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THE GREAT ADVENTURE (13 March 1956- 16 April 1957)
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- Sydney to Port Augusta
THE GREAT ADVENTURE (13 March 1956- 16 April 1957)This new chapter faces the chronicler with another challenge, rising from the abundance of sources, which are all interesting in their own right. I have summarized this rich documentation to provide a single narrative of the most striking episodes, those that were repeated and analysed by my parents throughout my childhood, and that can therefore be said to be part of the family history. These are the sources: - Beryl's diary is a detailed and written on the spot account of a participant, even better than an eye-witness. It tells of every little fact, meals, places to sleep, monuments visited, etc. There are but few personal comments, but those are very useful; - Guy's letters to Aunt Hélène and to other correspondents, as well as the collection of photographs and slides which have degraded or been lost in many cases; - three full-length newspaper articles in French (5,000 words each), two by Guy, the other his edited remarks, starting with the reasons for returning from Australia by land and presenting a selection of colourful or interesting episodes, such as the mechanical breakdowns, interesting characters met, etc. - a number of newspaper articles written in the different countries (and in five languages), which collected in our family cuttings-book, which is still in the family archive. They need to be read with caution, because they need perforce to bring out the human interest, and are fed by Guy's pandering to local pride to get his story through; - the book "Dreamalive" which gives a fictional account of Jack and Jill's trip, that displays my father's literary ambition to write his own book. I will cannibalise it for some of its best scenery descriptions. The overland passage is undoubtedly the most remarkable episode of Guy's life, and the most representative of his character and abilities. It was also the only time that anyone in the family has ever approached the 15 minutes of fame which we are all supposed to enjoy once in our life, in this case the 18 months starting in mid-1956. The voyage was, at the time, quite as brilliant and achievement if not more, than it would be today. People had not yet got used to international travel. It caught the fancy of many contemporaries because of the exoticism and risks of the enterprise, and was reported in a great number of newspaper and magazine articles, the most complete and best-written being a six-page account in Marie Claire. My father tested is literary ambitions on the subject by writing a full-length fictionalised account called "Dream Alive", which finally did not find an editor, and several long newspaper articles115. More than 50 years later, the interest has shifted to the mechanical performance, and can still generate interest, as shown by the illustrated article in "La vie de la moto", 2011 hors-série. With so much material readily available,116 I need not copy out the details of the voyage. Instead, I will draw from the most entertaining texts, either because they best illustrate my parents frame of mind at the time, or to remember how journalists worked at the time. Sydney to Port AugustaFor an overview of the first leg of the journey, we can use Guy's own words, speaking to a journalist117: "We set out from Sydney on March 13. In five days we reached Melbourne via Camberra, and on March 28 we were at Port Augusta. Here, the Australian Central Desert begins. Roads are mostly natural earth surfaces – they are non-existent. We entered the desert on March 30 and made fairly good progress until midway at a place called Cocklebiddy, where we met with a minor disaster. Our vehicle landed in an enormous pothole, probably created by the burrowing of a wombat, a typical Australian creature, (a cross between a pig and a rat). Two ribs of the main spring of the vehicle were broken. It was a grim situation. The nearest human settlement was 150 miles away. Water available in the vicinity was not potable. Providentially for us a couple of rabbit catchers – typical Australian 'bush mechanics' – appeared on the scene and helped to replace the broken ribs out of spared I carried with me. After this incident, we proceeded carefully over the remaining 500 miles until they reached Coolgardie, in the eastern gold fields of Western Australia. The signpost at the entrance of the desert reads 'Sydney 2,750 miles. The day was April 8. From Coolgardie to Perth the road was smooth and flat and twe took full advantage to cover the distance of 370 miles in a single day. Let us now come back over some of the highlights of the trip in detail. The family left Sydney on 13 March after trying out their contraption in the backyard attached to a friend's house: "On the evening before their departure we all had a farewell dinner at Jack Abernethy’s home in Johnston Street Annandale, and that night Guy and his family had their first sleepover in the Scootervan - parked in the driveway of the house.118" They stopped not long afterwards at the chicken farm run by friends in Picton, At the time, most people were a bit sceptical that the machine would make it all the way to Europe. From there they made it to Canberra, but not before experiencing a worrying break-down, the first of many mechanical mishaps. After getting lost in the vast avenues of the new capital, they got their visas for India and Ceylon and were able to sleep at the house of a friend. Before setting off, they visited the War Memorial, still a major landmark nowadays. The Hall of Remembrance was not yet finished building. A few days later, in Melbourne they were again welcomed by friends of Jack Abernethy. At Gundagai, they managed not to see the famous dog who had pissed on his master's tuck-box. I was given another chance in 2014 to view the attraction, inaugurated in its time by the Prime minister, and with my wife we had great fun at the Australian mania of making a monument to even the smallest and most trite event. In this case, it is the story of a dog who was so hungry waiting for his master to return from gold panning that he peed on his tucker (food) box to show his displeasure. The first newspaper article on the file was the Adelaide News, on 27 March, under the title "they're scooting over to France" with a photograph of the family peering out of the frontcof their vehicle. They were bound for Orthez, Guy's home town in the lower Pyrenees, where he had family business to fix (settling the estate of his father), and hoped to make satisfactory servicing arrangements for the future. "The tiny motor scooter has been converted with a few simple canvas extensions, and now has room for all four to sleep. The equipment: food for a fortnight, petrol stove, medicine chest, nylon clothes and other gear." Download 0.6 Mb. Share with your friends:
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