For a couple of years after we arrived in Australia we joined the local soccer club in Box Hill, and at the end of one season, we took a week off work and joined the club in it’s end of the year trip to Cumberland River, near Lorne.
Not many of the players had cars in those years, so we relied on the few who had, to supply the transport. The name of the guy we went with was Rod, (I never did find out his surname), a real happy-go-lucky sort of person who would be ‘in’ practically anything. The first day we arrived there, we set up camp and spent the remainder of the day getting acquainted with the surrounding area and also the small beach into which the Cumberland River flowed.
We woke up to a steady rain the next morning, so Rod suggested to a few of us to take a drive to Warrnambool, where his uncle ran a small farm.
“He told me I’d be welcome anytime I’d like to visit him” Rod informed us, “as long as you bring your own grog and your own sleeping bag, he told me.”
“How far is Warrnambool from here?” somebody asked.
“Only 160 kilometres.” was the answer. We all looked at Rod, then at his ‘clapped out’ little Morris, looked up at the sky and thought: “Why not,” and we hastily gathered a few camping utensils and our sleeping bags, filled up the boot of the car with it and the odd dozen or so bottles of beer, and five of us, plus Rod, took off on our little sojourn.
The troup consisted of Rod, Cor, my older brother Gerald, Brian, Graham and myself. The drive along the Great Ocean Road was very scenic, we drove through the Otway Ranges, past The Twelve Apostles, through Port Campbell and Peterborough. The sun was just ‘breaking out’ as we drove into Warranambool just after lunch and shortly after we arrived at Rod’s uncle’s place.
“Gone to Melbourne, back on Tuesday,” said the sign on the front of door of the farm when we pulled up.
“What now?” somebody asked.
“May as well go the beach for the afternoon.” somebody suggested, which we did, and, after having a nice swim and some sunbaking we decided to get the esky out of the boot and “break out” the beer. Of course, being unseasoned drinkers, after consuming a copious amount of the brown lager, we all finished up drunk.
We managed to roll out the sleeping bags and spent the night on the beach and woke up the next morning nursing hangovers and trying to shake all the sand out of our clothes and our hair. After a hearty breakfast of chocolate milk shakes and cream doughnuts, we had purchased from the local store, we took stock, and Rod suggested we take a drive to Portland, about an hour and a half away. “Right-o,” we said, (we were wlling to go along with anything by then) and, headaches forgotten, we took off on the next leg of our unplanned journey.
Upon arriving there, we had a quick look arond the town and decided that “this wasn’t much of a place” and without any hesitation got back into the car, headed straight to Mt Gambier, 110 kilometres away, and arrived there around lunchtime. We had a look at the beautiful ‘Blue Lake’ there , of which I managed to get a photograph on my little ‘box brownie’.
We had lunch, which consisted of fish and chips, washed down with a few cans of beer (real connoisseurs we were) and this gave us all renewed enthusiasm so somebody said: “We’ve come this far now, we may as well drive all the way to Adelaide.” This, I thought, was asking a bit too much of the little Morris and a long trip that, with six if us packed into it, seemed absolute lunancy.
“O.K. Let’s go,” somebody said, and that was it, I was well and truly out voted before I could even utter a word.
We drove through wine growing country, through Penola, Narrocoorte and Bordertown, had a quick tour through that town and continued along the Dukes Highway, and at around tea time had a counter meal at a pub in a place called Keith. It was dark when we left the hotel and halfway between Keith and Tailem Bend, we drove off the highway for about a hundred metres on a dirt track, threw down our sleeping bags and laid ourselves down in the open air, under millions of stars.
It was a beautiful night and, despite being dog tired, a couple of us were having a bit of a chat when Gerald, who has always been a chronic sleep walker, jumped up out his sleeping bag, yelled out: “FIRE!!!”, rolled up his bag, tucked it under his arm, and, stark naked, raced down the dirt track to the highway, did a “Lefty” there and sprinted in the direction of Adelaide, with us, wetting ourselves laughing, in hot pursuit, yelling and calling and trying to wake him up.
He didn’t come to his senses until a semi-trailer, with its high-beam headlights on, came boring down towards us, (I wonder what that driver thought) and we all made our way back to our makeshift campsite. What a laugh that was and we still ‘rib’ Gerald about it to this day.
We made Adelaide the next day, where the six of us bought an identical straw hat each, and wearing these and smoking big cigars, walked through Myers. We were the centre of attention , as you can imagine, and we spent the next two and half days trekking back to Cumberland River, through Bordertown, Dimboola, Horsham, Ararat and Colac, and when we finally arrived back at ‘base camp’, the rest of the guys from the soccer club were absolutely astounded when we related the story of our ‘little’ adventure and stared in disbelief at Rod’s little ‘workhorse’ which had accumulated so many kilometres over the previous six days.
It was probably the best advertisement for the Morris car ever, and I owned one myself for quite a few years in the late 70’s.