Bonzer Words!: Family Vehicles
...Mother came home from caring for her mother and bought herself a Holden utility, and obtained her licence again at age 53. She had many adventures with this on gravel roads. One time, she turned the vehicle over and was found by a local minister calmly sitting on the side of the road drinking tea from a thermos...
Dorothy Moffitt recalls driving days.
Dorothy writes for Bonzer! magazine. Please visit www.bonzer.org.au
My parents bought a Model T Ford for their camping honeymoon. It had removable celluloid windows. It must have been exchanged for a Bean truck when I was four or five.
This monster had neither doors nor windows. I do not know how my mother, with the latest baby on her knee, stayed inside over rutted, potholed and sometimes snow-covered farm roads. The rest of the children rode in the back on an old car seat, under a tarpaulin if it rained.
It often broke down, and finally expired at the farm gate on my first high school holiday from the city. A neighbour, with a reputation for fixing anything mechanical with fencing wire and binder twine, took it over; and the family went back to horse transport until after World War Two.
Dad came home from his second stint in the army—he was a veteran of Gallipoli in the First World War—and bought his first Fergusson tractor.
Mother came home from caring for her mother and bought herself a Holden utility, and obtained her licence again at age 53. She had many adventures with this on gravel roads. One time, she turned the vehicle over and was found by a local minister calmly sitting on the side of the road drinking tea from a thermos. Another time, the steering broke on a neighbour's culvert.
When Dad was eighty, they retired from the farm and he soon gave up driving because of his hearing loss. Mum continued visiting family members for a number of years. Then the utility was bought by a local lad.
When my husband was courting me, he taught me to drive in the family Oldsmobile, which he shared with his two brothers. One night, an assorted family group was driving to church in a nearby town when one of our children leant on the light switch, and in the ensuing darkness the car landed in a roadside gutter.
It was a great day when the brothers could afford their own cars, and we became the owners of a line of Holden cars. The first was a two-toned blue sedan, in which I finally obtained my licence.
Since then, we have had a line of campervans that enable us to travel and to carry my husband's mobile bookshop. We travelled around Australia in a motor home in 1987.
So over the years we have travelled in a variety of transport and seen the motor industry change. Our final vehicle will probably be a scooter.
© Dorothy Moffitt
