Up Front: The Home Straight
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Well if we're talking vehicular nostalgia, and British engineering...this was the first vehicle I ever drove:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ferguson_TEF(1955).JPG
No power steering, no safety bar, and the brakes tended not to work in winter because they got full of mud.
The best way to stop it was to drop the hydraulics quickly and hope the tray dragging on the ground would stop you in time.
Oh, and also hope anyone riding on the tray was ready for you to do this.
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I grew up further inland in Fairlie, but used to make that hot trip up to Christchurch to see the grandparents. Turning off at Geraldine on the way home was always a sign that it was almost over - we'd soon know the names of all the farms we went passed and the kids living there. The bench seats in the Vauxhall would get hot and sticky, the four kids would scrap, dad would smoke, mum would zone out.
I just waved some friends off as they set off to Auckland - the kids are watching a movie on a laptop in the back seat. Which is cloth, and there's air con, cd, radio, ipods, etc etc. Bet they get as bored as we did. -
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Emma’s post reminded me of a story my mother wrote for my young daughter several years ago, about the regular summer holiday trip her family took in the 1920s from Waimate to Christchurch to visit both sets of grandparents. She is dead now and I am grateful for these stories (another was about her first plane flight in the 1930s).
The trip took all day on unsealed roads in their Essex car with its crank starter, the spare tyre strapped to one running board and the petrol can to the other. A box was strapped on to the back for the luggage, the roof was canvas and the fresh air from the flapping side curtains (this was before glass windows or petrol stations) was still not enough to prevent car sickness.
Here are some extracts from the Timaru to Christchurch segment:
“…And on towards the Rangitata, the first of the big Canterbury braided rivers, with their wide river beds, their snow fed water. And here we had to climb a steep rise to the plain above. This was one of the danger spots, and we were waiting for it to happen, for the radiator to boil with a great gush of steam. Then we would have to stop, wait for the steam to die down before Dad could get near it, to take the top off and refill it with fresh water. With luck we would have remembered to bring a spare bottle of water with us, and we did have a spare of just about everything; otherwise it meant a walk down to the river – lucky there was some water handy – to get enough to fill it again. …At last the cooled-down radiator would be filled again, and with a few cranks of the crank handle the car would start again, and we would be off, along the straight flat road across the Canterbury plains. … And the day getting hotter and dustier.
And what about the petrol? We had to keep remembering, Dad had to keep checking, dipping a stick into the petrol tank, and making sure he didn’t let it get too low. Not a matter of looking for the next petrol station, but it was stop on the roadside, unstrap the four gallon tin from the running board, make sure you had brought the pourer, and tip in enough to fill the tank. And amid the petrol fumes, drive off again.
It was now well past mid day, and we would watch for a more pleasant place to have our lunch, like one of the river beds. And preferably somewhere where another car hadn’t just passed, enveloping us all in a cloud of yellow dust.
Our travelling speed was about 20-30 mph, so we had plenty of time to view the passing landscape. On either side of the long straight road were paddocks with crops of wheat or oats, or sheep or cows, but mainly it as the shelter belts of trees that gave us something go to watch. A dark row of trees would loom in the distance, gradually grow bigger, then we would pass through them. As they faded into the distance another row would loom in front of us.
There was one moment we watched for, the first sight of the Port Hills, faint in the distance, but there, that was where were going, we could actually see them, it wouldn’t be long now, only about another two hours. Even Dad was more cheerful, then – whoomph, wobble, creak, groan. What we always dreaded, but had escaped so far, a flat tyre; we had just passed an extra rough piece of road.
So it was all out, unstrap the spare, our one and only spare, any more punctures meant Dad had to mend it there and then, take out the tube, get out the repair set, find the hole, stick on the patch, get the tube back inside the tyre, and so on. … But this time it was the only tyre he had to change, jack up the car, unscrew the bolts, and all the rest of it, accompanied by huffing and puffing in the afternoon sun, and some muttered swear words.
So, at last on again, and still one more excitement, the Rakaia River, the biggest of all the rivers, with its one bridge for both cars and train, more than a mile long. If the train was due we would have to wait while a man with a flag came out of his hut and shut the road gate while the train huffed into view and rattled across. Then he would open the gate again, and let the line of waiting cars onto the bridge to straddle the railway lines, and wait in the bay half way across to let the cars coming the other way pass….
Then at last, the beginning of Christchurch; Riccarton, Fendalton, into the Square, the hills were just ahead of us… It was past five, the heat of the day was passing, it had been a long day, but we had made it, all on one piece, four wheels still turning, petrol still holding, only one puncture … 130 miles all in one day, more than eight hours on the road, and we were there. And two weeks later, the same trip, back again to where we started.”
From:
J Stace (1994) Driving to Christchurch – somewhere in the 1920s. -
Cheers for that, Hilary, it's lovely.
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3410,
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Hilary's mother's story reminds me of one from my Grandad (I wish I'd recorded his stories.)
He was an engineer, by trade and inclination, and during the period of petrol rationing had built a contraption onto the back of his vehicle which he called a "gas producer" or some such. In fact it was a small furnace burning coal dust, which somehow fueled the vehicle via a pipe along the side of it, as part of a primitive duel-fuel system, enabling him to drive from Kaikohe to Hamilton on two-and-a-half litres of petrol (or some similarly unlikely combination of distance and volume; I forget.)
It would aparently peter out from time to time, as fires do, obliging him to alight and stoke the coal-dust fire before continuing on his journey.
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@3410. I've been on a vehicle journey on a van that had what sounds like that same set up. It was on the Coromandal during the late seventies.The driver/mechanical engineers name was Don. He said it was an alternative fuel system, developed during the war.
His system was to start a coal fire, cool the coal smoke (coal gas) and send it true the carburetor. I remember he hit the leaver that changed the carburetor from sucking petrol to coal gas, after the engine was hot, and as we where going down a hill.
We loaded hippy commune food, corn, spuds and pumpkin into the coal cooler, which was of course boiling hot by the time we got there, for lunch.
In hind sight, Don was actually wheel chair bound. I can't remember how he was managing to drive like that. Something that obviously didn't bother me or the other half dozen secondary student and the teacher.
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My Dad told stories of holidays in the North Island where, with the car and trailer loaded up (5 kids, tent, food, petrol etc etc etc), they could not make up the hills. The solution was to turn the car around and, using the really low gearing of reverse, back up the winding gravel roads.
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Lovely story, Hilary.
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@Steven - something like this? I suspect this is a charcoal burner that doesn't actually power the vehicle itself, but still.
Wood gas was of course the big replacement fuel in Europe when petrol was scarce during the war - any period film set at the time will likely include a truck or car with a wood gas unit strapped on top or behind the cab.
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Sam,Thats the one. Note the actual one but I't be very surprised if Don didn't help build it.
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Crap, that last comment didn't read how I intended.
Apart from the car, I found Emma, you writing about the house and the other stationary symbols of the childhood journey, evocative, also.
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Further to my mother's story of her 1920s road trip to Christchurch, her mother, aunt and grandparents drove around Britain in a rental car - an open tourer - in 1913. Their diary accounts were recently published for the family and are fascinating on many levels. Apparently, the grandparents thought that taking their daughters on such an OE would be a good way to meet some suitable young British suitors. However, my grandmother was already besotted with my grandfather, the young lawyer from Waimate, who came from the wrong part of Christchurch, and who features as Dad the driver in my mother's story.
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Sounds fascinating. I'd happily devour more of your mother's travel stories, should you feel inclined to share more, and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone...
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My sister and I both used to get horribly car-sick, so my parents used to stick a couple of old icecream containers in the back so we could throw up with a minimum of mess.
Still do. Nothing quite delightful as a download of recently picked raspberries, half-way through the Awakino Gorge.
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wet raincoats and widdle in the new entrants' cloakroom
So that's what that smell was. Rob unlocks another of life's liddle mysteries.
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happily devour more of your mother's travel stories, should you feel inclined to share more
The next PAS book project, perhaps? I'd say talk with Haywood, but you may need a graceful agent..
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happily devour more of your mother's travel stories, should you feel inclined to share more
The next PAS book project, perhaps? I'd say talk with Haywood, but you may need a graceful agent..
Heh, I'd been thinking, what would be cool would be a book of stories focusing on ordinary people's stories of the same road, through different periods. No doubt it's been done with very famous roads, but I think it's the ordinary-ness that makes it, somehow.
Apart from the car, I found Emma, you writing about the houseand the other stationary symbols of the childhood journey, evocative, also.
Thanks Stephen. I did ask my mother what make the huge old English car we had when I was little was, but she couldn't remember. We used to call it Hercules, and it could get up our steep snow-covered Taihape driveway no worries.
We couldn't find any photos of the Orari house, but this is the house on Cone Road, at Waitohi. My grandfather is the little boy just to the right of the door. Fred and Sarah raised twelve children in that house, two of whom died in infancy.
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We used to call it Hercules, and it could get up our steep snow-covered Taihape driveway no worries.
Probably a vanguard standard, my guess, did it run of kero?
We couldn't find any photos of the Orari house, but this is the house on Cone Road, at Waitohi. My grandfather is the little boy just to the right of the door. Fred and Sarah raised twelve children in that house, two of whom died in infancy.
Handsome looking lot. And that looks like my bike at left.
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And that looks like my bike at left.
Why, were you wondering where you had left it?
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<quote>Why, were you wondering where you had left it?<|quote>
The Triptographer was overheating, on the day.
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The Triptographer
Oooohhh... excellent!
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Probably a vanguard standard, my guess, did it run of kero?
Doesn't sound quite right. But I tell you what, you guys tell me, here it is. This is actually driving my mother crazy now I've brought it up.
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Thats you, needing glasses? I don't know what that car is. It looks british and its got suicide doors but.
Did I mention how my daughter and I went to Taihapi and hired a B&B Grandma and Granddad, last time it snowed a lot.
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Steven, I like this one of you at work.
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