ABPA - Australian Bush Poets Association

From the archives - When the Nullabour was a dirt track ...

Oh Manfred that is soooo cute! ....the car, the caravan, the fashions (not the dirt track). What a dinky little caravan.

Heather

Heather that was top of the line way back in the dark ages.

Hey Manny.

Bob

Struth Manfred when that was made you wern't long out of nappys 1958 star model ford customline Grandads was two tone green I use to us it tow my horse float around to the rodeos

Bill the old battler

Spot on Bill, Star model. I think the whole rig cost about 8 or 9 hundred pounds (from a flawed memory).

Compliments of one good croc season in 66-67 ...

Mannie that’s back when the Nullarbor was a nine day trip and a shower with a gallon of beer at each end.
I remember it well.

TTFN

I think we did it in about three or four Dave, from Norseman to Ceduna, unreliable water tanks along the way. The highlight for me was Madura Pass - about two miles of sealed road and a break in the landscape - very pretty. ... and I still remember those bloody corrugations ...

The semis would load up on the train at Port Augusta for the trip and drive off at Kalgoorlie. I did one trip with a mate and the carriages were straight out of a Western cowboy flick. No sleepers. Just stiff leather upholstered bench seats and you had a little kitchenette to do your own cooking. No guard carriage either as I recall. You could walk out to the end of the carriage and see the miles of line disappearing over the (flat) tree-less horizon ...

Was definitely the best train trip I have ever taken ... Driving back, by comparison, was boring.

You do have a flawed memory Manfred, if you bought in 66-67 it would have been dollars...not quids!...

Maybe. Even though the changeover occurred on the 14th of February 1966 people still thought in 'Pounds' and worried about the transition to kilometres and kilos ...

... there was also a great debate about the Government diddling us out of a 'penny' in the changeover from SIX pence to FIVE cents ... a few mathematical midgets would show, on paper, how the Govt stood to make a fortune from this secret tax ...