News from Ted
Perth, Mid-April
Before leaving the country I wrote this rather harsh assessment:
Australian life does seem to have a dreamlike quality. Life seems to pass in a daze, as though one were just going through the motions. People do work, but never show the effect of it, and this underlying assumption of imperturbability seems to run through even their most drunken or excited moments. There is no real intensity and so boisterousness, un-warmed by real emotion, has a hard and cruel feeling. One must assume that Australians protect themselves from self-awareness, could not bear to know what they feel and so prefer to feel nothing. Better to amble slowly in the sun, in singlet and thongs, a stubby – in its cooler – in hand, drawn by the ever-present aroma of barbecued meat, like a Bisto kid grown up in paradise.
The Passage to Singapore
The Kota Bali was a fairly small vessel. In its upper decks it was a cruise ship. Down below, it was an animal transporter, taking live animals to the halal butchers in Malaysia. To my jaundiced eye it was difficult to distinguish between the people upstairs and the sheep below.
But what really occupied my mind and tore me apart was the thought of the pain I knew I would cause Carol, because it had become clear to me that if I were to write the book I’d had in mind for two and a half years, I must finish the journey alone. It was a terrible dilemma – Carol or the book. There was no question that we loved each other, completely. How could I expect her to understand? That I would let a book endanger our relationship? That having invited her to join me, I could now abandon her? So I wrote:
When there are two people, at least half of what happens concerns the other, or is modified by the other’s presence. Travelling in concert somehow blunts the sense of new, strange experience. If I were writing about two people travelling together that’s a challenge I can accept. But I cannot introduce a second character at this stage. There’s not enough weight or interest to absorb such a change of parameters. But even more than that I have to admit the intensity of the experience is much lower á deux. More comfort, more indulgence – a microcosm of marriage.
The passage to Singapore is fraught with the burden of responsibility for bringing down the towering expectations in which it seems to me Carol has chosen to house her love for me. Every day now it seems a new storey or wing is added to this unstable structure – in French lessons, references to details in the future of the journey and most of all in omissions of remarks, of which I am most conscious. The impending doom is so oppressive but still I can’t bring myself to make the first, simple remark which will bring it all crashing down. It must fall, it seems, of its own volition.
The atmosphere on the ship is crude and harsh. Australian couples who by their mere presence, let alone their references to “your wife” emphasise the wrongness of our situation. For two people to insist on their own forms of truth they must be entirely open to each other, or the uneasy wriggling under misguided interrogations deepens the dilemma.
“When did you start the journey?” they ask Carol. “What will you do afterwards? Are you going to live in France or in America?”
None of our answers mean anything to them. If they had the faintest concept of a life less surely conceived than their own they could not have the temerity to ask so abruptly. And certainly, the first vague, evasive reply would give some hint that perhaps a moment’s thought should be given before the next, inevitable line of the catechism. But no, inexorably they continue. “Are you going to have kids?”
The aroma of beer rolls down the decks every time the saloon doors are opened. The ladies, it’s said, change their frocks four times a day.
Charles and Arthur Booth, bull shippers, sheep shippers, drear and dreadful men.
We are both deeply depressed by the huge chunk of our resources we have had to break off for this miserable experience – to be exposed finally to a parody of everything that was worst about Australia – to be taken through a gale – to be denied the few visual pleasures of the Indonesian coast we might have enjoyed – by a maudlin and waspish Welsh captain whose first words to me were so ridiculous as to be beneath contempt. [Sadly, I didn’t write them down.]
Watching the horizon one day, at evening, so definite a line stretching round the ship below a wash of orange light, it struck me that it was quite obviously circular, and if the horizon is a circle then clearly the surface must drop away on all sides and at an equal decline. Given that the same picture presents itself at all times on the open sea when the horizons are clear, the inference must be that the earth is a globe. It is so much more understandable to me now how Columbus came to this conclusion – and that he cannot have been the only one, but perhaps the one who could least restrain the urge to demonstrate it, whatever the peril.
Passed Christmas Island on Easter Monday – a tree-covered rock rising sheer from the water, with waves breaking on it. A mine of phosphate rock for Western Australia, and little else it seems, but 4000 people.
Next morning we pass by Java Head, but light is poor and hazy and can only distinguish low lying masses on either side. Am sad at having to come this way. Would have been so much better and cheaper to have followed logical route of Darwin – Bali, etc. But there seemed no other way out. [Darwin had been destroyed by a hurricane.]
“We’re on the wrong trip,” I said to Carol. “We’d better get back on the right one soon.” It was as close as I’d dared come to saying it all. Already I was suffering from a sore throat, and my body was preparing to act out my emotional predicament. But Carol took it up and soon the whole edifice lay in ruins about us, with Carol wandering about the wreckage like an earthquake survivor, stunned, howling with rage and grief, cursing me, herself, fate, everything.
So they went on, the storms and lulls, through our last day on board, through the first day in Singapore of chasing papers, hotels, contacts, money. And the second day of more papers and unloading until I could at last go to bed and let the fever break over me. Eventually, as the fever went so did Carol’s blackness, and at last we seemed to be clean with each other again.
“Did you really have to take us through all that?” she asks, unsure of herself. I thought so, had been thinking so, never feeling it right to stop the grief halfway.
[We agreed finally to go our separate ways when we got to the Cameron Highlands, in Malaysia.]
Singapore, April 22nd
Arrived 8am. Took bus from Jurong into city. There, hassled with shipping clerk about import permits, then found hotel on Bencoolen. Back to ship in evening to get documents and few things, then to hotel, struggling on foot part of the way because of difficulties with buses and one-way systems.
A long-vanished sight. Sampans in Singapore
April 23rd
After a bad night, still feverish, to the AA for import permit, then to ship for bike, and at last to hotel with all gear, to bed, to sweat and eventually in night, to break the fever.
April 24th
The infamous lunch engagement with Mr. “Polly” whose sloppy conduct I can’t forgive. [I suspect he was a shipping agent.] Call Sunday Times at night.
April 25th
Walk around thieves’ market – nothing much there really except atmosphere – and ride round the island in the afternoon.
April 26th
Nobody at ST to talk to except Anglo-Asian editorial manager, Mr. Jackson, who is polite and suggests features for the Sundays.
Mr. “Polly” compounds his infamy. Shipping from Penang to Madras comes to too much. Peter Harland is suspected of having appendicitis. Indian High Commission makes ominous noises about visas, and I become profoundly depressed about money. Have only £100 left.
At last, cut the knot and call Tony Morgan for $1000. [Tony was a friend in England who had kept some money for me.] He promises to send it to NatCit, Penang. He sounds pretty demoralised. “You certainly left at the right time.” [Britain, under Harold Wilson, was going through a dark time, literally, with power cuts and strikes.]
Feel much better and cross the road to join Carol on an evening harbour cruise. Nothing to see, but it makes an hour away from the traffic. Singapore Tourist Board has erected a stone carving of a “Merlion” on a pier by the bridge and unashamedly announces that this is a foremost tourist attraction in Singapore.
After harbour we wait out a torrent of rain then go to Telek Ayer street restaurant across the river.
Here’s a picture of Gurney’s hole in the ground that I wrote about last week – where he had his orchard.
Thursday, April 8th
To Norseman. Exchanged thoughts while riding. Carol was on a “bummer” about something she’d written home and wished she hadn’t.
I was figuring out distillation plants from sea water using solar energy or burning slash from the bush. Much attracted by idea of a coastline as desolate as this must be, yet potentially so fertile. Lovely salmon gums in salmon-pink earth.
[The road to Norseman runs along the east and, as usual, I spent the time wondering how to make it habitable, and wondering what kind of life one could live here. Then suddenly, in late afternoon, I felt tremors through the handlebars and stopped just in time. All but two of the spokes on the left side of the rear wheel had gone, and the wheel was about to collapse. Fortunately, I had recently acquired new spokes and I set about rebuilding the wheel, a job I had never done before. As soon as we stopped moving swarms of mosquitoes attacked us.]
Horrible hour and a half battling with flies and mosquitoes.
[But I got the job done, and we arrived at Norseman.]
Friday, April 9th
One last remaining building from the gold rush days of Coolgardie
Bill leaves us for Perth. Off to Kalgoorlie, Coolgardie, and as far as Merredin. Carol burned out and hysterical but comes round. Lightening skies. Amazing smoky red sky behind rain clouds and streamers. Stopped at a pub and watch a party of lads talking and drinking. Two wore the same black t-shirts – one was very muscular and male model-y, with his quizzical smiles and profiles. The other a blonde buck-toothed boy with sweet feminine smile. Lots of touching. He was the only one who didn’t have aboriginal blood. One guy, absolutely plastered, wandered around with a jug of beer.
[I can only hope that I was more sympathetic to Carol than my notes seem to suggest.]
Saturday, April 10th
Into Perth. Straight through suburbs to Mosman Park, where found Bill tinkering with his bikes. We went off to a fine pub lunch, and then my first game of Australian Rules, which seemed an exciting enough game, but too formless after soccer. The goal referee with his ridiculous movements of the fingers ¬– and the flags – wears a white trilby and coat.
Gerry Rafferty and Bruce stoning themselves in the kitchen. He’s the drummer. Astrid, the daughter, Leslie and Paul are Rhodesian expatriates working for Zimbabwe, but Perth is so far from anywhere.
Terrible winds and rain lash the house at night and during the day.
The city seems as tho’ it might be a good one to live in – but can’t see that it compares for interest with Melbourne, or for tranquility with Adelaide. But then I saw very little.
Arrived with the engine once again in chaos, the cylinder sleeves scored and an exhaust valve burned out, once again it seems from dirty air, though this time the fractured manifold may have caused overheating as well.
[It astonishes me still that nowhere did any of the mechanics who helped me throughout my journey suggest doing something about air filters, when the one I had was so obviously inadequate.]
Norman Bennett (the Lucas man) was in hospital after a car crash, as well as having his mouth sewn up for a skin graft. Mervyn Whitehead helps me through to Matlock’s and I have the good fortune to meet Dave Waldren there (from Hornsey – ex-copper) who came over with wife Jan on a Suzuki 125 two years ago and worked his way up to being service manager. He does everything to get hold of parts and helps rebuild the bike in a frantic burst to beat the loading time for the ship.
After this we sailed for Singapore on the less-than-good ship Kota Bali – so that was Australia.
I’m off to the Adventure Bike Rally in the UK next week and I’m giving myself a little holiday from my usual holiday, so you might not hear from me for a week or two.
‘Till then, Cheers
Ted
We left Ceduna, and André’s garage, on April 6th to take the road across the Nullarbor plain.
Strangely there is almost nothing in my diary about this part of the journey, although after almost fifty years some of it is vividly memorable, so I will abandon the normal format of this series and just describe it as I remember it.
The next township of any note, so far as we knew, was Eucla, on the state boundary between South Australia and Western Australia. That was about 500 miles away.
We had met nobody coming the other way, so we had no current information of the state of the road, but we had gathered plenty of alarming prophecies. So far as we knew it was all dirt. Kangaroos, bulldust and road trains would be the principal dangers. Bulldust, they said, was thin powdered rock that filled huge potholes so that you wouldn’t know they were there until you fell into them; families of kangaroos would charge across the road unannounced and knock you down, most probably into a large pothole; and road trains – well, obviously you need to get out of the way in time because they don’t stop.
We had no information about fuel stops and had to assume there were none. Since my range on a full tank was about 300 miles, I must have been carrying extra, but my diary says nothing about it.
What we discovered after we got going was that a lot more of the road had been sealed than we expected, and when it did turn to dirt it was quite manageable – certainly nothing like as bad as the mountain roads of Ethiopia.
There were only 200 miles of dirt road left, and halfway across them we met Mr. Gurney. He was a spry, elderly gent with a big white beard, and he had a tin shack by the side of the road where he sold petrol. He lived with his wife (whom we never saw) in a ramshackle bungalow, with some emus, a pet wombat, and some other more familiar animals. It was there that I learned the wombat, a substantial animal, has a sense of humour. It likes to get between your legs and suddenly spin, tossing you to the ground.
Mr Gurney at his Kunaldra Station
Gurney said he owned eleven hundred square miles of Australia, but it was of no value to him because the only drinkable water was found in a cave near his dwelling. It was the cave we wanted to see, but he was reluctant to show us – “not since those three blokes with guns. They were sitting down there firing rifles at the roof. Mad drunk or something.”
But we persuaded him that we were safe. The Nullabor is quite flat, so we clambered down a crater. As I wrote in Jupiter’s Travels:
“Miraculously, at the bottom of the crater among rocks and boulders Gurney had an orchard, the only place where fruit trees could survive the heat. The cave is a series of great caverns, and an important experience, for it suggests that the whole plain must be largely hollow. Indeed there’s a theory – or fancy – that the Southern Ocean flows by subterranean passages to the interior of Australia. At any rate, the hollowness seemed most significant there, because you can feel the earth reverberate when you stamp on it, because emus call to each other by inflating bladders under their croups and making a noise like the underground echo of a steel drum, and because hollowness is a sign of great age. So in the night, half asleep on the ground, listening to the emus drumming and the clank of distant goat bells and not knowing what they were, I thought I was hearing the sound of a great tribal celebration drifting across the plain”.
We spent the night there outside on the ground. We were among the last to travel that road. Later that year a new road, further south, was built and tarred, leaving the Gurneys alone in the wilderness and I have wondered from time time what happened to them. He called his place Kunaldra Station.
On Wednesday, April 7th, my diary says:
Met Bill McGarry at Eucla. Camped out in the bush.
The Nullarbor at dawn
Just like most bikers who have travelled any distance in the last forty years or so I have been well aware of the existence of Touratech.
When I first saw some of their products back in the early nineties – tank bags, boxes, countless clever devices – it was with a very strange and confused mixture of emotions, part admiration, part envy, part regret and part contempt.
I had been riding round the world for four years with none of this stuff, I told myself, and I was proud of having contrived what I needed for myself as I went along with plastic and elastic and bits of this and that: And what about those majestic leather bags, hand stitched in Argentina, that sit astride the tank in the museum today. Of course it’s true that I was happy enough to accept Ken Craven’s fibreglass boxes but still, I would have invented something.
In my mind it was this bare-bones approach to travel that was an essential part of the experience. I was a purist. Just a man on a reasonable bike, wearing recognisable clothes; not a hi-tech phenomenon beamed down from Star Trek.
And then, contradicting myself, I thought if anyone was going to invent stuff to take on a bike through Africa it ought to have been me. I was full of ideas. I should have been Touratech; and then I saw how ridiculous I was being, that the world would go on, with or without me, and I turned to other things.
So when I came to the Touratech Event last weekend, all that history made it especially interesting to me. If you haven’t been yourself, the factory is in an unpronounceable village, Niedereschach, in the Black Forest area of south Germany and is far and away the biggest business there. It was their nineteenth Travel Event, which normally attracts enormous crowds – 17,000 in ’23 I was told – but because it rained comprehensively the entire weekend only a few thousand of the hardiest riders attended.
The hardiest bikers – damp but undaunted
I was invited because I was to be inaugurated as an Honorary Fellow. Being British it’s hard not to laugh, but the heart of the matter is very serious indeed. A strikingly tall and photogenic rider called Dieter Schneider has created something he called the Fellows Ride to combat depression.
The trophy – actually my first ever
It doesn’t surprise me at all to learn that riding a bike is a great antidote to depression, and he organises rides to help overcome what must be a very debilitating state of mind. So even if I couldn’t ride to the event – it was really too far for my scooter – I was all too happy to encourage all those Jolly Good Fellows. Dieter is determined to spread the word beyond Germany and if I can help I will. It’s a Jolly Good Idea.
That was only one of my opportunities to face the crowds this year. I have been enticed to appear yet again at the Adventure Bike Rider Festival at the end of the month. It’s another mammoth event that takes place at Ragley Hall, in Warwickshire. With any luck I’ll have Billy “Biketruck” on the stage to insult me with his fabricated tales of my appalling behaviour. I plan to get back at him this time. And of course I’ll be signing books as well.
I should have been signing books at the Touratech event too. The German translation of my Canary book was supposed to be ready but unfortunately it didn’t get to the printer in time. However, I’m promised that it will make its appearance at the big event, the MRT they call it, in Gieboldehausen at the end of August. I used to go to this meeting regularly, ever since a couple of guys, Ralph and Wolfgang, started it back in the nineties. I remember riding from Sospel, above Nice, to get there in time. I believe it was the longest non-stop ride I’d ever done, around 1,400 Km, and it started on mountain roads in a heavy fog. But I’ve never been interested in endurance riding. I have friends who do “Ironbutt” stuff but, with respect, I think they’re nuts.
And now, going even further back:
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS, Ceduna, Australia 1976
André’s Story
(Word for word, as promised, two weeks ago)
In 1939 he worked in an aircraft engine factory in Paris. (Gnome et Rhone). Then, at least as a skilled man, you earned two or three times what the rest got. He had no father. Was responsible for his mother and family. Lived between Porte d’Italie and Porte d’Orleans. Came war. He stayed at work – reserved occupation. Went on working during occupation. Says the British abandoned France. Promised twenty divisions. Sent only two, and they started the war. Then was trying to escape from romance with an older woman. Took offer of a job in Warsaw. Then another in Russia. Was promised Gaulloises. When they didn’t arrive he protested and resigned. German officer tried to bully him into staying, but A insisted and was given travel papers home via Köln – was even able to visit his uncle there, a POW there, and take him stuff. Then he “disappeared” – – In 1958 he left France in disgust for Australia. Had married a woman, had two children (now both in Australia) but she had mental trouble. Now has no more relations in France. Protests too much. Other reasons for not wanting to go back? In his opinions and personality he reminds me of Papillion’s character.
Next week, the Nullarbor at last.
March 19th to 26th, Adelaide
Our hosts John and Judith Brine were academics who enjoyed our company, as we did theirs, and they looked after us for a week while we explored the city. There was plenty to see but I made only one short note.
Visit to Art Gallery. A quiet mood. Aboriginal bark paintings. The Pleiades and Orion in a T and Oval shape respectively. Some good Australian landscapes, by H.J. Johnstone, John Glover, Heysen, Walter Withers (all 19th Cent.) Some Dutch – a cavalry battle, bulbous white horse glistening like swollen intestines.
Adelaide is the last big city on the south coast before getting to the other side. We set out on:
March 27th and 28th to Laura and Wilpena
Averaging 63 mpg. Spoke gone in the morning. Very brown flat land. Grain silos and sheep trains drawn up at sidings. Big grey and white gums. 50 miles between towns going towards Flinders Range. Melrose seemed a pretty town, just beyond us last night. Hawker was a surprise, but is a tourist outpost, with two grandiose hotels, one now derelict (Grand Junction and Royal) – or were they in Quorn? Will check today. Took wrong road from Hawker for a few miles – under construction. Then 30 miles to Wilpena Pound Nat. Park. Shop. Wine. Stew. Galahs. Sweet-smelling pines and gums. Roseate sky. Walk in the Pound. Kangaroos and babies. Fine woods. Derelict house with graffiti.
March 29th, from Wilpena
Hard ride back to Quorn (Grand Junction Hotel).
[The hotels were in Quorn after all.]
Port Augusta power station, all in smog. Amazing in all this space to see small town in smog. On to Whyallah. Turns out to be a steel foundry (BHP) and almost nothing else. Next pt. on coast is Cowell, another 64 miles. Long ride and turn off on a whim to Lucky Bay. Dirt road. Little row of holiday houses on the coast. Great heaps of sea grass on the beach. Little sign of life. Bed down behind some scrub bushes in the white sand. Grilled steaks, cabbage and potatoes. Perfect bed with net cover.
March 30th
Up with the sun. A man put his gill net out and caught a dozen whiting in half an hour. Gave us two for breakfast. Delicious. On to Port Lincoln. To Cowell, to sharpen knife at butchers. Stopped first at Port Arno where found a man who sold cockles. Then decided to move more slowly round the coast and really do the fishing seriously. So turned off at Port Neill. Quiet holiday resort., Two adjoining bays, one with long jetty. Houses all locked up, likewise caravans, pretty green park, with attendant Scotsman and white tomcat. Spent the rest of the afternoon fishing off beach in rough water but no sign of anything. So went over to jetty towards sundown. Felt a few knocks on the line, but nothing much. Tried the silver lure, but still nought. The Scotsman told Carol there were no whiting here. Only a few Toms – or Tommy Ruffs – which are a small herring-like fish with yellow dashes on their sides.
Somewhere near Venus Bay
March 31st, Wednesday
600 miles from Adelaide and two thirds of a pint of oil gone.
First thing after love, i.e. at 7am, to jetty to try again. In first light sea is beautifully illuminated. Can see bait on the bottom (sand among the grass) and also the Toms swishing about. Gradually I learn where they’ll pick it up – i.e, floating and in motion about halfway down and so, painfully slowly over a period of three hours catch four little Toms, and lose two off the hook. But it’s a beginning, and they make a breakfast. We had just finished eating when a young man came to ask if we’d help move some furniture.
“There’s five bucks in it!”
“Not half!!”
The furniture is made of cardboard and is moving into a plasterboard house. Job takes fifteen minutes. Lucky Country.
From Port Neill to Lincoln, long and straight. Huge granary, grain loader, rail head. Spent winnings on a cask of Coolabah and tied plastic bottle on the back. Took wrong road to Coffin Bay but came back to it after eight miles. Big bush fire filled sky with fiery smoke. Sparse, dry country. Scrub. Brown sheep. Coffin Bay, three miles of road, a small town with lots of holiday houses spreading from it. Jetty and series of interconnected bays. We camped on a beach beyond houses on dirt road. Shallow cockle bay. Towards evening, Andy Spiers, the new ranger for the newer Yangie Reserve drove up with wife Helen and three children, and a surf boat. They later invited us to lunch the following day. We had a beautiful night under the net. Went cockling in the morning.
Thursday, April 1st
Caught a sprat from the jetty. Rain clouds formed. Lunch with Andy and Helen. Then rode through the reserve to Avoid Bay, to catch a big one off the rocks. It took the tail off my bait. Then I lost bait hook and sinker in rocks, twice, and cut my foot trying to retrieve them. Stone is volcanic, sharp and friable. Back to Andy’s at night. Listened to his tapes. Then home to tent.
Friday, April 2nd
Weather still cool and damp. Went on to Venus Bay with four lamb chops. Camped on bluff overlooking most rugged coast. With mile-long rollers breaking on rocks. Took pics. Made good fire, in spite of strong wind and had lovely meat and sautéd potatoes. Very warm and comfortable behind bush.
April 3rd
From Venus Bay to Ceduna. Through fifty miles of bad dirt road. Then good road. Said caretaker at Venus (his wife feeds the pelicans, 24 of them) it’s what the Nullarbor is like when it’s bad.
[Ever since Melbourne we were haunted by the prospect of the Nullarbor road, three or four hundred miles of it, across the huge waterless wasteland that divides the south of Australia.]
To Streaky Bay. The café with the couple dressed up in little white numbers – like McDonald’s. Nothing again for 70 miles. Then André’s Garage [in Ceduna] and invitations from A. for dinner. Wife Helga from Munich – the ultimate “Level Gaze” as Carol put it. Children Bernard and Andrew.
[Next weekend I will be at the Touratech travellers’ meeting in the Black Forest, where they want to put me on the stage and make a fuss of me, so there probably won’t be another episode that Sunday. The following weekend, still in Ceduna, and André’s strange story.]
Edging along the south coast towards the Nullarbor
The Rises, 3rd to 13th March
The Handbury family made us feel at home on their sheep station, and even allowed us to earn a little money doing labouring work. I learned a lot, but my most vivid memory was of watching the foreman kill and dismember a sheep. It was done with amazing speed and precision. We stayed for ten days, and I made very few notes.
Helen’s manner a trifle odd at times. Paddy the kindly, strapping younger brother. Ted Jagoe, ex-jockey, Farm hand or foreman?
Worked to make a little money, clearing sticks from paddocks under the big blue gums. Then we cleared out an oat silo together. Hard and itchy work. But had wonderful meals, lovely room.
Fishing. Red fins and one glorious salmon trout, plus a turtle.
My first catch: two redfins and a salmon trout
On Monday (a holiday) we went sailing on lake Natimuk – and went out on the trapeze on Tony Mitchell’s boat.
On the big paddocks a sheep occasionally dies, debilitated by worms.
Saturday 13th MacArthur
From The Rises, left late, 1pm, Went 70 miles in great heat, stopped at MacArthur for drink. Saw a 28lb conger eel being trailed by two boys on a stick. Looked like a long grey stocking stuffed with jelly. To park, free. Put up my gazebo of tubes for first time – works quite well, but obviously now the sheet should be made to fit it better. One of several lads came to borrow a fork.
Back later, three of them, with a carton full of beer bottles. We talked and drank, and they left a bottle for us. A little later three possums came to roam around. One was particularly tame. All lowered themselves head-first into litter bin.
Trestle bridge on south coast
Sunday 14th Port Fairey
Phillip Pilgrim & his ’52 Vincent Rapide, with the Vincent Owners Club at Port Fairey. Amazing coincidental meeting with my Melbourne mechanic friend. Carol gets to ride in a sidecar. I get advice about forks and spokes (heavy duty)
Monday 15th from Mt Gambier
Long straight roads near the coast through endless plantations of Pinus Radiatus from 196 to 1976 some being cropped now. Softwood Holdings Ltd. Crossed state line. Gained half an hour. Beach before Beachport, loads of kelp, collected spherical shells. On to Robe, past lakes (George, etc.) Swans. Theosophy centre. To Robe. Camped on beach. Fished off jetty. Caught one sprat. Ate good dinners at Robe Hotel, slept in perfect little bay, but at 3am heavy sea mist came and got us scrambling for cover. Slept on under lean-to against bike. Woke at 6, good exciting night. Dried things, breakfasted. Talked French, packed. Adjusted timing (LH plug sooty). Big moon hanging over horizon.
Tuesday 16th from Robe
From Robe to Kingston. Little but scrub and sheep. Then along north side of several dry salt lakes, the Coorong National Park, big dunes in the background, Malley trees and succulents. Wandered in over sand and salt to find big ramshackle house with derelict-looking property around it (perfect for heroin lab) but we got no further. Miles to the sea.
Ninety miles of this, then Meningie on Lake Albert. For sandwich lunch. Three ladies from Sydney returning from Adelaide Festival. V Good they said.
From Meningie to Murray Bridge, having remember that Mari gave me names there. Forgot, though, that they were the ancient man/young woman couple. (32.34.29 phone for Bill and Peggy Graton at M.B.)
Wednesday 17th Murray Bridge
A conventional house with a good well-ordered flower and veg. garden. Peggy is the librarian of Murray Bridge – 7000 volumes, about one per capita. A physically self-effacing woman, non-descript clothes, a wad of blue tissue clipped on to the left strap of her bra, but not fastidiously concealed (a mastectomy?) – busy getting things done in the kitchen before a journey to Adelaide. Like any working wife. Then Bill returns. Assume at first that he’s her father. Sparse hair almost white, but covering the crown of a well-shaped hard-tanned head. Features clean, skin clear, though much folded, slightly bowed, trousers hung high on braces – bright eyes, an easy laugh. He’s able to recount events of 25 years ago as though yesterday – but seems to have a good focus on the present. Was a dairy farmer – appears to have enjoyed much success and respect. Read and absorbed as much as possible on the subject. Built stone house (German stone mason) but insisted on concrete foundations, lintels and ties. Says super-phosphate does not leach out, though lime does, according to Rothampstead. Obviously their relationship is very good, though marriage is a convenient word for it.
Murray River water – too thin to plough, too thick to drink.
Thursday 18th to Adelaide (Addleyade?)
But first to Hahndorf – founded 1830s by a German sea-captain and his passengers. All Lutherans escaping persecution. Saw a few attempts to recover early atmosphere. Museum and art gallery in old board school. Interesting paintings by Ruth Tuck of figures, faintly obscene behind lace curtains. Relics of early settlers – lace-trimmed petticoats, baby carriages, etc. Some pottery and jewellery sold there is good. Otherwise, little to recommend.
Hilly country around Adelaide, freeway, then looking down on city and ocean beyond. Into city centre along broad streets to railway station. Had a couple of pizzas then phoned John and Judith Brine and were immediately invited to their vine covered villa on the edge of the city. Heavy polished wood, wainscoting a foot high, Immensely thick brick walls, vines screening the windows, etc.
We spent almost a month in Melbourne. Much of the time I was working on the bike and looking for a ship to take us away from Australia. With Darwin destroyed by a typhoon, I felt the least I should do to be able to say I’d seen Australia was to ride the two thousand miles across the south to Perth, but finding a boat was difficult. One ship would have taken us all around the Philippines to Bangkok but it was too expensive. Another would have had us travelling with racehorses to Djakarta but that fell through. Finally the only acceptable choice was the Kota Bali, a small cruise ship sailing out of Fremantle to Singapore. It cost $200 each, bike included, still a lot of money at the time.
Looking for an antidote to Okker, I was bowled over (a suitable metaphor for cricket-crazy Oz) by the art in the Melbourne Gallery. My notebook lists Sidney Nolan, Perceval, John Brack, Arthur Boyd, Justin O’Brien, Russell Drysdale, Charles Blackman, and I even made tiny sketches of the paintings I admired most.
I see I also visited Kodak, probably trying to get my film processed, but I don’t know if I succeeded. Having to carry all my exposed film around on the bike was a persistent worry.
I see I made a mistake earlier in these notes. We did stay a full month in Melbourne before I was ready to leave.
Friday, February 27th
Melbourne to Colac. Road to Geelong, past docks, competing petrol stations, and along the freeway. Geelong ancient wool port, then to join the Ocean Road. A triumph. Quite as lovely as the Hwy 1 [in California] and much more deserted. To Lorne and Apollo Bay. (Fish & Chips). Then through attractive hills and forests to the hot inland grazing country and to Colac where found Chris at his parents’ house waiting for Karen [friends made in Melbourne]. Went to pub to meet Stephen the publican who owns two pubs and vaguely reminds me of Tom Merrin [a ruffian from my newspaper days] Then back for chops and a cold night ride to Gellibrand and their home – ten acres, fibreboard house on a rise with sheds and then steep slope to small river with some acres of potatoes cultivated with their permission by Vic, a perfect potato grower who calls everyone sheriff. Chris is big, blonde, complacent, affable. Karen pretty, dark, contained.
Back to Lorne on Sunday for the day, where I fished with his rod. He had caught a trout the night before.
Monday we looked for work. Saw several farmers and Dept. of Agriculture. [Presumably we failed.]
Wednesday, March 3rd
Colac to Apollo Bay, Port Campbell and Balmoral.
From Apollo Bay across the headlands, dirt and lush sub-tropical veg. most beautiful. Stopped for dynamiting of tree on road. Coast continues. Bare grazing land. Sandstone bluffs and great sandstone pillars carved out by the sea.
A few of the Twelve Apostles
Carol’s headache disaster. [She had a migraine attack. We were on our way to Matt Handbury’s parents at “The Rises” but she couldn’t continue. We spent hours above the cliffs as I massaged her head and neck until she felt able to go on.]
Convalescence at Port Campbell. Man from Berkshire. BMW rider from Perth (Hunchback?).
Four hours to Balmoral. Long cold ride through the night, just managed to find petrol in time. Caramut Hotel, where we phoned.
From Balmoral, over bridge left on to dirt road, to find house all lit up to welcome us. Such nice people.
I marvel at Carol’s stamina and our determination to get there. Perhaps we had no option. I would never have imposed the ordeal upon her. There’s so much my notes don’t tell.
First, thank you all so very much for your many birthday wishes. I truly appreciate them.
I made a bad mistake in last week’s pages. I said that Melbourne’s famous newspaper, “The Age,” belonged to Murdoch. Untrue. It is and always has been quite independent of Murdoch, and my error is possibly due to my own mild obsession with him. Not everything belongs to Rupert Murdoch. Although we have never met, and he has certainly forgotten the one time we spoke 55 years ago, he has been a fairly constant presence in my life.
In 1969 I was editing an issue of the Observer colour magazine in London and I chose to make “influence” the theme. I made a list of people I thought most influential, and planned to ask them whom they thought were most influential. Rupert Murdoch had just landed in England from Australia. He was making a lot of noise, having acquired two newspapers, The Sun and The News of the World, and he was stretching his wings. I phoned him to say we thought of him as having growing influence, and all I remember him saying, quite pleasantly, was “Don’t be silly.” He wanted nothing to do with it.
In 1975, when I was riding through Ecuador, I met and spent some time with Matt Handbury, a young man on a BMW, who happened to be Rupert’s nephew. He was on a long, unfocused journey trying to decide whether to shelter under his uncle’s umbrella or live an independent life. His mother Helen was Rupert’s sister. He told me that when I got to Australia I should visit their sheep station, The Rises, and – he added – I should also go to see his grandmother, Dame Elisabeth Murdoch in Melbourne. He gave me addresses and telephone numbers and so here I was, in Melbourne.
The political scene in Australia had just gone through unprecedented turmoil, and the Murdochs were nothing if not political, so it could be interesting to meet the Dame now. I phoned, and she invited us to come and have lunch at Cruden Farm. We went on the bike, of course. This is what I wrote:
The road from Melbourne to Frankston was along the East side of the bay. At first it comes inland a bit from St Kilda, where the massage parlours earn constant shy allusions – small villas, painted in rather bright distemper colours, windows painted over and the street numbers in large figures a foot or more high as their principal recognition points; where the smart movie houses (Palais and National) were showing classic movies every night (Borsalino & Co, Delon: Day of the Locusts: Death in Venice), and Leo’s Spaghetti Bar did a generous bowl of Spag Carbonara for 60 cents, on Fitzroy Street, among cheaper hotels (Nightly: Miss Sammi Davis) and cafés and Luna Park on the beach.
So the Nepean Highway, which is a continuation of St Kilda’s road goes out to Moorabin through “Autoland” and then past the Lucas factory on the right, to the more leisurely resorts along the coast where nautical sports keep their dinghies and yachts.
Downtown Melbourne in 1976
Cruden Farm is about three miles inland, not a lot of land but sufficient for the house to be well back from the road on a long drive. Stone house, old English, early 19th century perhaps, the Dame appearing at upstairs window saying “I’m just changing. Go in please, make yourselves comfortable.”
Polished wood, piano, delicious aroma of baking, When she comes down she’s a slighter figure than one expects of a Dame, wearing a simple calico dress (frock?), spectacles, easy light-limbed walk (she is presumably in her middle or late sixties.) We talk at first about the election – her son’s change of heart, her criticism of “The Age” for changing its attitude to Liberal in the last days before the election.
[“The Age” was Australia’s greatest newspaper, and Graham Perkin it’s famous editor. He favored the Labor Party but died suddenly before the election. “The Age” changed allegiance, to the Liberal Party, which was distinctly conservative.]
She (the Dame) felt that Perkin would have stuck to his guns. She is herself a convinced Liberal. It’s difficult though, on reflection, to believe that she would have been able to sustain a different opinion from the men. Keith Murdoch was her husband. Geoffrey – Matt’s father – is a son-in-law, daughters Helen and Rachel (married to John Calvert-Jones). She really believes that Labor was ruining Australia, and that Rupert was reluctantly convinced of it.
Rupert I didn’t meet but saw on TV – a broad-faced, cuddly person with a legend of ruthlessness about him. She pooh-poohs the ruthlessness, says talk of his power mania is foolish, that he’s just not like that to meet. Like so many people, she can’t distinguish, at least in her own son, the difference between a personal affectation of ruthlessness, and the ruthless consequences of rational business decisions taken in boardroom vacuo.
We sip white wine with cheese biscuits – the proper kind that are soft and crumbly and taste of cheese and salt, and the Dame talks easily, beginning each sentence by opening her mouth wider than usual and aspirating the first vowel, a curious mannerism that seems appropriate to her generation and reveals the schoolgirl in her.
We are both flattered by her attention – she is perfectly courteous and seems to pay real attention to what we say. At first she tends to address her general questions to me (about Australia, Australians, etc.) but I turn them over to Carol and the Dame picks that cue up very easily. Calvert-Jones arrives with the coffee – he has a rather obsequious attitude to her – I was surprised to hear later that he was a general’s son. Much later, at The Rises, we heard that he had been surprised by the amount of time she had lavished on us.
He showed us around the grounds, a fine old stable with horses’ heads carved on the post heads, and an ornamental garden.
She came out at the end to see us off, and clambered onto the pillion seat to see what it was like, showing suspenders and stocking tops and knickers, and was very sprightly about it, though when she caught my glance at her deshabille she seemed, for a moment, frozen in anger, as though afraid she’d gone too far.
We’re on a circular drive, in front of the house. Big tree has fragments of honeycomb fallen at its base, and Calvert-Jones seems unnecessarily nervous of them.
House has some leaded windows, and colonial white pillars of wood which always seem so unsatisfactory to me where they meet the joists they support.
Perhaps the essential point about Cruden is that the life it describes is so divorced from the Australia we have got to know – as different as upper-class used to be in England.
A few years after my journey had ended Rupert Murdoch acquired both The Times and The Sunday Times newspapers and he offered Harry Evans the editorship of The Times, an offer he couldn’t refuse.
I was in something of crisis at home so I took an assignment from Harry as a roving correspondent of The Times. I was halfway down South America, in Argentina, just as Margaret Thatcher sent her naval armada to the Falklands. I was in a great position to report the story, as Argentinians went into conniptions about the “pirate fleet” they thought was coming to shell Buenos Aires. But Murdoch chose that moment to sack Harry for not doing as he was told, and I didn’t have the stomach to continue. So I went home to the ranch.
Since then, Rupert, together with his gang at Fox News, has become a monster. I am as likely to blame him as I am to blame Trump or President Pudding for all the ills of the world. He’s the same age as me. We’ll see which of us outlasts the other.
PS: I have a new character in my rogue’s gallery. Along with Vladimir Pudding, Porky and Percy K.Pistachio, I welcome Benny Notonyernellie. (Brits might make more sense of this one).
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!
