Learning to Drive

After Church. I probably drove home that day.

A couple of years ago I taught my daughter to drive. I sat patiently beside her for most of the compulsory 120 hours of supervised driving. Long will I remember her first evening drive to her weekly piano lesson. As we approached a car parked facing us on our side of the road, lights blazing, she made no effort to slow. ‘Stop’, I said. No response. ‘Stop’ I repeated, this time more firmly for the same result. ‘Stop!’, I screamed, this time getting the required response. ‘Didn’t you see that car?’ I asked. ‘What car?’ Needless to say I drove home that night, and if I were still a drinking man I would have stopped at the first pub I could find for something to settle the nerves.

How times have changed. I remember the story of how my grandfather got his licence. Uncle Roy, Pa’s Marsh’s brother-in-law, was the local Morris dealer and a WW1 veteran so Pa purchased a new Morris. However, he didn’t have a licence so down to Maclean police station to rectify that little anomaly they went. Pa’s request for a licence was met with a ‘Can you drive?’ ‘Of course I can’ answered Pa. ‘Can anyone vouch for that? returned the officer. ‘I can’ said Uncle Roy and so the license was duly issued.

Now Pa had never driven a car, so when the officer asked ‘I’m going out your way, any chance of a lift?’, Pa had to think quickly. ‘Have you ever driven a new Morris?’ he asked. ‘Never’ came the reply. ‘Would you  like to?’ The officer jumped at the chance.

I learnt to drive on the farm. My earliest memory is of Dad taking delivery of a new grey Ferguson tractor around the time my brother was born - the tractor is a much stronger memory than the arrival of a baby brother. A raised road ran through Pa Marsh’s farm and I remember the truck backed up to this as the tractor was driven off the tray. As I grew older I would sit between Dad’s legs holding the steering wheel and it probably wasn’t long after I was tall enough to sit on the seat and reach all the controls that I began to drive. Before I left home I was hauling sugar cane along the road to the derrick where it would be loaded onto punts to be transported to the Harwood sugar mill. Can you imagine that these days - a 15 year old kid driving an unregistered tractor towing an unregistered trailer on a public road?

The Palmers Channel public hall had been built in the late 19th century for the benefit of Protestant Christians and was used by four denominations, each with their allocated Sunday in the month. We were Church of England and would faithfully attend on our rostered day. Pa bought an XL Falcon, released in 1962,  and I remember driving this home from Church often, a distance of just over a mile, or 1.6 km. I can’t remember how old I was when I started doing this, but I must have been 13 or 14.

I obtained my license while on leave from Wagga at the end of 1967. I drove the policeman around the back streets of Maclean in Dad’s automatic XK Falcon while Mum sat in the back seat. It was a happy young man who went home that evening with his ‘P’s.

The XK was the first model Falcon released and Dad had bought this - a station wagon, as was Pa’s - second hand. I remember a later experience in this car - perhaps when I was on leave from Williamtown. On the Maclean bypass I decided to see how fast it would go. As the speed increased the car started to wallow, the speedo fluctuated wildly, and there was absolutely no sense of feel through the steering wheel. It felt as if I could have turned the wheel from lock to lock without it making any difference. Those that raced these things around Bathurst in the early 60s have my greatest admiration for I still recall this as one frightening experience.

Twelve months later, again while I was home on leave, Mum and Dad surprised me with my first car, an Austin Lancer Series II. This was probably a 1962 model. In the twelve months between obtaining my licence and taking delivery of the car I don’t think I had any driving experience - except, possibly, driving Don Bank’s Mk II Zephyr at Wagga. So I had very little experience as ‘P’ plate driver, as we were only on them for 12 months in those days - and, if I remember correctly, without speed restriction.

At the end of my leave period I drove my new car back to Wagga - but that is a different story.

First written circa 2010