Forget Bali and Fiji.......

 

 

It's a long weekend in the school holidays. The weather is glorious. Clear blue skies and warm but not hot.

In normal times Terrigal would be very busy this weekend. But these are not normal times. Most interstate borders are closed and Australia's international borders are closed. So the hundreds of thousands of New South Wales citizens who usually fly to Bali, Fiji, Phuket or Hawaii for the school holidays are staying at home and the result is an absolute boom for NSW coastal towns such as Terrigal. 

I have never seen anything like the number of people on the beaches at Terrigal and Wamberal this weekend. The traffic in the town is awful and the cafes and shops are full to capacity- the main Terrigal beach looks like Rio. A vacant parking space is harder to find than rocking horse droppings. It is a visitor bonanza. The local traders will be lobbying the state and federal governments to keep the borders closed.

I went with one of my granddaughters to Wambersal Lagoon mid-morning so that she could go body boarding. Usually even at the height of summer there would be a dozen cars in the small car park there and a smattering of people-the sandbank in the photo would be empty. Today there were cars lining the road to the lagoon and the sandbank was packed with people. 

Photo taken with my iPhone. I would have preferred to have taken it with a camera but Leicas and beaches do not mix so it had to be the iPhone again. I have actually slightly dialled back the clarity on the photo in Lightroom as I thought it looked oversharp and harsh.

Austin of England

 

This Austin A30 was parked by the Esplanade in Terrigal today. I have seen it driving and parked around the town a few times recently. It is not on historic plates and it looks as if it is being used as a regular or even a daily driver.  

The A30 was manufactured by the Austin Motor Company from 1952 to 1956 when it was superseded by the A35. The A30 was surprisingly advanced for its time. It had a monocoque body and the newly designed 803cc A Series engine. By today's standards the performance was awful  (0 -100kmh was 42.3 seconds!) but in the immediate post war period petrol was very low octane so this was a major factor. I am sure the performance is better today with modern fuel although an egg timer is still probably useful for timing acceleration.

The A30 was assembled in Australia at the Austin Motor Company of Australia assembly plant in West Melbourne from KD ( knocked down) kits of parts shipped from England. At that time thousands of KD kits were being shipped all over the world by Austin and their major competitor, and later BMC partner, Morris. The kits were like IKEA flat pack furniture although unlike IKEA often parts were missing due to supply problems when the kits were packed. Local suppliers supplied parts such as tyres and batteries in more advanced markets such as Australia.

Standing on the street the A30 looks tiny. Look at the size of the Jeep in front of it. I cannot imagine driving it in today's traffic on a regular basis. Visualise trying to jump into a line of traffic or onto a roundabout with that sluggish performance. It would be frustrating for you and the drivers behind you. The brakes must be woeful by modern standards and as for safety and crash performance, well best not to think about it. 

What must it have been like to drive an A30 on Australian roads in the early 1950s? Outside the main cities and larger towns most of the roads were dirt. There was no airconditioning and tyres were poor quality so punctures were frequent. The headlamps would be like a pair of candles. If you hit a kangaroo it would probably come off in better shape than the A30.

 Imagine packing a family into that tiny car-with their luggage and camping gear and driving from Sydney to Terrigal. A journey of just 100km but back then there was no motorway only the very narrow, winding Pacific Highway and there was no bridge across the Hawkesbury -just a ferry with long lines of vehicles waiting to cross. "Are we there yet ?" would have been a very frequent refrain. It must have been a very long journey. 

An unusual curiosity and I would be interested to hear its full story.