My First Car

SOLC DAY 21

Glenda’s recent post about her visit to a car show and her mention of the ‘open road’ reminded me of the eventful purchase of my first car https://glendafunk.wordpress.com/2023/03/19/american-nostalgia-for-the-open-road-solsc23-sol23-day-20-31/.

I had no need of a car in England. Trains ran well back then (I gather they are a nightmare these days). In London I used the underground (tube) or double decker buses and the occasional taxi to get around if it was too far to walk.

After saving up a fair amount of money doing various jobs, I had a plan to drive right around the Australian coast. I started my journey by going into a car dealership in Melbourne with a friend who knew something about cars. On his advice I came away the proud owner of an EJ Holden sedan for which I paid AUD450. I didn’t take out insurance as I couldn’t afford it on my limited budget.

It was cherry red and white and looked similar to the car in this photo, without the white walls on the wheels. Obviously, it wasn’t a collector’s item, as it would be these days, just an eleven year old car in a saleyard that was in the right spot at the right time for me.

Can you believe it didn’t have seat belts and I think the gear shift may have been on the steering wheel?

I had arranged to stay for a few days with a very distant second cousin, whose address I had been given by another relative before leaving England. He used to be private secretary to Prince Philip (that’s probably worthy of another slice some day). His car was an older model Rolls Royce and he lived in a prestigious suburb. I parked my new car carefully on the hilly street outside his house.

When I went out the next morning to run an errand, my car was gone. I had owned it less than forty-eight hours and it was gone! I walked back down the hill and over the next rise, just in case I’d forgotten exactly where I parked it.

No car. From amongst the expensive, higher end models that lined both sides of that shady treelined road, my lowly Holden had been stolen.

I rang the police. They took my details over the phone and said that they would do their best, but of course they didn’t hold out much hope. My plans to travel around Australia were dissolving around me. I had arranged to drive west to Adelaide along the coast road and then meet a friend from Japan. We had met while working in a ski resort in the Snowy Mountains. He wanted his last chance to drive in a straight line across the Nullarbor Desert before returning to Japan. There are no long straight roads in Japan. As I don’t like driving long distances, it was a perfect solution.

I’m not sure how I filled the next few days as I prepared for the first leg of my journey and wondered whether to buy a bus ticket or hold onto the remote hope of my car being found.

Five days later, the phone rang. To my surprise it was the police and they were asking me to come and collect my car.

Apparently the man had been stealing several popular models of cars all around the city and then hiding them in various side streets. He was going to steal one more and then take them all out into the bush and strip them down and sell the parts. The police were given a tip off and were watching him as he broke into that last car.

Fortunately the man took them to all the locations where he had parked the other stolen cars. Including mine.

I went to the police station in a dreamlike state and got my car. ‘He didn’t do any damage,’ the policeman assured me. ‘He wanted them in good condition so he could strip them down.’

I got my first car back. There were just a few cigarette butts in the ashtray. Back in those days, cars still had pull out ashtrays.

My first car. Bought, stolen and recovered within a week. It still feels like a dream.

GRATITUDE DAY 21

I am grateful for cars and how useful they can be in our daily lives. I will of course never forget the first car I owned.