ROADS I HAVE TRAVELLED.

 

A road in the Australian Outback

If you were born in the age of the motor car, and anyone alive today has been, then you have travelled much further than your ancestors who were born earlier than the nineteen hundreds.  Before the car was invented, ground transport relied on horses and horse drawn carriages or trains.  If you travelled by train you had be going on a pretty specific journey and if by horse, or horse and carriage, you weren't likely to be taking scenic detours but going somewhere for a purpose.

Because of this modern humans have clocked up a lot more distance than our predecessors.  I was brought home from hospital (I wasn't a home birth) in a car and, for me, a car has been something I have loved and appreciated since I can remember.  They have taken me on some wonderful journeys, to events and given me access to places I needed to go.

Let's face it, any good invention comes with it's downside.  That's the case for most things in life but for now let's consider the benefits of the car.

Life was once urban or provincial.  Suburbs began to spring up in the mid nineteenth century around cities that became overcrowded.  In London a catalyst for suburban growth was the opening of the Metropolitan Railway in the 1860's.  At that time London was the largest city in the world.  By the 1950's, when the motor car became affordable to normal families and the US Interstate Highway was built, suburbs fanned out around cities in that country.

Australia, with its massive size and tiny population relative to the US had still, by the 1950's, managed to link its far flung major cities with roads and, by the time I was born in 1952, suburbs had spread out far and wide from city centres .  By the time I was seven my family and I had made a long journey by road from Sydney south to Melbourne then Adelaide on sealed roads.  We then put the car on a train, the famous Ghan, and travelled north to Alice Springs.  I don't think the road between those two cities was sealed until the 1980's.  After that we drove further north to Darwin and from there eastwards to Cairns and then back to Sydney.  It was without doubt the best trip of my life even though I have since travelled many places overseas.

My first memories of being driven are of excursions to the local shops with my mother and to school.  In those days we didn't have seat belts and I remember many a time when, if Mum had to brake suddenly, she would fling her arm across me to hold me back.  Years later when seat belts arrived, she would still do it by habit. There was also the time before indicators became fitted to cars that I remember her making hand signals to stop or turn.  I loved it when, after my parents had visited friends, we would drive home at night and I would fall asleep in the back seat.  Once home, my father would carry me into bed.  I so loved this that when I got older and woke as we arrived home, I would fake being asleep so I could be carried to bed.  Sadly Dad grew tired of this as I grew heavier and I would have to walk.

Once I was seven and left the local school some three kilometers from home, my mother would drive me to a primary convent school at Avalon on Sydney's Northern Beaches.  The journey was about ten kilometers and the last two were around some spectacular but winding roads on headlands around the beaches.  While I just sat and enjoyed the view and the time with my mother she did not enjoy it although she was very sweet about it for the three years I remained at the school,.  She had to drive me as there was no bus and then drive home and repeat the exercise in reverse in the afternoon.  She didn't do paid work so this, as such, was her job among her other housewifely duties.  Mum was an excellent driver even if she didn't like being my chauffeur.

Living so far up the North Shore from Sydney city as we did, a car was a necessity.  The train lines were further inland than the beach suburbs and the bus journey to the city was a long trip.  On Sunday's my father and I would go to church and when we returned home he would stop the car at the base of our long, steep driveway so that I could drive up it.  I was twelve by this stage and it was my introduction to driving.

Also at this age I was sent to a school in the Eastern suburbs of Sydney, some thirty kilometers distant.  Here I endured weekly boarding and Mum would drive me in Monday mornings and pick me up Friday afternoons.  By this stage she moaned considerably about having to drive me.  I had no sympathy as I loathed the school and felt it was just punishment for her making me go there.  She did occasionally manage to wiggle out of this by getting Dad to drop me at the Hydrofoil in Manly that took me over Sydney Harbour to Circular Quay in the city.  From there with my suitcase full of a week's clothes, I took a bus to the school.  As I was prone to panic attacks by this stage, I did not enjoy this exercise but managed it nonetheless.  But I had my revenge because I was mostly driven to school during those six years even though I had to endure my mother complaining about it.  If my parents had had the sense to send me to the local high school a mere three kilometers away, I could have done the bus trip without an issue so they made that rod for their own backs.

I give them their due, however, by the time I went to University they presented me with a brand new car that I loved and enjoyed for ten years and would even carry my baby son in the rear when he arrived.  Driving to University became the way I overcame my panic attacks.  It took an effort but the car became my home away from home.  It was a very snazzy, mustard coloured Datsun 1200 Coupe and I am forever grateful for this gift from my parents.  I have never since been without a car and would feel I had lost a limb if I was.

Driving my new born baby proved a challenge in my little coupe.  He was too young for a baby car seat and there weren't the snazzy contraptions for carrying a baby in the car in those days.  My solution was, with great difficulty, to put his carry basket minus baby on the rear seat.  This involved putting the front seat forward and getting the basket through the opening.  Then I would put the rear seatbelts through the basket's handles and clip them in to their fasteners to hold it in place.  Then baby went in and finally there was a nifty webbing I had bought at a baby shop that I put over the top of the basket that was then secured around its edges so my son was safe and would only hit the soft criss-cross webbing rather than being hurled around the car should I have an accident.  Of course once I arrived at my destination I had to retrieve son from this device and put him in the pram I carried in the boot of the car.  It was quite a business.  When he was big enough he went into a child car seat and when he turned five he just sat on a booster seat and was strapped in with a seat belt.  There was none of this being in a child seat until the age of seven or a specific height.

Whenever my parents drove me I would look out the window and enjoy the scenery.  Even on repetitive trips to the same places I would still enjoy the view.  Not so my son.  Scenery did not enthrall him at all.  His three children have video screens to watch when they are being driven and this makes me roll my eyes to heaven.  I suppose it's anything for peace but he, as a child, was never a problem even without amusement.

When my son was two and a half we moved to Hong Kong where they also drive on the left as we do in Australia.  The public transport was brilliant but we liked taking excursions and I also needed to drive my son to playschool.  Life was just easier with a car.  We bought an old Toyota Cressida whose favourite pastime was breaking down and led me to my first initiation into the local mentality.  I have mentioned in earlier posts that I was young and glamorous during my Hong Kong sojourn and one early morning I was dressed in a long turquoise coloured velour shift with a long side split up one leg when husband decided he needed to be driven to work for some reason.  As we had a maid, I could drive my husband and leave our son with her and, as I wouldn't be seen, it didn't matter what I was wearing.

We got down to Wanchai easily enough where I dropped husband and then proceeded towards Central, then up Cotton Tree Drive to the Mid Levels.  There, on a hill on a single lane road in traffic, the car conked out.  I tried to restart it.  No luck.  I tried again a few times and then, dressed as I was, I got out of the car and spread my arms in a helpless gesture to the cars behind me.  In Australia a couple of able bodied fellows would have jumped from their cars and helped push mine out of the way.  No one honked and no one helped.  The Chinese man in the Mercedes behind me just sat impassively waiting.  This had a profound effect on me.  I decided if no one wanted to help they would thus be stuck sitting on the hill and that was their choice.  I got back in the car and relaxed.  I've never felt so calm in such a situation.  Why panic and feel bad when no one was willing to help me and, thus, themselves?  I sat waiting a few more minutes and eventually decided to try the ignition again and, lo and behold, the car started and I drove home but I had learned a very important lesson.  I don't know why no one tried to help but I thought it might have come down to Chinese 'loss of face' but the episode taught me to go with the flow.

We would lend the car to a Swiss chef who lived in our building because he let us use his parking spot.  He would use the car some weekends to take his family out but would take it as a personal affront when it broke down even though he knew it wasn't reliable.  There's one thing about the Swiss, they expect things to run like clockwork.

When my husband sentenced us to life back in Australia after three years we bought a new car and he also had a company car.  I am not fond of Perth and we would take drives south to Margaret River and Dunsborough, where my parents would end up living some years later.  There are places north and east of Perth where there is something akin to greenery for a short stretch but it isn't lush and eventually runs out.  Even so we went east and explored Toodyay, York and even Kalgoorlie.  One forgettable holiday we went north to Kalbarri, which was meant to be tropical.  It was not but has some spectacular gorges.  We also went north on the coast to Yanchep and even the awful Lancelin.  The beach there is as barren and glary as you would wish and my son, then six years old, and I ran into a snake coming out of the men's toilet block.  We turned and ran and then one of our friends, who had come in convoy in another car, decided to chase it with a spade against everyone's advice.  Fortunately it out slithered him.

We dared to visit Lancelin another time but not the beach.  We drove past it to visit the remarkable Pinnacles, a petrified forest an hours drive north of the town reached first by sealed road and then a very rocky dirt track that we somehow managed in our sedan.

Our son climbing a Pinnacle

While we lived in Perth, Australia had an airline pilot strike.  This was in 1989 and when their bona fide demands were not met, 1,640 domestic pilots resigned throwing the airlines into chaos for well over a year.  By that time my parents lived in Dunsborough but my husband's family lived in Sydney and we toyed with the idea of taking a train or driving all the way there to visit them.  Driving only as far Adelaide, two thirds of the way to Sydney, would take up to four days across the treeless Nullabour or, by train, two days and then on to Sydney and we decided not to attempt it.  At this stage my panic attacks had begun to recur due to the strain on our marriage and by the time the effects of the strike ended, I couldn't get on a plane.  It took a couple of years to beat the attacks that I'd never thought would come back and, once I did, they never returned.  I continued to drive while I was prone to the attacks because my cars have always helped me to contain them and the only trouble I had was gritting my teeth and sweating as I drove over the very long Mount Henry Bridge on my way to Murdoch University to lectures.  I have loved driving too much to let the attacks get the better of me.

There was a time on a vacation in Hawaii that I tried to drive on the right and immediately handed the car back to my husband.  That was way too dyslexic a feeling.  When I went to France years later with my partner, who is Polish, I didn't even try the right side driving and pulled my weight by way of being navigator from Paris to Versailles then through the Loire Valley.  We loved the villages in the countryside and the Chateaux with their magnificent gardens.  We then drove through the Alps down to beautiful Nice and stunning Monaco.

Another earlier vacation that I took with my husband and son was to Sri Lanka and the Maldives on our way back from Hong Kong.  We stopped in Sri Lanka one night on our way to the Maldives to which we would fly in the morning.  I have no idea where the hotel was that we stayed in as we were driven there in the dark.  I think the reception had some light but, after being led to our room in the one story building, when we entered there was no electric light, or any light for that matter.  It was pitch black and we groped our way to the beds, found them, felt for bugs and put our son to sleep.  I just lay on the covers of the bed and hoped nothing would bite me.  In the morning, on going out the door, there was a beach in view but everything in the night was so dark we had no idea of our surroundings.

We spent over a week in the Maldives and it's a place you couldn't pay me to return to no matter what the brochures look like.  We had arrived during Ramadan and the food we were subjected to made my then fifty kilo frame drop another two kilos.  I'm sure the water looked pretty but you needed shoes to swim as the sand was made of broken up coral and hurt your feet.  We were the closest island to the capital Male because we wanted to be close to civilization if our son was sick.  Happily he wasn't but I'm really not too sure there was any civilization if we needed it.  The view from our bungalow consisted of rotting ship hulks as the Maldives is the one of the cheapest places in the world to moor them.

After that we had a driver take us on a five day driving tour of Sri Lanka.  He was a local and had no personality and little English.  If I managed to get him to stop to take a photo, he did so two hundred meters after the photo opportunity.  People had their hands out wherever we went and it was a thoroughly miserable place.  The travel brochures and television advertisements in Hong Kong quoted Mark Twain as saying it was the most beautiful place on earth.  It wasn't.  I had no idea the people there were so poor and felt for them but the whole place had a bad atmosphere.  No doubt our driver's pay was a pittance so we tipped him well.

I haven't travelled overseas for twenty four years now.  Hard to believe I know but divorce, lack of employment opportunities and a failed business all added up.  At least I found employment driving a cab and it only paid the bills, but I'm extremely grateful I managed to do it for twelve years before Covid hit.  I thoroughly enjoyed those years and part of the reason for that is I love driving.  You are your own boss in a cab and, being outdoors in a pretty place like Brisbane, is a bonus.

I'm overdue for a long driving holiday and am even considering going as far as Dunsborough where my father's ashes rest.  We've all been cooped up because of the pandemic and now domestic travel appeals to me as much as foreign.  Another consideration in regard to foreign travel is that there are places I would no longer consider going because, if I catch the virus, I want to be very certain the hospitals in a place are excellent.

There are many places I am sorry not to have seen but I'm also fortunate to have seen many.  I've travelled around New Zealand by car.  I've ridden pillion behind my father one day on a motorcycle on Norfolk Island.  I've also had a driving lesson in a Fiat Bambino bouncing across a golf course on that island with Dad beside me and Mum in the back seat as I kangarooed across the fairways learning to change gears.  The course was as much paddock as it was fairway.  The year I finished school my parents took my cousin and I to beautiful Fiji for Christmas.  We were there for three weeks and were driven between Suva and Lautoka  We stayed on both Viti Levu and Vanua Levu and also did the three day Blue Lagoon cruise around some outlying islands.

I spent only four days in London and experienced its traffic on a bus from the airport to my hotel.  I've also visited Penang in Malaysia, Bangkok and Phuket in Thailand, the Phillipines, Bali and passed many times through Singapore where I've also stayed.  In all these places I have been driven in some form of transport and I find it to be the best way to see a place.  My only regret is the frequency with which I've travelled.  Travelling blows fresh air through the mind and also makes home more appealing when you return.

I hope I have journeys yet to make.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

END

A BEACH TOO FAR

A Dumper

 

Water turns me on, not in a sexual sense but in a making me feel alive sense.  As soon as I see it my spirits lift in a way that a landscape can't affect me.  I don't know if it's because I grew up near Sydney's Northern beaches and, from my home, had a beautiful view of Pittwater, an inlet of the Hawkesbury River.  Whatever the reason, I am never quite complete without a water-scape to fill my senses.

The view of Pittwater from Church Point

Australia is surrounded by water, which makes it an island, but there is so much interior that living near the water, or with a view of it, is both sought after and expensive.  Of course a person could buy a cheaper property overlooking water on some barren southern cliff but, in general, the most sought after water views are near cities or coastal towns.

There are plenty of barren and inhospitable beaches on an island continent whose mainland circumference measures almost thirty thousand kilometres.  This measurement does not include Tasmania or the many islands that make up Australian territory.

One thing they all have in common are sharks.  Of course there are sharks in every ocean save, I believe, the Mediterranean, which has smaller, mostly harmless sharks. Nonetheless in Australia few people are taken per year and this is because most know where and where not to swim. When I say few, I mean at least ten to twelve, and to those poor souls the statistics are meaningless.

My parents taught me that swimming inside the breaker line meant that you were less likely to be taken by a shark.  Sadly I'm shortsighted and every large cluster of seaweed was mistaken for a Kim-eating shark.  To this day, though, I have all my limbs.  Waves disturbed me almost as much as sharks.  Australian children learn how to be 'dumped'.  How often did I emerge from the water with a crotch full of sand?  Plenty.

It's quite embarrassing having your swimsuit hanging between you thighs laden with wet sand.  You try to extricate it hiding your lower half under the water but its not easy.  Chances are another wave will come along and force you face first in the water.  It's all part of growing up at the beach but it doesn't seem to happen as much when you grow older.  In my case it's simply because I hate getting my hair wet and having to wash it afterwards.

My first experience of the surf was of being walked towards a breaker on the shoulders of my not very tall father as he jovially assured me he would let no harm come to me.  The approaching wave was taller than both of us put together and I quickly formulated that it would break over the top of us.  I freaked out and now can't remember the outcome

This lovely, fatherly attempt to help initiate me to surf has stayed with me all these years and had the opposite long term effect to giving me confidence.  Bless his heart though for trying.  Nonetheless I was soon confronting waves and have since done my share of diving under a curler to avoid a dumping.

There's nothing like the thrill and terror of seeing a dumper, a wave that curls from the top and begins to form a cylinder within.  There is but one thing to do and that is dive and hit the sand, lay flat and wait for it to thunder down, over and past you.  Often however, if big enough, it will pick you up from the bottom and take you with it, rolling you around like a dead fish so that you don't know which way is up when it starts to subside and you can try and surface for air.

Describing this scene is like reliving it all over again.  You never forget the experience but you will still return to the sea as if the primeval part of your brain draws you there to better, simpler times that are hidden deep inside your brain's inner cortex.

When I see an expanse of blue water it is as if my soul, which has gone into hibernation from the sheer repetition of the everyday, wakes up and thinks heaven is in sight to release it from its physical confines.  It really does feel like that.  Something deep within me stirs and feels the hope and possibilities I am missing these days.

While I love the beach, not all are equal.  In its vast circumference Australia has only a small percentage of really good swimming beaches.  Some of the reasons for this are the quality of the sand and water but for others, no matter how perfect the swimming possibilities, you only venture in at your peril.

Above the Tropic of Capricorn exist crocodiles and, in the summer, deadly Box jellyfish.  The stings of this creature are so painful they are likely to kill you before the venom.  Those few who have survived them have the scars to show for it.  The long, stinger covered tendrils leave dark, permanent welts all along the lines where they have touched the skin.

Scars left by the tentacles stingers of the Box jellyfish

Box Jellyfish

The islands of the Great Barrier Reef are where people swim, scuba and snorkel and are supposedly free of stingers.  This is because the jellyfish breed in river estuaries and remain close to shore.

Sea snakes don't seem to kill anyone even though they are capable of it.  They are a gentler variety than their land based cousins and don't attack.  Another danger in the ocean is the Manta Ray with its venomous tail spike but this is only a defense mechanism.  The only death I have ever heard of from one of these gentle giants is the tragic one of Steve Irwin.  The great environmentalist and exuberant, infectious character was killed by one.  It was almost a fitting end for the great man as a warrior for nature to be speared in the heart.  I almost see the hand of God in his ending.  There was no surer way to ensure his work would never be forgotten and its effects continue long afterwards.

But back to beaches.  I once lived in Melbourne on Port Phillip Bay in a bay side suburb.  The water was still and shallow and I needed shoes to wade into its tepid water.  In my mind it wasn't water at all.  My husband and I went to the coastal beaches near Portsea, the so-called back beaches.  These were not attractive like those in Sydney and look positively dangerous.  We never went back.

A Back Beach of the Mornington Pensinsula south of Melbourne, Australia

I now live in Brisbane which, to my horror, when I arrived, I discovered had no surf beaches.  I was so eager to get out of Perth I didn't care.  The surf beaches lie an hour to the north and to the south.  The southern Gold Coast boasts the most famous beaches in Australia.  I think they are inferior to Sydney's, but they are a tourist haven.  The beaches are long, unbroken by headlands and surrounded by skyscrapers.  People drown there every summer because foreign tourists simply can't read the sea.  It looks tranquil but there are rips, undertows and sandbanks.  The life savers do their absolute best or the numbers would be much higher.

The Gold Coast

Some people prefer the more natural beaches of Noosa and the ones on the sea side of Fraser Island.  Those around Noosa, apart from the one of Noosa town itself that is not a surf beach, are hard to get to without a four wheel drive.

There are also great beaches off Stradbroke Island that lies off Brisbane.  Unfortunately it is a forty minute ferry trip from the mainland and you may need to travel up to an hour to get to the ferry depending on where you live in Brisbane.

When we lived in Perth we were at first excited at the sight of the white sand beaches and surf.  Sitting upon one just before midday one Saturday we saw people begin to vacate the beach and looked at one another puzzled.  Then it happened.  A breeze picked up and became stronger.  The sea became choppy and sand began to pick up.  We left.  We had experienced the famous Fremantle Doctor, the breeze that comes in every afternoon and makes the beach impossible to enjoy.  Our earlier idea of an evening beach barbeque went out the door.

Myself, son Asher and Bruno on a bleak winter's day at City Beach, Perth, WA

In the afternoon the ocean becomes a glassy mirror as the sun begins its journey down to the horizon.  I was very glad not to have a view of this from our house, which was within a kilometer of the beach.  It explained why, up until then, the nineteen eighties, Perth had no really prestige houses with an ocean view north of Cottesloe.  Things changed while we were there, but I wouldn't have paid to look at that hot, silver strip.  The ocean is on the West and facing in that direction in Perth is hot.  The word humidity hasn't made its way to that city yet and never will.  Hot means very hot and dry.  It is also very cold in winter.

My parents moved to Perth against my advice, stayed two years and moved south to the beach holiday town of Dunsborough.  This is where the West's beaches come into their own.  Dunsborough is situated on Geographe Bay.  The bay faces North West and is protected from winds at its Southern tip by Cape Naturaliste.  The sand is white, the water blue and there are no waves.  The water is shallow then deepens gradually.  Sharks don't bother coming in to such warm water without enough depth.  It is absolutely ideal for families and those of us who have been terrorised by big waves.

The gorgeous beach at Dunsborough, WA on Geographe Bay

The only problem here are small and vicious little stingers that come when the water flows from certain directions at swimming times of the year.  They can vary in size annually as well and the sting can range from an irritation to painful as my son discovered one year when he was the first in the water and ran out covered in painful welts.

Further around from Dunsborough come the little cove beaches that are deeper and with some chop.  These are in secluded and protected headlands and grass and trees line the the area down to the sand.  Moving a little further south you come to Margaret River and Yellingup beaches.  These are famous surf spots.  Yellingup is surrounded by a steep hill on which perch the holiday homes of Perth's wealthy.  You can't call it a pretty place but the beach is great.  There is major surf area and a lovely protected lagoon on one side for swimmers.

Lagoon at Yellingup Beach, WA

I am fond of this southern part of Western Australia now that I don't have to live in there.  It's partly because my parent's remaining years together were spent there and partly because it has a lovely atmosphere.  I shall go back as I must to place my mother's ashes with my father's.  His lie in the memorial garden of the church he helped design and build - Our Lady of the Southern Cross.  That's another very good reason I have great fondness for the place.  It really is a little slice of heaven.   

END

PART 2 - A 1959 ROAD TRIP AROUND AUSTRALIA.

Tenant Creek part of the Red Centre

I finished the last instalment at Katherine in the Northern Territory but didn't add anything about Alice Springs, the town situated in the centre of the Australian Continent or Tennant Creek.

Above is a tableland at Tennant Creek, a place known for its Gold and Copper mines.  It lies between Alice Springs and Darwin.

In 'the Alice', as it is known, we visited a church named after Doctor John Flynn who started the The Royal Flying Doctor Service.  This wonderful service is still operating throughout the Outback, flying to towns and properties where patients need medical attention and often flying them out to hospital.
 

The John Flynn Memorial Church, Alice Springs

Another feature of Alice Springs is Katherine Gorge and scenery that inspired our most famous Aboriginal painter, Albert Namatjira.

Katherine Gorge near Alice Springs

A landscape reminiscent of an Albert Namatjira painting

A Painting by Albert Namatjira

The landscape in South Australia had been dry and dirty beige but mostly the Outback was red and dusty.  I found the red outback quite beautiful.  It doesn't seem harsh with its white ghost gums and azure blue sky contrasting with the red ochre dirt.

A Beer Bottle Tree

We drove past an interesting piece of flora in the desert landscape.  It was a variation of a Bottle Brush, or Banksia plant, for which Australia is renowned.  This one was covered in real beer bottles and the actual tree quite dead.  I wonder if it's still there all these years later.  It may even have grown, in bottles that is or given rise to others.

I remember little of Darwin except another church that still stands today and for its time from very modern.

Darwin Uniting Memorial Church

Dad was a devout Catholic and it says something that this church appeared in his photographs.  He was nothing if not ecumenical and a church was a church to him.  I think, however, he was more interested in the architecture which was very new for its time.

A Termite Mound, something actually bigger than Gordon

From Darwin we headed around the Gulf of Carpentaria and stopped at a coastal town north of Normanton called Karumba.  Prue and I swam in the water in a pool made by enclosing pylons.  I knew there were sharks there, I didn't know there were crocodiles, but as there was so little vegetation, these must have remained in the river estuary.  Now to a girl, this place was interesting.

Gordon Brown gets to pull in a Shark

Kim and Prue with what's left of the Shark

Kim with a local girl

Gordon with a boar he has shot

The owner of the hotel in which we stayed was a famous crocodile hunter.  We later saw him at the movies in a documentary in which he hunted them.  That's him above with Gordon looking at the poor dead boar Gordon shot.  As you may remember if you read the first instalment, after shooting an eagle, my father refused to hunt anymore.  He went along and took the photo but that's all he shot.

I remember my mother, Bev, Mollie Brown, Prue and I having toasted cheese sandwiches for lunch in the dining room.  We were the only people there.  It's one of funny things that come back to mind but the cheese toast was cut into three strips.  My nimble fingers always went for the centre one without the crusts.  There were quite a few slices of toast and when I went for another centre piece, my mother firmly told me to leave it for someone else.  It was the prize piece and I never forgot this little lesson in manners in the wild coastal town.

I managed to upset the mother of the little aboriginal girl in the photo with whom Prue and I played.  I asked the little girl, in all innocence, why she was always so sandy.  This got back to her mother who helped in the hotel kitchen and it turned out I had insulted the little girl.  I would never have done so deliberately and my mother realised this.  I didn't get to apologise, not that I would have managed without putting my foot innocently in my mouth again.  The mother was fired from the kitchen on an unrelated matter about, from what I recall, was something to do with stolen scissors.

It was all too complicated for one of seven but I never forgot and felt bad ever after that the little girl had felt insulted.

The local men had caught a shark on a line and they asked Gordon, the man mountain, to pull it in.  We all went down to watch.  What was left of the creature afterwards was framed about Prue and I, the jaws still dripping with blood.

There were bigger jaws all around the wall of the pub or restaurant at the water's edge.  It was a wild place at the back of beyond and I loved it.

We moved on through dry, hot desert towns in Queensland's outback before coming upon lush cane fields where harvesting was underway.  What I remember of coastal Queensland was the lovely shades of green of the foliage and how lush everything was.  I fell in love with it and its why I live here now.

An Outback Town in the Northern Territory or Queensland

Our Holden FJ with boulders

Brumbies, wild horses, in the Outback

The old fashioned way to plant sugar cane, Queensland

Three flowers probably in Cairns

We arrived at the coast probably at Cairns judging from the photo of myself, Mum and the orchids above.  Then we made our way down the coast to Mission Beach.  I fell in love with the place.  It looks over to Dunk Island, a famous Whitsunday Resort Island known for its spectacular blue, iridescent butterflies.

Kim and Prue riding Gordon at Mission Beach, Queensland

No matter how everyone assured me there were no deadly box jellyfish in the water in June, as it was the wrong season, I wouldn't get down from Gordon's shoulders when he went in the water.  Really, I didn't.  Later as our parents set up camp and the evening meal, Prue and I dug a hole in the sand, lay in it and watched as evening fell.  I fell asleep in the warm sand.  I remember that to this day and the lovely time we had there.

After this we went on a boat to explore the Whitsunday Islands.

Bev, my mother, looking like a Vogue model in the Whitsundays

On Green Island there lived a scientist, whose name I have forgotten, with his wife.  He had studied the marine life there for years.  We met them both and they gave us a tour of the island.

Scientist who lived on and studied Green Island

Scientist on left, his wife, second from right, and others on Green Island off Cairns, Queensland

I was very excited to find a TV character staying on one of the islands.  He hosted a television show as a captain.  Of course I can't remember the name of the show but I remember being thrilled to be in the presence of a real live television personality.  Below he salutes as we leave, making my day complete.

TV Captain on a Whitsunday Island

There is so much more from earlier in the trip I could have included in the first instalment, however it is taking me an eternity to scan the slides that my father so carefully stored away.  I had to look at each one to see what was on it.  This proved no easy task.  Just when I had enough slides on disk this blog decided it wouldn't take BMP or PDF files and so I have had to convert them.

The slides will grow old and mildewed and I am trying to save them all.  This is my history that I leave for my son and his children.  I think it is wonderful that photography has allowed us to look into the past and preserve memories.

The girl I was then as I travelled with my parents around Australia in 1959

I still feel so young.  I am basically young in mind and body now at 61 years of age.  I don't look my age.  But looking back into this past seems almost like another person's life.  Yet I remember it.  I look fondly at the photos and the young girl in them.  She is almost like a daughter to me.  I know her future and wish I could tell her so many things to protect her and to stop her taking certain paths.  But she knew then, as she does now, that life is good and she loved the environment and always will.

But if I had changed things, I wouldn't have the son I have now or my new grandson.  I am just grateful for my past, all of it.  I treasure the memories my father has left me here, for he recorded them.  I treasure my parents, now passed away.  The trip around Australia was the best of my life because I was ready for it and the country is magic.  It filled me with its spirit and fortified me for the future.

That's All Folks

So long.  Drive straight and true.

THE END.

A 1959 Road Trip Around Australia - Part 1.

 

My Mother's Opinion of Our 1959 Road Trip Around Australia
Don't Worry It's Not Loaded

There are days that have a special aura about them, that carry you along in a kind of magic plasma.  Colours appear to be more vibrant and the light is different.

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.

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.

 

Campsite at Katherine

 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.