Overlanding With Annabel

Annabel - a vintage 1929 Chrysler, was found in an old car dump, and with some new (second-hand) tyres and a spare fuel tank for long distant driving, for a few pounds became the means of transport for Stuart and Jan Gore to travel the long round trip from Perth in Western Australia north to Darwin, then south through the red centre to Alice Springs. From Alice Springs Annabel and her companions were loaded on the Ghan (a train) to Adelaide, from where they headed back west to cross the Nullarbor. around a 6000 mile journey (10,000km).

Stuart and Jan are both professional photographers, and determined travellers. This was a hardcore journey in the 1950s. The Great Northern Highway, as the road from Perth to Wyndham is now known, only completed its sealing in 1989 (although parts were sealed from the 1960s onwards as part of the ‘Beef Cattle Roads' scheme. From the descriptions in this book, it is at times a muddy track, at others a sun-baked pitted and corrugated track - seemingly designed to shake cars apart.

Cracking a cylinder head literally on day two of their journey sets the tone for the punishment the car takes (a tube of chemi-weld, and some high hopes fixed that), with broken springs, and any number of other minor ailments, not to mention a newly purchased generator to run their picture show (more below) which didn't work before some assistance to rebuild it.

As a means of financing their trip, these photographic couple took up movie making, producing a series of short films entitled See Australia First. They screen versions of this all along their trip, charging a small fee for entry. This keeps them in fuel and food, although they are well hosted by many of the homesteads and stations that they stop in between towns. As noted above they are hardy travellers, and resort to eating damper and tinned food when camping out - another of their modifications on Annabel - a sleeping platform on the roof with a mosquito net and tent fly strung over.

While much of the content of this book related specifically to their journey - the driving, the camping, their food, getting stuck (and unstuck); there is also much about the people they encounter. This ranges from the (nearly always) helpful police, the station owners, the hoteliers, to those running a leprosy hospital - an the Aboriginal patients. Similarly further north at Udialla Station, the Aborigines held a corroboree which the pair were permitted to film. The chapters on Udialla was particularly interesting - the station being set up by the government as a walk-in, walk-out training facility for Aboriginal and part-Aboriginal people.

At just under 200 pages, this is a quick read, and one I enjoyed a lot. Fairly obscure, but I expect there are plenty of copies lurking in the dusty shelves of second hand bookshops (much like me, I guess).

4 stars.