Living History

My Place: cars and travel

Our first car in my lifetime was an Essex Terraplane - with celluloid and leather windows that you had to fit (clip on) when you wanted them. I think that Dad did all his own servicing on this car - I can remember him doing the oil changes. The registration for this car was 62-642. I can also remember seeing the petrol rationing vouchers as Dad went to fill up the tank on the weekends, probably during 1947.

Some time in 1948 we lined up to get a brand new blue Hillman Minx. Registration TN-321. This car first pulled our small blue caravan and we had many, many travelling holidays, covering the east coast from Brisbane to Melbourne, the Hume Highway the Princes Highway, Canberra and the Snowy Mountains area. We joined the Holden family from about 1950 with a pale grey FX.

For several years during my time at primary school, my parents rented a holiday cottage at Nambucca Heads for a fortnight’s fishing in July. We often travelled with other families who also had a caravan and as fishing was the main interest, we went to coastal, river and lake places. The coast north of Sydney was the most popular - Lake Munmorah/Elizabeth Beach, Hawks Nest and Tea Gardens, Foster, Harrington, - just the right distances for a long-weekend break. South of Sydney we went to Kiama, Gerringong, Sussex Inlet, Minnamurra (where I enjoyed canoe hire) and Huskisson. During a trip to Brisbane in 1955, I can remember seeing nothing but dirty sand and a low dune area, at a place they called Broadbeach, with the large multi-storey Lennons hotel seemingly in the middle of nowhere!

When we travelled on weekends and long-weekends, we used to leave the Sydney suburbs on the Friday evening and always made planned stops the first night within about 4 hours’ travel time; travelling the Hume Hwy, we would make Goulburn or even Canberra (with ice at a Shell servo along Woodville Road) and travelling the Prince’s Highway, to Windang; which had a very noise wooden bridge that disturbed my mother’s sleep. When travelling north, we used to stop overnight with friends of my parents at Wyong.

I felt that I knew every inch of the Pacific Highway between Sydney and Brisbane. The highway crossed many of the coastal rivers and my eager mind quickly learnt the order of the rivers and the names of the main towns. A great way to learn geography! In the 1940s and 50s many of the river crossings were by car ferry (punt) and we used to queue patiently to wait our turn. A large punt took traffic across the Hunter River at Hexham, another punt at Raymond Terrace, and travelling further north, we crossed the Clarence River by vehicular ferry at Harwood. This was the last ferry on NSW state highways to be replaced by a bridge, but not until 1966. For trips south on the Princes Highway there was a punt over the Clyde River at Batemans Bay and I can remember a well-placed fish and chip shop to ease the pain of long queues there.

The trip down past Canberra and into the Snowy Mountains area was popular with my parents and interested friends for the longer break over the 4-day Easter weekends. We loved Jindabyne, beside the pretty Snowy River before the area was flooded, and looked in amazement at a small church on a hill that we were told would be 100 feet underwater when Lake Jindabyne had filled. We also passed through Adaminaby several times, and on later visits soon after Lake Eucumbene started to fill, were sad to see roads that we had previously driven on, just going straight into the lake. Several times we drove right to the summit of Mount Kosciusko in our FX Holden. Other trips took us through several of the NSW limestone caves; it was possible to drive up through Katoomba to the Jenolan Caves, out past Blayney for the Abercrombie Caves, south to the Wombeyn Caves just north of Goulburn then back to Sydney over about a 4 day break.

Helen, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory

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