My first set of wheels

I’d finished my final year of University and gone straight into farm work as a contractor with my old boss on that years harvest.   In the early part of the season we spent most of our time slashing, winnowing and baling hay into the small rectangular bales you used to see once upon a time.   Now-days the large circular bales that now dot the countryside have replaced these smaller more manageable ones.  We worked hard with twelve-hour days, seven days a week until we had completed the 2000 acres of his 5000 acres of grass cut and baled.   Which to the layman is just over 3 square miles – yeah, that’s a lot of bales!  I got to the point where I would actually dream of bales coming up the elevator at me…just couldn’t escape the never-ending monotony of the job or the nightmare of the “sea of bales” awaiting me the next morning.

Thousands of hay bales - after a while you'd see
them in your sleep 

After completing the early part of the harvest (hay), we then switched to taking off the grain crop with his brand new Claas combine harvester.   It was a beauty and as you can imagine for those following along at home and have read my earlier blogs initially he wasn’t going to let me come within 40 yards of it based on my prior experience with farm equipment, but my charming personality (oh, and the lack of reliable farm hands) made him finally relent and let me be his 12 hour on 12 hour off cohort.   So many stories from the farm I think could write a book about them.

Anyway, this is all well and good, but the story so far doesn’t explain my first car….   

At the end of the harvest I had saved almost $1000, which would have to see me until I found a job.   In those days there were no teaching jobs readily available so I had to work out what I was going to do with myself.   Never one to sit on my bum and complain about the situation I figured that I would just get myself to Melbourne I’d find a job of some sort.  I felt like the world was at my feet but wasn’t exactly sure what was in my immediate future, but definitely felt positive about the situation in general, but Melbourne was about 100 miles away and so transportation would be imperative for my job hunt.

Mum's 1971 Torana - produced by General Motors Australia

Up until this point I had borrowed mum’s car (1971 Torana) to go to and from work each day on the farm, but she was done with lending her car, so with the harvest now complete I was “strongly encouraged” to find my own transportation.   Hence it was with this as a backdrop that I was casually skimming the used car pages of the local paper (Ballarat Courier) when I came across what I thought was an absolute “find” given that I wanted to only pay $500 for a car.

I can still see the advertisement now – “1963 Wolseley sedan, one local owner, low mileage with road worthy certificate.  $500 ono”.   Price was the only factor that bothered me much as I wasn’t a car aficionado nor particularly interested except for the utilitarian value of getting me from point A to point B.

By this time mum and dad had finally gotten a telephone at home, although dad did make us record the number called and the length of the call in a paper exercise book so he could match it against the telephone company bill each month…don’t ask!  (Dad did this till the day he died – seriously he always thought Telstra were trying to rip him off).   My nickname for dad was “Watchdog Bill”…you get the picture!

TW with his pride & joy - 1963 Wolseley 24/80 Mk I sedan
at Craig & Al's house in St Arnard circa 1981

So I called to enquire about the car, “yes it was still available, and yes I could drop round and see it tomorrow morning”.   It was only a mile or so from my sister’s house in Ballarat so the next morning I caught the bus into town and walked over to see it.

To be honest I’d never heard of this brand of car before, but both mum and dad assured me that it was a bit of a luxury car “in its day”, which piqued my interest but still had no idea what it looked like or what to expect and with no internet to look up the image I was completely in the dark.  

In actuality I didn’t have the foggiest idea about what to ask the owner in terms of its reliability or general use having never owned a car before.   The older gentleman who owned it hadn’t driven it too much of late, and it have been parked in his garage for sometime so the actual car was in pretty good condition given its age.  It had a walnut (yes, real wood) dashboard, leather seats, three speed manual gearbox (on the tree) and not a bad ride except for the thin and rather uncomfortable tires, but beggars can’t be choosers and so after a short test drive around the block I determined that it was okay to buy.  Not sure on what basis I made my decision but it seemed just fine at the time, plus it had a current roadworthy certificate – how bad could it be?   After shelling out half my summer’s earnings on a car I felt like a million bucks driving home to show it off.

James – my younger brother is a true car-ophile (okay I might have just made that word up?) and how he laughed when he saw my purchase…he was in absolute hysterics that I had paid $500 for he what he determined an rather “inferior piece of crap” – my words not his (got to keep it clean).

I had the Wolseley for about 18 months and it was truly a great first car, completely reliable although to be honest it did have a couple of quirks… firstly it would shudder and shake violently if I got above 50 miles per hour – even after I put new tires on it!  As well, I had to amuse myself when I drove anywhere as there was no radio and the heat was perpetually stuck in the “on” position so I had to drive pretty much everywhere, all year round with all of the windows rolled down to try and escape the suffocating heat…especially in the hot Australian summers…other than that she was beaut!

TW the environmentalist - some might say a Prius equivalent -
my 1981 Daihastu Charade at home in Clunes circa 1982

My next car was a Daihatsu Charade – a three-cylinder juggernaut, to be fair I like to think of myself as ahead of my time…just call me Terence the environmentalist!   This was the Prius of its day – we’re talking early 80’s.   Again it would struggle to get over 50 miles per hour and forget about passing anyone on the open road, but the petrol consumption was brilliant at 50 mpg.   However I think the thing that cracked everyone up was the color – bright apple green!

Anyway the long and short of it is that I have a reputation in my family for buying rather odd makes and models of cars and yes my manhood has been called into question on more than one occasion – let me see after James, both Craig and Al have had more than there fair share of hysterics over my vehicle choices.   In fact I think Al almost cried laughing when he saw the Daihatsu…so glad I could entertain them so heartily.   Some might say it was as close as you could get to a glorified rollerskate without being an actual rollerskate...

I’m such a team player!