Bonzer Words!: Europe In The Sixties
Shortly after Rodney Gascoyne left school his mother suggested one last family camping tour. It was 1963 and the roads were still open, no autoroutes, autostradas, autobahns or motorways.
Rodney writes for Bonzer! magazine. Please visit www.bonzer.org.au
We took a family holiday by car in the early sixties, using our Ford Zephyr, and set out to camp and explore, mainly Italy. The plan meant quickly getting through France, with my brother and I sharing all the driving, but slowing down some after going over the Alps and dropping down to the French Riviera.
We stayed on the coast and stopped again in Monaco before going into Italy and looked around next in Genoa, where I found it frightening to drive on narrow streets, with trams likely to come round any corner and aim straight at you. I found out there about the locals’ idea of “Priorité a la droite”. This applied on roads of equal importance that joined together where the person to the right had the priority. But the locals also saw this as a game and, if on the smaller road, would attempt to bluff from the right. By keeping your eyes ahead and not showing they had been seen, they would screech to a halt at the junction, otherwise they were in and blowing their horn. We also learned the difference between a small Fiat 500 on the weekend with Mama and the kids aboard, dawdling down the road, as against the weekdays when they would dart everywhere at great speed and taking whatever liberties and advantage they could of tourists, when Dad was alone.
After Pisa, we drove on down to Rome and stayed a few days, seeing all the sights in the City Centre, touring the Vatican and St. Peter’s, as well the Roman Forum and the Coliseum. Next, we headed for Naples and an eye opener. Back then the city was very badly damaged from the war and not a lot of repairs had been made. There were large parts of the city where illegal shack housing had sprung up on the sides of roads or on any vacant land. There were also the ‘scunitzi’, the kids from those homes that would roam the streets, following any tourists they found. It was like no other part of Italy, or Europe, at that time. Again we saw the sights and even went to Vesuvius, Pompeii and Herculaneum.
A special trip was our day on the Isle of Capri. We had camped outside of Naples in the bay to the south, in an orchard next to the beach. Getting up early, we had a village man row us out to the middle of the bay where the local ferry from Naples, going to the island, was ‘hailed’. They dropped us off the same way on the return trip. The island was interesting and we walked up the hill to the square at the top and also visited the ‘Blue Grotto’ in a small boat. It was gloriously sunny and warm that day, with us feeling like kings to be the only ones with our own ferry stop.
For one afternoon we drove down the coast to Sorrento and then left to cross the country, heading for San Marino and Rimini on the shores of the Adriatic. We continued up that coast till reaching Venice and camped just next to the station, for the train that would take us to the city and the ‘vaparettos’, or water buses that would run you throughout the city on the main canals. For a few days, we stayed there and explored all those canals and then the smaller islands in the lagoon. It was a landmark of the whole trip and an experience that lasted years. So much so that one New Year, in the early 90s, I returned just to photograph the city and all its small corners. Our route home was past Lake Como and into Switzerland, before going back to the Channel ferry, through the Champagne district of northern France. It was a great trip and holds many memories for me still.
© Rodney Gascoyne
