Allan Dick , 2 Apr 2011

Some time back, I headed for Australia with a firm plan in mind to do a Boy’s Own trip into the Australian Outback, but it all turned to custard when we arrived at Melbourne airport to find that the car we thought we had arranged wasn’t! This took a couple of hours to establish, by which time I had had enough coffee and was sick and tired of looking at the walls of the arrival hall.

So I headed across the road to Avis, hired a Holden for five days and set out on a bit of an ad-lib voyage of discovery around Victoria.

The only alternative was to try and catch a plane back home at an affordable price.

We had mixed success.

We visited Geelong and took a tour of what I thought was the Ford Australia museum. Geelong is where Ford set up shop in Australia ages and ages ago and their engine plant is still on the outskirts of the town in a retro looking plant. The “museum” is actually a joint venture between the Geelong City Council and the local polytech with some Ford backing.

It’s an interesting enough place and worth spending an hour there. They have on display the world’s first “ute”. This claim is surely based on semantics. Ford (or is it the Australians as a nation?) claim that Ford designer Lewis T Bandt listened to the heart-felt plea of a cockie, circa 1934/5, who wanted something comfortable for best, but also something onto which he could load a bale of wool, some #8 wire, a bundle of droppers or a squillion rabbit traps. Bandt modified a 1935 Ford V8 by putting a wellside deck on the back and claimed to have invented the “ute”.

The original is on display at Geelong.

We all know that there were plenty of these sorts of vehicle around before Louis T Bandt came along. The difference is that most of the others appear to have had a separate wellside deck added on behind the cab. Bandt, blended the wellside in as part of the overall body. But surely, this is a case of a rose by any other name?

Anyway, after Geelong we did the Great Ocean Road, which is claimed to be one of the World’s Great Drives.

Like the claim of inventing the ute, this is much overstated. The Kaikoura Coast is twice as spectacular and it can’t hold a match to the coastal drive from Greymouth to Westport road.

Then we headed inland for Echuca where the guide books told us there was an Holden Museum. Which was odd as I thought that Holden officially supported the Australian National Motor Museum at Birdswood near Adelaide. Ah well, Echuca here we come.

Echuca’s on the Murray River and is famous for its paddle steamers and it was a bit far to get there that day, so we stopped in a pretty place called Daylesford.

Parking car and our overnight bags we strolled around the town and found a local pub where we got engaged in conversation with the town drunk. Before he had taken to the grog he had made a healthy living importing high performance car parts from the USA.

We got talking about cars and he slipped into the conversation that Eddie Ford lived in a small town nearby. 

Eddie Ford is Australia’s classic car Guru. He’s been publishing a small magazine called “Restored Cars” for thirty years or so along with some other specialist titles.

So we went calling - but not until after we had visited a shop in Daylesford called “Lost in the Fifties” which specialised in cars, music and ephemera from the 1950s.

We spent several small fortunes on some models and dusty old books and magazines - “Sports Car World” and the like, plus a “Man” magazine of 1950. 

Eddie Ford’s town was more a collection of houses and buildings scattered over an area, rather than a town with a proper main street. Eddie wasn’t expecting us, didn’t know who we were but he was warm and affable and we swapped magazines and chatted for a couple of hours.

If Eddie was any more laid back he’d be on the carpet.

I suppose you could say that “Restored Cars” is old-fashioned in that it’s small, mostly black and white and getting the information onto the paper is more important to Eddie than any graphic niceties. It’s a damned good read. 

Eddie came from a nearby farm, started “Restored Cars” because he liked old cars, moved into town and set up office and house in an old bank.

He doesn’t have an advertising salesman, he started out by just relying on the retail sales of the magazine and then advertising came knocking at his door. Which is a good, old-fashioned way of doing it.

Back on the farm, he started parking up cars that people offered him because he was a good guy editor of a good classic car magazine. He now has about 300 out on the farm and he’s got a collection of “best” cars in town.

He built himself a very large “garage”, big enough to house about 20 cars and he’s got an elevated office at the back. It’s elevated so he can sit at his desk and when he needs inspiration he can look out over his collection.

But he’s got other cars parked up in a collection of smaller garages and sheds out the back.

It’s mostly American - mostly 1950s and 1960s. He doesn’t appear to use them much. His favourite? A 1959 (or was it 1960?) Cadillac two door coupe of which only a handful were made. It’s the model with fins so tall they have aircraft hazard lights attached.

As we chatted he mentioned that a former Dunedin man lived nearby - Harry Wright - who I knew of as a former hot-rodder. Harry worked for Up the Creek Engineering in the next town and that company is owned by Grant Cowie who owns the ex George Smith Austin Seven racer - the venerable Rubber Duck.

So we made another detour before heading off to Echuca.

Grant Cowie established himself in Australia from Christchurch many years ago. He was back with the Austin a couple of years back for the big Skope classic meeting at Ruapuna. That was the first time the Austin had been seen in action in New Zealand for almost 50 years.

Grant employs three full-time staff and they have plenty of very up-market work on hand.

Then it was, finally, off to Echuca but it was too late for the Holden museum that day, so we went to the pub again and this time met up with the engineer of one of the old steam powered paddle steamers. He was a decent sort of fellow with a huge bushy beard and surprised us when it turned out he was only 23 or so. And, wouldn’t you know it, both he and his Dad were classic car people!

We weren’t expecting too much from the Holden museum frankly. After all, Holden’s just 50 years old and there are really no secrets.

This is not an official Holden Museum, it’s a private thing and it’s worth a look if (a) you are in the neighbourhood, or (b) have Holden red paint for blood. There are no surprises because there are no secrets in Holden history. There’s a selection of Holdens from the FX walrus grille model up to the new Monaro. The shop had plenty of good stuff on offer, but we’d spent our allowances in Daylesford the day before.

It wasn’t the trip I had planned. But we had ad-libbed our way around and it hadn’t been a total waste of time.

The English bodied Hudson that now resides in Wellington

to be continued… 

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