Apr 13, 2008
I suppose I can claim to be born into the motoring age. At least my father was always pretty keen on cars, owning his first car, a Model T Ford in 1925, and having a succession of cars, mostly Fords, up till the time of his death in 1963.
The model T was bought before my time, but as I understand it from family legend he bought it in Balclutha and as licences were not necessary in those days, he got a driving lesson from the salesman and then drove it from Balclutha to Romahapa, where he was head of the school at the time. He didn’t seem to regard it as a great adventure, but then he was only 30 at the time, and I suppose had that youthful self assurance that young people have these days with electronics. Confidence wasn’t universal though. He had a story of some contemporary motorist who had driven a similar distance in bottom gear, frozen to the wheel, and too terrified to work the clutch.
Our model T was a sedan and had a proper metal body with wind up windows, unlike most of them which were called “tourers” and had a fabric hood which could be lowered to let the air in in fine weather. I don’t know if it was new, but it must have been fairly recently minted because it was navy blue, not the formerly universal black that was Henry Ford’s idea of a colour range. It had running boards along the sides which you could step on to enter it, (it stood quite high) and they had metal concertina type things attached to the edges of them which you could pull up so as to use the running boards as luggage racks.
Just below the steering wheel where the indicator lever and the windscreen wiper control would be these days, there were two long metal levers with which you could adjust the choke and the spark advance, - not very automatic. You set them at some appropriate setting before going round to the front to turn the cranking handle to start the engine. When it fired you rushed round to readjust the levers to the idling position. Our model T, I heard Dad say, had a Ruxel gearbox, which was pretty flash I believe, and which gave it, I think, two extra forward gears. With it you changed gear by depressing the clutch twice, if I recall. It meant that the car was in gear when the engine was switched off, and as the spark was operated by a sort of generator called a magneto, the engine could start itself under some circumstances. It did this once when we were parked on the wharf at Castlecliff to see the navy sloop, Veronica in 1931. I suppose it was doing a tour of honour after becoming famous for the part it had played in disaster relief after the Napier earthquake. Apparently the sun shining on the model T’s motor that day had caused the engine to fire, and the old car had proceeded to go slowly forwards towards the edge of the wharf and the Wanganui River.. Fortunately Dad saw it in time, and rushed to climb aboard and bring it under control.
We had moved to Fordell near Wanganui in 1930, and in a way the Model T was lucky to be with us. Our “personal effects” were booked to go from Dunedin to Wanganui on the ss. Manuka, which was unfortunately wrecked on Long Point south of Dunedin in 1929, fortunately before it was to load our car and things. Grandma had some cutlery salvaged from the Manuka, with the Union Steamship Company’s flag symbol stamped on the handles, and scratches which she claimed were caused by the salt water. But you never know who you can trust.
About 1933 we traded the Model T in on a nice green 1932 Model A Ford with black mudguards and wire wheels, and a clever black steel box arrangement on the back for luggage. It was hinged so that half of it could be opened out and pinned in place to form a sort of short tray, which we kids were sometimes allowed to sit in and ride al fresco when the car happened to be full of adults. I remember that car with affection, with its gathered pockets on the insides of the doors, and its petrol gauge on the dashboard which must have read directly from the tank which was under the bonnet just in front of the windscreen, for it jiggled whenever the petrol in the tank jiggled. I would watch it with trepidation as the red “empty” mark began to come up on our journey home to Fordell after an afternoon’s shopping in Wanganui on pay day. I was a worrier even then. And of course I would rejoice inwardly when Dad would pull up at Mr Kingi’s service station at the foot of Durie Hill, and boldly order “three Shell”.
We did lots of trips in that old car,- down to Wellington in the Christmas holidays to stay at Uncle Murray’s at Karaka Bay; to Masterton to visit Grandma and Auntie Pearle when she was teaching at Solway College, and also to visit Mum’s sister Elsie and Uncle Albert when he had a bookshop in Masterton. It never let us down, worry as I might when the petrol seemed to be getting low.
Then in 1936 a house that dad owned and had let in Dunedin got burnt down and there was insurance. Wowee! - new carpets, new curtains, and a brand new Ford V8. Easily the best car in the village at that time, towards the end of the Depression. Proud! Were we ever proud! It was sleek and shiny and “gunmetal grey” and Dad taught us how to wash it with chamois leather and polish it with “Carpol” so it stayed that way all its life.
Provision for luggage on cars in those days seems to have been something of an afterthought. Perhaps they weren’t expected to take you far enough for you to need luggage. The V8 had a space behind the back seat, but you had to pull the back of the seat forward to get at it, and that meant everyone getting out of the back seat whenever you wanted to load or unload. However Dad bought a secondhand tent, he was a regular client of the auction mart, and developed a great scheme to take us on a camping holiday up to Taupo and Rotorua and Whakatane and round East Cape to Gisborne and Napier and home. That needed more luggage capacity, so we sold our pet lamb for ten shillings and bought a smart folding luggage rack that attached to the chassis at the back. Even then the tent, which when rolled up would fit in Dad’s army kitbag, had to be accommodated in the hollow between the front mudguard and the bonnet. We also removed the back of the back seat and with the boot filled with primuses and bedding and things, you could sort of lean on that for a seat back.
It was a great trip. We camped the first night on the deserted beach of Lake Taupo near Turangi. Hardly anyone lived there then, and a couple of ducks swimming on the lake were our only company. We gathered driftwood to make a campfire, and Dad showed Alan how to cut a forked stick and stick it in the ground by the fire, and then to angle a green willow stick in the fork and suspend the billy of water over the fire. While the billy was warming up he lit the primus and Mum fried sausages and onions over it, and we put potatoes in the ashes around the fire to cook. They came out a bit crusty on one side and not especially well cooked on the other, but we’d all had a swim in the lake so we were hungry, and the food went down a treat.
The tent was a big old blue and white striped thing with a cunning arrangement of poles and struts that held it up without the need for a centre pole. It must have been all of three metres square, so there was plenty of room in it. Anyway Alan had a little pup tent that he slept in, and I think Hilary slept in the car, so that left plenty of space for Mum, Dad and the three of us boys.
I suppose Mum and Dad had a mattress of some sort, but Alan showed the rest of us how to collect bracken and build up a bed with it, and of course we claimed it was comfortable. There were no sleeping bags. We just rolled ourselves up in a blanket. It was a great adventure.
Next day we did the Huka falls and the Aratiatia rapids and drove through miles of dusty pumice country covered with bracken, - perhaps there were little pine trees among it even then, but they didn’t show, - to Rotorua. On the way, Hils made up a song. I think Mum had had a tentative go at dyeing her hair before the trip, though when accused of it she claimed it must have been the result of pushing her hair out of her eyes while cleaning her brown suede shoes. Anyhow the song, to the tune of “Lavender’s Blue”, said:
Dad’s hair is grey, dilly dilly, Alan’s is black.
All ours is brown dilly dilly,
Mum’s is Nu Nap.
We sang it in the back seat for miles and miles. It was something of a hit.
At Whaka I think we had a guide pretty much to ourselves. We went over the bridge where the kids jump into the creek for pennies, and were shown hot pools where real ladies suspended potatoes or something wrapped in a tea towel to cook in the boiling water. We had some of the carvings on a meeting house explained to us, and we made the customary comments about the boiling mud pools looking like the porridge at home. We were much impressed by the Pohutu geyser which was really something in those days before geothermal electricity diminished its pressure, shooting boiling water thirty or forty feet into the sky, and the guide explained that it could be made to perform even better by the addition of soap, though she didn’t happen to have any. Altogether it was quite a day for an eight year old. I guess we bought souvenirs too, though we were not big spenders.
After Opotiki it rained most of the way, and the road worked its way along the cliffs high above a turbulent sea so that it was quite a relief to be sitting on the landward side of the car. And then the road would descend at frequent intervals to ford one of many creeks, (we counted thirteen of them before we lost interest), which the car would drop bravely into and grind its way across. We were headed for Raukokore where Dad knew the teacher at some God forsaken Maori school, but whenever we happened on someone on the road to ask about progress, or more significantly, about the availability of petrol, we got the same reply, “About two miles, I s’pose.”
Eventually, after many miles, we did find a petrol pump surrounded by many 44 gallon drums, and never was the sound of fuel gushing into the tank so musical to my ears.
At that point Dad phoned ahead to our host to ask about the way and received the disquieting news that there was yet a full scale river to cross, but not to worry. Our host had arranged for the bullock team, which normally dragged the cream cart across the river, to meet us there and help us through. It was dark when we got there, but a flash of the headlights brought a man on a horse out of the scrub, and with him this team of four large bullocks, complete with heavy wooden yokes on their necks just like in a nursery story. “Keep the engine running in low gear if you can,” the man said. “It will help the bullocks. The river is a bit high though with the tide coming in, and the engine may cut out, but never mind. Do your best.”
Well the engine did keep going though the water came right into the car and rinsed the dye out of Dad’s reddish greatcoat where it lay on the floor, so the carpet in the back seat of the car was red for ever after. However we got to the other side alright, and was I glad!
Harry Trimmer met us there in his car, and guided us along an atrocious road, “Keep in the same ruts as I do,” he said, till at last we reached the schoolhouse. What a day! What a car!
Next day it was fine, we had a swim in the sea, and the world seemed brighter. Unfortunately Dad had carefully parked the car with the handbrake on, so when he came to shift it, all four wheels were locked tight, and even a tow from the cream lorry would only make them skid along the ground. Mr Trimmer said it was salt in the river water, brought in with the incoming tide. that had rusted the brake shoes onto their drums, and it was not advisable to park with the brakes on under those circumstances. However he found a local mechanic to remove the wheels one by one and with a teious cold chisel, release the brake shoes once again.
I don’t remember how long we stayed at Trimmers, - perhaps about a week. It was there I learnt to swim, by the simple technique of forgetting that I couldn’t, and just lifting my feet off the bottom, and presto! I didn’t sink! There I was dog paddling on the surface of the sea. The buoyancy of the salt water must have helped, but once having got the nack, swimming in fresh water never bothered me thereafter either.
I remember we went back to the river once, to watch the cream lorry unload empty cream cans onto a dray which our bullocks dragged across the river to another cream lorry waiting on the other side , and then brought the full cans back from it. We also met a family of Walkers who owned a store and a farm and a wharf and a launch at Waihau Bay. Real pioneers.
Dad still had that car into the 1960’s, when he gave it to Hilary’s family after Darcy brought home a Humber Super Snipe which he didn’t want, when he came back from England. Dad bought it off him as a favour.
Later Hilary gave the V8 to Barry and he ultimately sold it to a neighbour who used it to pull a sweep in a hay paddock, and the last time I saw it, it was standing abandoned, still shiny, in a Northland pasture.
But there were better times ahead for it. It got shifted into a kids playground and kids took imaginary trips in it for years after. After all, it was always a car to make kids eyes sparkle, right from the beginning.