I'm not a car person. I have friends who have car parts on display in their home so I know what car people are. But I have had a lot of cars I have loved and a lot of motoring 'experience'.
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My first car cost around $70 - that was way back in the late '60s. I didn't buy it, I 'inherited' it and could drive it as soon as my feet reached the pedals and I could see over the dashboard. I was 12 and it was a bit of a stretch.
It was in Austin A40. A beast of a car with a column gear shift and a pull out ignition and flipper indicators that more than often didn't flip. And all that was okay when you are driving around the home block at about 10-20 miles per hour.
But when I was of learner age, taking it on the open road was a different matter. My dad and I left the driveway, drove up the hill about a kilometre and went to turn right down a country lane. The flipper indicator didn't work, so dad advised to wind the window down and stick my arm out to indicate my intention to turn right, at the same time steering the car around the turn. He forgot to mention that I should slow down and apparently we went around the corner on two wheels - quite a feat for such a top heavy vehicle.
That's where my first lesson ended and some time in the very near future I had a 1960s model Mini Minor (about $300), much closer to the ground and much harder to roll. The ignition button was on the floor, and I could view the road passing under me around the four-on-the floor gear stick which moved with the engine mount. It had a cassette player and leather buckles holding the hood down. And it cornered like it was on rails - generally when a road sign advised the speed for a certain bend, say 60kph, I could do that in miles per hour. The speedo was in miles per hour so I was constantly calculating - 36 miles per hour was roughly 60kph.
Our next car was luxury, an Austin 1800, affectionately known as 'The Land Crab'. Then we borrowed the family's 1956 Land Rover for a memorable trip to Fraser Island. Air conditioning was push-out vents below the windscreen and we lined the interior with old carpet for lessen the road noise.
We drove our brand new, luxury (velour seats) Toyota Camry (one of only two brand new cars we have owned) through the South Alligator River in Kakadu, careful to keep the wave in front of the engine.
There's been a few rides since but my favourite remains the 'Disco', a Land Rover Discovery, and if I win Powerball, it's on the shopping list.
Drive safe this Easter and enjoy the journey.
Toni Bell
ACM editor, Manning River Times
Toni Bell
Manning Great Lakes editor covering mastheads Manning River Times, Great Lakes Advocate, Gloucester Advocate, Wingham Chronicle and the Manning Great Lakes Extra. A journalist for 40 plus years.
Manning Great Lakes editor covering mastheads Manning River Times, Great Lakes Advocate, Gloucester Advocate, Wingham Chronicle and the Manning Great Lakes Extra. A journalist for 40 plus years.
