Early days of caravanning in Australia

In my previous post on this site, I described the early days of camping under canvas in the 1950s. However, not all our summer holidays were like that - oh no! One year Mum and Dad decided to rent a caravan!

We were going to drive to Wilcannia, about 180 miles from Broken Hill in the far west of my home state of New South Wales. Dad wanted to visit one of his fellow Army pals he had served with in Darwin when it was bombed during the second World War, and Wilcannia is an awfully long way from Sydney, especially as our Ford A tourer, called Lizzie, could only manage about 50 miles per hour with the wind behind her. 

Anyway, my sisters and I were wound up in excitement of having a holiday in a caravan! Such luxury! Such comfort! Err, well, not quite! Actually, we were quite distinctly unimpressed when Dad arrived home with it in tow. 

I don't know who manufactured the van, but it was very small and made of ply. There was a small folding table at the front, between two very narrow seats/bunks, a sink with a foot-operated tap, a two-burner kerosene stove and, err, that's it except for a cupboard big enough for clothing for one person! But it was a caravan, so we were still looking forward to our holiday. 

New South Wales is Australia's second smallest state on the mainland of the continent, but it is still three times larger than the whole of Great Britain and Ireland, so it was going to take most of a week just to get to Wilcannia. Dad had a letter from his mate, and it gave directions from the centre of Wilcannia to his property, on which he bred sheep and a few cattle. It turned out that his sheep numbered about 500,000, and only 1,500 cattle!

Unfortunately for us, that year it was wet - very wet! It rained almost constantly frim leaving Sydney until we arrived at Wilcannia, and eventually we found the letter-box beside the main road where we had to turn off. The letter-box was the beginning of his drive to his farmhouse, just a short run of approximately 100 miles. And it was mud - thick, cloying mud about three lanes wide where Dad's mate would drive around the worst of the muddy bits of the dirt track. 

My eldest sister, Penny, had been given the job of looking out the back window of our car to keep an eye on the caravan, because Dad was worried that one wheel might sunk into the mud and tip over the caravan. I was told to stand in the rear bumper bar and help aid traction over the back wheels (shades of horror in these Health and Safety conscious days!), while my youngest sister Lynn was still too young to be of any help. 

Mum was on the left at the back and I was in the right, hanging on for dear life as Dad ground his way along the bumoy and extremely muddy track. Penny was peering out the back window, and about 20 miles or so along the teack she must have called our in alarm as our caravan swayed and slid feim side to side. So Dad stopped. WRONG!! The car's rear wheels immediately began to sink up to the axle in the mud, and the van looked like the Titanic going down. 

Mum and I tgen had to start digging the mud from in front of the wheels, while Dad kept trying to rock the car forwards and backwards to extricate us from the mud. We did eventually get out, but only by unhitching the caravan and leaving it behind.

It took us eight hours to drive that 100 miles, and when we arrived at the homestead, Col (Dad's mate) got out his big tractor and they drove the 80 miles back to drag the caravan to the homestead. 

We spent most of the evening washing ourselves, the car and the caravan clean of mud which had plastered everything. Col had just completed construction of his new homestead, so we bunked down in the old, spider-infested timber house which was the former homestead. But at least it was dry, and we could use the old solid-fuel range to cook on! Luxury!

We stayed there for a week. I learnt to ride a horse (albeit not very well), and we all went kangaroo shooting because the kangaroos were eating all the meagre grass which was required for the sheep. I should mention that the property wasn't very large - only about 8,000 square miles! I helped shear a sheep, helped kill an old ewe for some mutton for our dinners, and my sisters and I were in heaven climbing the apricot trees beside the houses and eating apricots until we nearly burst. Dad and Col sat and talked for hours (I can't remember what Mum was doing, but it was probably washing our very dirty clothes). I do remember one day Col had to drive into Wilcannia for bread and returned with two HUGE loaves, at least four to five times bigger than what we have today! Milk came from his two cows kept in the home paddocks, and there was always plenty of mutton to eat, but bread was something that Col couldn't make himself. 

I don't remember the trip back to Sydney, but at least the rain had stopped so getting back to the main road wasn't such a problem because the mud had dried to concrete. That holiday has stuck in my mind even though it was about 55 years ago.