Articles published in April, 2024
Sunday, January 11th
From Coonabarrabran. Very quiet on the roads and in the towns. Passed along a section of dirt road to Cudal. Stopped a while to talk and look at parrots. Beginning to realise how many there are – oddly enough there are more to be seen in the South than in the North. The grey ones with red breasts and heads are everywhere – Galahs – and another, even more gaudy, is common too. Found one by roadside and took feathers as a sample.
The Galah
Country made strong impression. Rolling pasture for hundreds of miles – seemingly in all directions. Towns, particularly Canowindra (owin = oun) have a more evolved look, the older hotels with spacious balconies of decorative ironwork and good proportions are well-kept.
Canowindra in 1976
The Garden of Roses
A weather-beaten gent. stood by the bike, waiting to talk to me. He had a mild, humble manner, said he’d done some gold-mining himself and though he’d never travelled he read about foreign places, especially where there was mining.
“How is it in Peru?” he asked. He’d heard about that. I enjoyed being with him for a while.
The Pembertons received us kindly. She has a strong, vital personality but he’s rather burned out (deaf and drinks a fair bit). Carol observes how often one or other partner is a wreck. They built the home fifteen years before – a big expensive place – she was very sensitive about the state of the lawn. We slept in the girls’ room – single beds on opposite sides of the room (“You don’t mind sharing a bedroom?”) She told us at length about Glenice’s [the daughter] surprise wedding, and Christopher [husband] didn’t get a very good press. She’s going out to visit them in Salvador.
Monday, 12th
At Clunes, on the road from Canowindra to Cowra, with family called Young. Son Ian, daughters Rebecca, Margaret, Sue, Letitia. Rode up to house along avenue lined with immature trees. House, of brick, seemed fairly new. People seen through windows stretched out in easy chairs.
Ian had just come back to garage on his Agricultural Yamaha and I rode up there to talk to him. Pleasant, almost sweet young man, sideburns, reddish hair very thick on forearms, wearing toweling shorts – his expression reminded me of John Clarke, from my childhood. Talked to us forever, while we still sat on our bikes like dummies, although it was obvious that we would be able to stay on the land. At last he fetched his father. The whole family came out and we talked for a good while in the evening light, with the Galahs swooping and screeching in the gum trees. (they kill the biggest trees by stripping their bark).
The father offered us the use of a disused cottage at the back of the property, near the sheep-shearing shed. Ian accompanied us there and we thought that would be the end of it, but then we saw headlights approaching, slowly, halting at each set of gates. The girls arrived with beer, salad, orange juice and a bottle of Coke. Very generous.
13th – 15th, Canberra, but no notes.
16th To Kosciousko Park, the Snowy Mountains
We’ve spent four days in the Southside Caravan park and it’s time to leave. The magpies are strolling around as usual – exceptionally bulky birds in their tattered black suits with flashes of white underwear showing through. They have a strangely musical chant, like squeaky machinery but at a very sophisticated level, and look very much at home among the campers. Said goodbye to the Beissmans, young Germans – he a welder/fitter/turner, she an optometrist. They’ve lived nine months in Australia, with tent and Land Rover and plan to go on working like that to buy land and build.
Weather was perfect for riding, blue sky, hot sun, cool air. Up into Snowies – above 5000 feet – bought steak and few veg at Adaminaby. Admired the wild flowers and gum forests, and the dams and switching stations. Day ended gracefully in a forest clearing, where we swept away leaves and twigs to make places for the bed and the fire – a good stone fireplace – to avoid any chance of a forest fire. Only sad note was Carol’s increasing discomfort with what later seemed to be a cyst, together with various aches and pains and glandular swelling. We also had little money and had forgotten it was Friday – so a weekend of difficulty unless Carol’s theory of easy money changing was born out.
Saturday 17th
Woke up at dawn. Aching night, but clear and cool. Carol went for a walk. Found a little beetle on helmet visor – brown with speckles and toy feet. Left a little turd and flew off. Wonderful to watch it gear itself up for flight, with the slightest movement of wing cases, pacing back and forth on the edge of the plastic (like that bizarre Southern priest we saw on TV preparing to smash bricks with his forehead.)
Set off to complete the circuit of the Snowies – the threatening dirt road climb was not as bad as it might be. Road winds up and down over creeks named after Groggin and Swiggin – a veritable Hobbit land. Filled up from stream water, took some pix, went over the top (at Leather Barrel) and came down to Lake Jindabyne where a wily Italian took 40 cents for a coffee, and Carol’s theories began to seem unfounded. On to Cooma where further efforts to change money proved futile. I kept up a sort of bloody-minded indifference for a while, letting her do the running in and out of motel offices. It had annoyed me the day before when I pointed out a bank and she had not wanted to go in. Sometimes I resent being forced into a position of having either to insist on some point or having to suffer again the consequences that I already went through on my own a year or two ago.
Decided to go on to Eden anyway, with only 90 cents. At Merimbula saw a likely motel and got $15 off the proprietor. In Eden drew up outside the Australasia for a drink – and was hailed by a tall man with one leg, and some others. They were a work camp building a house for an Aboriginal family. They asked us to join them, were very friendly, wanted us to go back with them for “tea’ but Carol really exhausted so we bought food (chicken) and ate it in the pub with wine and beer to relax. Then rode back to the school where the kids were living (right next to park where we intended to camp). They were going to sleep on the beach with a fire. Though often illegal, they thought their numbers would prevail. It was a bit of a performance getting down there, and we were a bit overtired to be much entertained by the resident “performer” singing about old ladies locked in the loo – and the foggy, foggy dew. But eventually, despite a few mosquitoes, it was a good night.
Sunday, 18th
Morning was beautiful. Beach was glorious, water was cool and heavenly. Collected shells – a film canister full – and came back to the house where most of them were packing up to leave. The house was unfinished and some of the principal people were staying behind.
In the afternoon we were taken to the swimming falls they had discovered about 20 miles inland where a river has worked its way through a great rock in a series of falls and cavities more beautiful than anything I’ve seen on that scale.
19th to 28th
We stayed with them – Tim Seale, Kevin Goode, Chris, Brian Spillsbury, Helen, Judy, etc, to help finish the house. I drew a floor plan on the inside back cover of my notebook.
In a church hall we were joined by a reinforcement from another camp. The difference in tone was quick to appear. Three men, two women, churchy over-age pranksters, not very “mellow” as Carol would say.
Had much difficulty working with flimsy materials, fibre board, asbestos, pacific maple moulding and skirting – light as balsa, all walls and ceilings out of true, doors featherweight but monstruous size to ceiling so that inhabitants dwarfed (to reduce damp in roof – lets hot air flow out) floor of fibre-board sanded down. Banks give 15 years life to these houses for mortgage purposes.
Wednesday 28th
Carol’s uneasiness continued through the night (another cancer dream) but in the morning we were able to talk it out better. She feels that I don’t value her, think her contribution is of insufficient value (intelligence, articulacy, says she was learning from me ways to discuss and question – that the “movement” language was not sufficiently broad to deal with everything) while I said it disturbed me to find myself constantly provoking her uneasiness by references in passing (as yesterday when I asked people whether they would prefer travelling through India alone or in company.)
It’s true that I am still profoundly suspicious of women, and I do anticipate that they will “pull the rug out” – and of course this suspicion breeds uneasiness in me, etc., etc. So we talked about expectations, good and bad.
Today will pursue the problem of parts for the bike, and perhaps approach “The Age” (Murdoch’s Melbourne newspaper) to see if they’ll take some stuff from me for money.
What I need for the motorcycle
Pistons, standard plus 20 LC
Spokes, Q.D. wheel, RH side
Petcock RH side
Gearbox oil change
From 30th January to 18th February we stayed in Melbourne, St Kilda, with friends. Most of those days I spent in Frank Mussett’s shop working on the bike. Described at length in the book. Here’s a note, for gearheads, of what was done:
Change – two inlet, one exhaust valve
Pistons to 7:1 Hepolite
Re-sleeve barrel to standard
Removed and inspected oil tank. New washers
Replaced original oil pump. Found other had badly worn seats
Removed rotor, expanded core and replaced with new tab washer (I’ve forgotten what this means).
Replaced wrong chain from Renold and fitted new one.
Front fork reassembly with missing seals and washers. Compressed springs using old oil seals as spacers.
Removed rear wheel, replaced missing spokes and rebuilt wheel with rim the right side round
Re-riveted speedo gear box
Washed and packed wheel bearings – added missing spacers to hub assembly and refitted
By Friday 13th the work was done, the bike was ready, and I was searching for a ship to take us from Perth to somewhere in East Asia. Meanwhile we visited museums and had lunch with a Dame.
See you next week, I hope.
1879 was a year in which the British Empire confronted some 4000 Zulus at the Battle of Rorke’s Drift, with tales of heroism and a splurge of Victoria Crosses to excite the British public. It was also the year in which George Lucas launched his bicycle lamp, which might seem of relatively little importance. Nonetheless his lamp, mounted on the front wheel of penny-farthings, went on showing the way through darkness long after the battle was history. His was a small one-man business, selling oil and other things from a cart in the streets of Birmingham, but his lamp, which he called “King of the Road,” was the foundation of a business which came to flourish throughout the Empire and was still a household name when I began my journey in 1973.
All Triumphs were fitted with Lucas electrics and, because they had offices and workshops in most of the big cities along the route I had planned, they agreed to help by allowing Avon to send me new tyres at various places along the way. So I came to know the Lucas culture well, in Nairobi, in Cape Town, in Rio and Santiago, in Los Angeles, Sydney, Melbourne, Penang, Madras, Bangalore and Delhi, and I paid courtesy visits even when there were no new tyres to fit. The managers were very old-school British businessmen, jacket-and-tie, belonging to the right clubs, occasionally inclined to grandiosity, very much wedded to the idea of Empire even though it had been dismantled around them. All the jokes and sarcasm among bikers – “Prince of Darkness” was the most current epithet – didn’t seem to impinge on them at all, and although I had my share of trouble, I think the criticism was generally unfair. More often problems arose from connectivity, and Triumph had to share the blame. In any event they seemed unaware of the encroaching doom and were always generous and helpful to me. So in Brisbane too I made contact with Lucas.
Carol, I, and the bike arrived in Brisbane on the morning of January 9th by train. I must have done some phoning beforehand, because we were invited to have lunch that day. The manager’s name was Gribble. Here is what I wrote:
Friday 9th
Brisbane at 12.30. Lunch with Gribble, a firmly fat man, fawn trousers, light brown shoes, white shirt stretched over his chest and belly. When I heard him over the telephone he reminded me of all the other Lucas men, and I thought of portly tolerance and good humour, and a good steak.
He greeted me with a necktie folded in his palm – a token of his extraordinary powers of anticipation – for me to wear in the club. He showed no pleasure, it isn’t his style. He prefers an impassive stance and delivers verbal blows unheralded by expression. The effort to maintain this poker face cause a muscle at the corner of his mouth to twitch a little and adds a slightly sinister cast to the general blandness. He has a butcher’s face; square, fleshed, opaque.
He started the conversation immediately by his hatred for Germans, all Germans. He loathes them, despises them, won’t allow one across his threshold. “There are only two kinds of German . . .” dramatic pause “ . . as Churchill once said, they’re either groveling at your feet or lording it over you.“
He continued with a terrible tale of punishment inflicted on some putative Nazi in Nigeria before the war, who said Heil Hitler and was foolish enough to leave an outboard motor on his, Gribble’s, property.
The motor was pitched directly into the sea. The Nazi came to remonstrate.
“ ‘I shall give you exactly ten seconds to get out of here,’ I said, but he stayed one second too long. I was wearing African army boots, you know, the ones with laces up to here, and on the eleventh second “ – Gribble lost his cool and became ecstatic – “I kicked him where it would do him most good, and pitched him out into the street.”
Gribble’s adjutant in Nigeria, when he was commissioned, was Quintin Hogg – later Lord Hailsham.
[Hogg, who had a distinguished war record, cut short by injury, later became a man of considerable importance in British politics and was almost Prime Minister. Read Gribble’s account in that light.]
He told a story of how he “unmanned” Q.H. He delighted in the word “unmanned,” repeated it several times. It was some foolishness about not having asked the C.O’s permission to marry.
“I don’t know what he’ll say,” quavered Q.H. according to Mr. Gribble.
“The best way to find out is to ask him,” said G.
In all his stories the protagonist makes strident or pathetic remarks in a silly voice, and G snaps them smartly to account with the pithy voice of reason and courage.
At one point Gribble evidently blundered into some perilous enterprise with his men and was lucky enough to get away with it. He rationalises that since the enemy would never expect such impudence (stupidity?) it was tactically brilliant to perpetrate it.
What upset Carol most was how Gribble taught his servant to refer to himself as “a gentleman’s personal gentleman.” In Australia, I imagine, there might be some kudos in some quarters to have actually had an officially legal black slave. When he joined the army, a regulation was promulgated that all officers’ servants had to be soldiers too. The black man promptly (and voluntarily according to G) joined up.
Quintin Hogg approached Gribble in the officers’ mess. “What do you suppose your fellow said he was when I gave him the attestation?”
“Gentleman’s personal gentleman,” replied G. [With satisfaction.]
He claims that the Germans rendered him childless. Did they kill his child, or render him sterile? I don’t know.
The vital point is that his stories, all perfectly acceptable in their time, seem gross today. Yet he has preserved his attitudes unchanged – and they are apparently still valid currency here.
[Gribble was the only insufferable Lucas man I met. The others, as I’ve said, were true gentlemen, but nice with it.]
We escaped from Gribble at about 2.30 and rode off to find the New England Highway, through Ipswich – nothing special – along the Cunningham Highway and past the National Park where there were fine forested hills, and up to Warwick where the N.E. Highway begins. Here we looked for vegetables, but the shop was a travesty (beans at 45 cents and not much else) so we got a steak (1lb 2ozs for $1.10 – very good rump). A heavy shower caught the bike while we were there. Then we went on for a way and found a gate into a field.
At first, difficult, Carol was nervous being on private land. Then we found we had no matches. I rode off to find some, and came back to find her calm, and lit a fire. Then it went very well. We slept out, there were a few mosquitoes, and I didn’t sleep much, watching the wind sweep the clouds away, and listening to odd sounds, and feeling Carol’s presence very lovingly.
This is hilly country at about 3000 feet: a cool area where sheep graze and apples grow. Stouthorpe, Tanterfield, etc. All Italian fruit growers.
What was that you said?
Saturday 10th
Blue sky with bars of white cloud. Cool, rather English countryside. Tanterfield a busy town, full of life. Had a poor lunch but enjoyed the place. Armidale is obviously the most prestigious of these “New England” towns, with the main street blocked off to make a pedestrian area, but no life – all home at lunch. After Armidale many ups and downs, but mostly downs, with safety ramps on the steeper descents, then into great heat of Tamworth. Old thin guy, called Walt, who owned village store and burned his sawmill for the insurance to build a new motel opposite, where we had a beer. Carol came out with a beer and a packet of crisps (SMITHS CRISPS) saying how gross it was, and that someone had said something about arses, but she wasn’t sure it was aimed at her.
In Tamworth I stopped to fix my helmet and passed a man in a half-shell helmet on a tiny bike with an even smaller tank. Turned out to be a 1934 Velocette, and he an old-time m/cycle mechanic who had restored it. Said he’d worked on them for 13 years (as a race mech. I suppose).
At Tamworth we took off on the Newell Highway, into big flat land where an increasingly strong wind blew, ‘till it was quite hard work to stay upright. Going West in the setting sun – with dust clouds in the air – like N. Nebraska, said Carol. Nearly a hundred miles of that, but some relief towards the end as ground rose and wound among hills before coming down into Coonabarrabran where Coolcappa turned out to be name of the sheep station where the Pembertons (?) lived. 800 acres of wheat, 2500 head of sheep, 600 head of cattle, etc. (10,000 or more acres). Earlier passed slaughterhouse, with shed for skins to dry out (like tobacco). Passing the cattle in the fields, it can be odd to reflect that each cow goes to support one person in the city for a year.
The Pembertons, it turns out, are people I heard about in Central America. Next week, if we’re lucky, parrots and Pembertons. Cheers!
I think I mentioned a while back that I’ve been to Mexico. Got back two weeks ago. I flew into Mexico City and from there made two trips, one north to Mazatlán to see two dear friends from California whom I miss, the other south to San Cristòbal to see my German cousin’s daughter who has a house there. She’s a doctor, married to a doctor, and their two sons are doctors so it’s obviously important to keep in with them.
In Mazatlán it turns out I have a fan called Hector Peniche, who not only rides motorcycles but also happens to run a very fancy restaurant called Hector’s Bistro. He started his career in London as a pastry chef (I think I got that right, Hector?) where he met his wife Victoria, also a pastry chef, who comes from Worcester, in England. They married and came to Mazatlán to start a restaurant in a small, rented place; but they were so good at it that a wealthy customer decided to back them, and they now have a whole block humming away, with the bistro and a café. I ate there twice and it’s not to please him that I say the food was wonderful.
Hector’s place
Victoria rides too, and Hector showed me a lovely, retro-seeming new BMW parked outside that he had just bought for her, but a forgot to take a picture of it, or her (she’s lovely, by the way) so the best I can do is a picture of Hector himself. Here he is:
Hector Peniche
Later we all went to a tiny cinema called El Retro, where I gave a slide show for about fifty people.. I’m very out of practice and did the show really badly, but everybody claimed to have loved it – which is not an uncommon experience. Once, back in the nineties, when I was still using Kodachrome slides and a projector, I did a show at a BMW rally somewhere in the American South. Just before it started the cassette tipped over and all the slides fell out. There was no time to sort them – all I could do was stuff them back in any old how, so I never knew what was coming up next. The audience was delighted and kept me in pizzas and beer for the rest of the show. [“It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it.”]
In the old colonial centre of San Cristòbal, as in Mazatlán, the low facades of the houses disguise the fact there is usually a large area of ground behind them with one or more larger houses and gardens.
Outside in the street the houses look like this:
But inside, behind these modest facades . . .
. . . are big properties like my cousin Christine’s house and garden.
San Cristòbal de las Casas, to give it its proper name, is a wonderful old town, with a great climate, but I got there too late in life.
At 7000 feet I discovered that at my age my tolerance for altitude has vanished. I was breathless the whole time I was there, and really only comfortable sitting down. Where is the man who was once quite happy coming down to Potosí from 15,000 feet in Bolivia? Not only that, but I suffered the indignity of a tummy bug coming back to Europe. I have always prided myself on my gastric fortitude and I’m humiliated.
In fact the last time I can remember losing it was when I squatted in a field in India, in the state of Bihar, 47 years ago. That’s when I composed my most memorable poem:
One should not stray far,
After lunch in Bihar,
For the food in Bihar is rather bizarre.
Not even as far as the nearest bazaar,
For none can outrun the food in Bihar.
When I came to check in to my flight at the airport hotel, Aeromexico offered me a business upgrade at a price I couldn’t refuse. I snapped it up because it meant I could spend my last six hours in Mexico waiting in their business lounge. But it was not like any business lounge I’ve ever lounged in – it was more like a works canteen, a huge noisy barn of a place full of people eating off paper plates. Well, I’ve nothing against people having fun, and I have no reason to blame my condition on the one mouthful I took of the “bife” and rice, but it was not nice.
The flight home however was very comfortable.
PS: I hear that Vladimir Pudding leaned on his buddy and drone supplier, Pistachio “Percy” Kameni, to persuade HIS buddies, at Hamas, to start something awful and take the world’s eye off Ukraine. Probably rubbish, but it certainly worked.
Here, at last, what you’ve been waiting for – the tale of the croc’ hunter.
We are in far north Queensland, where we had just caught a mud crab, but I forgot to note how utterly delicious it was. Huge clumps of white flesh. Never had anything like it since.
So, on again, word for word . . .
Monday 5th January, 1976
We are advised to leave while the going’s good. The tractor repair guy has returned and says Cooper’s Creek is still down. It’s beginning to rain after a dry night. Bill comes with us on his trail bike to help in case I get stuck, and we move gingerly off. As far as the creek the going is tolerable and this time I ride through the creek unaided. Bill waves and turns back, and we go on into worse adventures on clay slopes, eventually falling over in a puddle – but no damage, and Carol takes it well. The rain goggles are a disaster – fog up inside like all the others, and the lens also falls too easily out of the soft frame. At speed perhaps the airstream might help, but it’s at slow speeds, stumbling through mud and potholes that one wants to see best, and can’t. The answer is to wear nothing. Brakes, likewise, will only dry out at speed.
Ted in the Bush, smelling the flowers
Back at the ferry, not realising it was Susie passing us coming over, we get into conversation with the one-legged ferry man. A wispy fair beard, a saucy expression, he talks about his life as a crocodile hunter – up to $20 for a “freshie” – double for a “saltie” – he had one 16ft saltie that brought $240 for the skin. Said he’d never go after one of those again. Too big to land in the boat, they had to skin it in the water, attracting shoals of small shark (water very shallow) which lacerated their legs. H says there were three of them shooting together – both the others are dead. One turned out to have been a convicted rapist who’d killed a man, and was eventually shot dead after killing another. The other was his wife’s brother, who died of septicemia. His own leg he lost to cancer, but after it had been badly mashed up. Croc shooting, he claimed, wasn’t all that dangerous, nor that rewarding. “You get wages and a half, but you’re doing what you like best. If they opened it up again I’d be off in the morning.”
It seemed like a brave boast, but perhaps not. The shot is all-important – a target of 6” diameter at relatively short range, and if you know your job you won’t often have to swim to collect the corpse. Says there are plenty of freshies left to build up the population, now that they’re protected, but there aren’t enough salties left to keep a man in wages.
One of his favourite places is Bourketown, in Queensland. There’s a pub, and very little else. The walls and floor are all at an angle, from being hit by storms, and when it floods the clients have to row themselves to the thunderbox at the bottom of the yard. A Yank was the host, but he got a bit “Tropo” and after periods of sanity he would become violent in the Wild West manner, punch his clients across the bar, and come down the stairs with guns blazing. They put him away, and then the pub was hit by a “whirly-whirly.”
Another character he knew who was “Tropo” had a pet white cockatoo which he used to put on trial for misdemeanors – the case for and against was considered carefully before judgement. At the time it was doing twenty days for chewing a shoelace.
Tuesday 6th
Back in Redlynch. The green frogs on the doors, windows, leaping impressively, all sizes. The huge cane – 8ft or more – mosquitoes of different sizes and pitch – the croaking in the river – covered with floating vegetation – the big, brown bush pheasants settling down on the cane field.
[The cane trains – a complete railways system to serve the sugar mills – counted 200 hundred baskets south of Sarina.]
Brian Adams decides to give us three of the four bracelets to take away with us. Carol buys a tongue to eat for dinner. A convivial evening, each describing his own building.
Wednesday 7th
We planned to go to Green Island but missed the boat through laziness, compounded by Brian’s kitchen clock.
Went to Cairns and Atherton Tableland, to Kuranda and half-way to Mareeba. Dinner with Brian and Anne, then train at 10pm.
[Apparently we then took a train back to Brisbane to avoid riding the same roads back. I remember nothing of this now. The train took two days. We arrived in Brisbane on the 9th.]
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PS: Vladimir Pudding has been putting the lights out in Kharkiv for a couple of days and nights. We really must do something to stop him. If you have a congressman, please write to him.
