been very good as the line kept getting shorter with every take. Finally I got to say "Chicken" just before I took a bite.
Later I was hoping to find out I made it into the advertisement. I never did know. Back in Sydney my parents and I would occasionally go to the Italians' place for dinner. Their dining table was amazing. It was glass and was suspended from the ceiling with piano wires that went through it to the floor. I've never again seen anything like it and this was 1959.
We disembarked at Alice Springs and had plenty to take in there. We walked through the Katherine Gorge and saw the town. Then we boarded a small plane that I think now must have been a twin engine Cessna. I know that on the hour and a half flight to Ayers Rock I had one terrific ear ache. I forgot about it on landing at the sight of that incredible monolith. We pretty much had the place to ourselves apart from the other passengers and the Rock's caretaker.
I don't believe you can walk on the Rock these days. Dad and I made some progress up along a handrail that guided us. There were a couple of people already there who had made it to the top. We were driven around the whole Rock and it is quite a distance. The day was dull but the colours were amazing.
I don't believe you can walk on the Rock these days. Dad and I made some progress up along a handrail that guided us. There were a couple of people already there who had made it to the top. We were driven around the whole Rock and it is quite a distance. The day was dull but the colours were amazing.
Uluru, once called Ayers Rock
No wonder we call the Outback "the Red Centre". I've never been to Ayers Rock again but I am so glad I've been once. Years later I flew over the centre of Australia going from Perth to Cairns. We flew directly over the Rock and my son, then eleven years old, had the chance to see it from the air. I find it amazing that in the centre of this huge continent is this extraordinary monolith. I feel it can't be a coincidence. No wonder it is sacred to the Aboriginals and now, rightly, bears the name "Uluru".
Imagine, though, if you were Ayers, the explorer, coming upon this amazing sight over a century ago. I would say he and his party would have been gobsmacked to say the least.
From Alice Springs Dad drove us to a station quite a way west of the city. There lived one of my mother's bridesmaids who had married a station owner called Jim Macdonnel and they had three children. We stayed with them a couple of days. I had the dubious pleasure of using the "School of the Air" with them. I had escaped school for longer than the three-week holiday and I had to spend the entire class time with them.
Another time all the kids and I hitched a ride on top my parent's station wagon hanging onto the luggage rack as they drove out on the property. This was enormous fun. The family had aboriginal help in the house but we drove across a dry river bed where the local aboriginals lived in bark shanties. It was hard to believe my eyes as our car went past their encampment.
The School of the Air
Leaving the Macdonnels behind we headed North towards Darwin. First we stopped at Mataranka Homestead. Hot springs at Mataranka bubble from the ground and in those days there was no caravan park and no embellishments. Nearby is the grave of the author Jeannie Gunn who wrote "We of the Never Never" as the area is known.
It is the story of a young city woman who married Aeneus Gunn who lived and worked in this outpost of the Outback in the 1890's.
Dad and I in the hot springs at Mataranka
The homestead was a two storey affair and very basic. I remember getting no sleep as the owner snored so loudly the tin roof reverberated all night. Outside in the aboriginal camp meat was drying in the open and I have never seen so many flies in my life. The backs of the aboriginals would be covered with flies but that didn't seem to bother them one iota.
Mataranka Homestead - not exactly the Hilton
I loved swimming in the hot springs but felt sure there must be crocodiles in the water. My father assured me there were none but I was a difficult child to convince. On Mission Beach I wouldn't climb down from Gordon Browns shoulders to get in the water because I was sure there were Sea Wasp stingers at that time of year. There weren't but I'm nothing if no careful.
From Mataranka it was on to Katherine, a place where we camped beside a river. I particularly liked Katherine. Dad carried a 22 calibre rifle on the trip, mostly for safety as the Outback is a big place and he had two women to protect. I loved shooting tin cans with it when I was allowed. Dad decided for the first and last time in his life to try hunting. He took aim at hawk high above the river in Katherine. I think he thought he would miss. He didn't. He never forgave himself. When Gordon went hunting for boar later, Dad only went with a camera.
My father was simply the nicest and kindest man I ever knew. That opinion hasn't changed to this day. If he could have breathed life back into the hawk, he would have. He was a devout Catholic and I'm sure he said penance for what he did. But actions spoke louder than words for him and he spent his life living by the doctrine: treat others as you would have them treat you. You can see the smile in the photo below is a sad one. He just did it for the camera.
My father William Norman Prior
END OF PART ONE.
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