Читать книгу A Life of Pride - Alan G Pride - Страница 20

Along with the bikes, I was also buying and selling cars. After the T-model Ford in 1948, I had a 1928 Oldsmobile tourer. It cost £120. It had been a four-seater, but someone had cut the back seats off and put a table-top on. I kept it for a year or so. Once I drove it on a hunting trip with half a dozen blokes on the back, and the axle broke as we bumped across country. We were way off the main roads, looking for ‘roos and rabbits, so I had a long walk back to the highway.

I finally got a lift back into Broken Hill, found a replacement axle at a wrecking yard and persuaded long-suffering Gloria to drive me back out with it in her lovely car. She wasn’t too happy about it, but I could always count on her to help me. (Years later, after our father had sold his car, she’d drive him to Broken Hill Tip in her Jaguar, so that he could scavenge to his heart’s content. I think she found it quite embarrassing, though with the scrounged wood and metal, he'd make things for her daughters Marie and Julie – a cubbyhouse, a miniature clothesline. He also resoled and mended everyone's shoes with recycled materials. )

I still managed to make a profit on the Oldsmobile and my next car was a 1936 Ford ute. A very smart-looking car, but difficult to work on, because it hadn’t been designed for easy access under the bonnet when anything went wrong.

The Oldsmobile outside 307 Oxide Street.

I took it as far north as the dingo fence on the Queensland border several times, driving with friends on hunting trips. We’d go way off-road, which was asking for trouble, and on one of these trips I hit an old tree stump full-on. This dented the sump and bent the front suspension.

We hobbled back home, and the repair job was one of the toughest ever. I had to remove the whole front suspension and take it down to Neejame’s repair shop in Blende St. They had hydraulic presses and oxy cutting rigs; it cost heaps to take the axle off, straighten it out and get the dent out of the sump, because the steering box was in the way. Then it all had to be put back together.

Nevertheless, I was a glutton for punishment and kept taking the Ford up near the border.

Another time, we were bouncing along there with a bunch of blokes perched on the back, guns at the ready. Everyone fell about when I hit a pothole, and one of the rifles, an automatic 22, banged its muzzle against the tray floor and went off – straight through the petrol tank.

So there we were, miles from any made road, with the petrol running into the sand. I jumped down, raked the prickles out from under the Ford and made the gun’s owner lie there with his thumb plugging the hole in the tank, while I considered what to do. Finally I went over to the dingo fence with a pair of pliers and cut five or six metres of fencing wire. We plugged the bullet-hole with a piece of soap, backed it up with a shirt as a tourniquet and wrapped the wire around the tank, tightening it with a screwdriver.

Luckily we had enough fuel to get home, but as always with that Ford, the repair was complicated. The fuel-tank was mounted on top of the chassis rails and the body atop of that, so to remove the tank, I had to jack the body up off the rails before getting Neejame’s to weld a patch over the hole.

Another time, I was out with Pro Hart and Laurie Heath on the Adelaide road near Mingary, when the Ford came to a sudden stop. We lifted the bonnet and found that the fuel-pump had failed. Of course we didn’t have a spare, so we had to improvise. First we removed the air-cleaner and then the carburettor, to expose the float-bowl in the engine. I siphoned 9 gallons of petrol from the main tank into a can and Laurie very carefully poured it into the exposed engine, while straddling the mudguard and gripping with his knees around the headlight. Off we went. Unfortunately, because the engine was running, the fan-blade splashed petrol all over Laurie. So to stop the fan spinning, we took off the fan-belt. Then we had to drive along with just the wind to cool the engine. In less than half a k Laurie ran out of fuel to pour in, and we had to stop and refuel him. We eventually made the 70-k trip home in these tiny intervals, the bonnet up while Laurie and Pro took turns to perch on the mudguard like contortionists.

Despite its devilish mechanical problems, the Ford gave me many happy memories. As well as shooting bunnies, ‘roos or foxes, we would take our girlfriends out in it to an empty shearer’s hut, for a weekend stayover. We’d take a broom to clean out the dust, and rig up a bush shower – a bucket with a shower rose fitted to the bottom of it, which we filled from the nearby dam. Very basic, but luxury for us away from our parents and the prying eyes of Broken Hill.