Right to the Edge: Sydney to Tokyo By Any Means (3 page)

As I climbed into the cab Mark looked sideways at me with a mischievous grin on his face, and we were pulling away before I’d even closed the door. He was in his late fifties, maybe early sixties, it was hard to tell. Short grey hair and a pair of wraparound shades that made him look a little menacing. He ground the gears as we turned out of his driveway.

‘How long since you drove this truck, Mark?’ I asked him.

He showed his teeth. ‘Thirteen years.’

The truck was the noisiest vehicle I think I’ve ever been in. We left Mark’s place in Wauchope and drove 100 kilometres up the coast with the two-stroke ringing in my ears. This was the 653 American edition, with the GM engine rather than one made in Australia under licence. The main difference is the twin air cleaners, like a pair of blue milk churns attached to the wings - apparently the air was inducted back through the body, whereas on the Aussie version it was through the bonnet. It was fabulous, but as I say, incredibly loud: a two-stroke diesel V6 with what they call a thirteen-spread ranger gearbox. It had been built in 1962 and was known as a ‘screamer’ - that scream really was unbelievable, even Mark thought so. I take my hat off to anyone who could have driven one of these trucks for a living.

Anyway, we were on the road heading north and having to shout across the cab to each other. Above the brain-numbing din I managed to work out that Mark ran a mobile paint shop and had sign-written many of the trucks that passed us on the highway. He was married to an English woman he met when he was travelling around Australia.

The way their trucks looked was always as important to Diamond T as how they functioned, and the chrome was everywhere - a sort of Harley Davidson of the commercial vehicle family. ‘Dad’s Pride’ was emblazoned on the front bumper of this one, the interior was pale studded upholstery, the gear knob a piston head and the steering wheel white with four spokes. I loved it, apart from the noise anyway. By the time we got to our next stop, Stan’s place in Macksville, I was deaf as a post.

Stan was another Aussie good old boy. He was older than Mark, tall and lean and wearing a faded baseball cap. His great passion was trucks - big, old trucks - and he was going to give us a ride in an Oshkosh as far as Coffs Harbour.

I thought the Diamond T was big, but this thing was colossal. A bright yellow tow truck with a powder-coated towing rig - Stan told me it weighed thirteen tonnes. He had restored it after it went out of service. He was a member of the Heritage Vehicle Association and without people like him these old trucks would vanish from the roads altogether. His wife was equally involved. Stan said that she was getting used to the gears now and if he was away she would clean the Oshkosh in readiness for a show. There was one every year in Alice Springs and a really massive one every five years. Stan’s father had always been into trucks too. Back in the 1940s he drove for the forest service before buying a bus route and settling in Macksville. Over the years he had restored lots of vehicles and that was where Stan got the bug.

Oshkosh is a city in Wisconsin. The trucks all come from there - not just tow trucks like Stan’s, but army vehicles too. This was a left-hand drive that had been brought over and converted - Stan pointed out the shaft that ran under the dash from left to right. Oshkosh was an American Indian chief: the word means ‘claw’ and considering the massive power of this thing, that seemed apt somehow. Its GCM (Given Concentration Mass) was 120 tonnes, which means that it can pull anything up to 107 tonnes (as its own weight was the 13 tonnes Stan had mentioned). So it was strong enough to pull the massive road trains I’d driven the last time I was over here.

I was keen to drive it myself, so halfway to Coffs Harbour I suggested to Stan that we swap places.

‘You’ve got a truck licence, right?’ he asked as I slipped behind the wheel.

‘Oh yeah,’ I lied. ‘I drove an International S Line over at Coober Pedy.’

‘Great, away we go then.’

I ground the gears, that horrific screeching sound of synchromesh not meshing, and with a smile I squinted at him. ‘You know the old saying, Stan: if you can’t find it - grind it.’ Then we were off down the freeway with sweat rolling off my brow and my palms wringing wet.

‘Are you all right, mate?’ Stan asked. ‘Your hands are sweating.’

‘I’m fine.’

I was, actually. Even though it was huge, the truck wasn’t that hard to manoeuvre, although because of its age the steering felt a little vague and I found myself over-correcting. But it was great fun and immensely powerful and I loved being that high up, looking down on what appeared to be miniature cars trundling by. We were on the move. I’d been riding bikes, I was in my second truck and the juice Herbie Jefferson talked about was flowing.

LEAVING STAN SOUTH of the harbour, we carried on to the Coaching Station Inn at Nymboida. It was still wet outside but there was a fire in the grate and I could smell food being cooked. Feeling pretty exhausted, I slumped down at a table.

The only other guests seemed to be a young couple sitting across the way and I got talking to them. Joel and his wife Tatum had been married a year and were spending their first anniversary at Coffs Harbour. We spent the evening chatting and at one point Joel suggested we go for a swim in the river before breakfast. I wasn’t much up for it but I was looking for a lift in the morning so I agreed.

‘I’ll be there,’ I said. ‘I used to swim in the river that ran through my dad’s place in Ireland. Listen, Joel: I’ve got to meet a guy with an electric car at a petrol station tomorrow. It’s about twenty kilometres up the road. Is there any chance of you two giving me a lift?’

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘We could do that, yeah.’

 

 

I woke to the smell of eucalyptus, more rain and a grey mist that coated the hills. This was a beautiful spot, log-cabin-style rooms with great views across an evergreen valley with the river coursing through it. And I mean
coursing
: from where I was standing it looked pretty fast-flowing and pretty cold. Suddenly I was having second thoughts about this morning’s ‘refreshing’ dip. But Joel came by, and having made a commitment the night before, I followed him down to the shore. It was bloody freezing and the swim was brief to say the least, but we did manage to find a section where the rapids weren’t roaring. And for those of you who complained about the quality of my underpants the last time you saw me in a river, I had a proper pair of swimming shorts this time, all right?

The weather was really grim still: not cold but the rain appeared to have set in. It was as if a great grey blanket had been thrown across this section of the Australian coast and there was no way out from under it. In a couple of days we were due to fly up the coast in a Spitfire and I really hoped the weather wouldn’t get in the way. I’d had a few flying lessons - I could take off and land - but a Spitfire . . . it reminded me of my dad’s film
Hope and Glory
, where I’d played a German pilot who crashed his plane. I did not want to miss out.

In the meantime the weather would do what weather does. Joel and Tatum gave me a ride in their Holden.

‘So what do you think about the idea of electric cars then?’ I asked Joel. ‘There’s a bit of a love affair with the V8 in this country, isn’t there?’

He looked sideways at me. ‘Take someone’s V8 off them and give them an electric car? Yeah, I’m not sure how well that would go down.’

 

 

The electric car was bright green and looked like a small Mazda. I’m not sure what I’d been expecting but I’d driven a fairly outlandish-looking solar-powered car the last time I was here, and this looked like a normal compact.

Turned out it
was
a normal compact, based on a Mazda but with a bunch of boxes and computers under the bonnet instead of a petrol or diesel engine. The car was called an evMe and had been built by Phil Coop and his company, Energetique. To all intents and purposes it looked and felt like any other car. There was an ignition key, though no gears as such: just a ‘Drive’ position and, of course, reverse. It easily coped with 130 kmph. I was amazed; it was so quiet, and after the trucks yesterday that was wonderful.

Phil is a committed and enthusiastic guy who isn’t trying to solve the environmental problems of the world, just do his bit. Not only is he involved with the car company; he also run a cattle farm where everything is sustainable and organic. The battery-powered car is his passion, however, and he explained that trying to develop something for everyday use was like trying to wade through treacle.

‘I’m not one for conspiracy theories,’ he said, ‘but even the smallest problem in this business becomes a major challenge. In the past it was politicians and fossil-fuel companies who would try to block us. More recently it’s been computer and technology companies. For example, just this last year we tried to buy a piece of important equipment from the States and were blocked completely.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I can’t tell you why, maybe these people just don’t want us to move forward, but that bit of equipment suddenly became unavailable.’

He told us that things were changing, though. For years battery technology had lagged behind other areas in terms of what he called ‘the electrification of society’. Then with the development of nanotech batteries, they made a huge leap forward. The battery in the evMe would last ten years and even then it would still work at 80 per cent of its original capacity. The new breed that would be available in only a couple of years’ time would last fifty years and have other applications long after the life of the car was over. This little car ran for two hundred kilometres on one charge; the charge took only seven minutes and cost about three quid. It wasn’t the only solution for future clean fuelling, but it was certainly one of them.

I for one was impressed. The evMe was great to drive, it had good pick-up, lots of torque and it ate up the miles to Byron Bay. The car was simple and so quiet, and in many ways so much better than a normal version.

 

 

The evMe was a million miles away from the next car we’d be driving. Brendan’s clapped-out old Mitsubishi estate had been given to him by his mate Declan and it’s fair to say that it was significantly less environmentally friendly than Phil’s car. We met Brendan at the Arts Factory in Byron Bay, a cool town on the coast that has an American feel to it, with wide roads and diagonal parking, and palm trees that today were bent almost horizontal by the wind and rain. It really was kicking up a storm. We stopped at the beach and the waves were massive, rolling whitecaps. I’d been hoping to go surfing tomorrow but there was no chance of a novice like me venturing out in this. There was also an ever-diminishing chance that we would be up in that plane. Sam phoned the Spitfire people and they told him the weather was just as bad in Brisbane and that as things stood there was only about a 40 per cent likelihood we’d be flying.

It was a bummer. Not only did it mean we’d miss out on an incredible experience, but it would add time to the journey and we’d have to find another way of moving up the coast.

As if to really piss us off, when we came through town the rain seemed to get even worse, the wipers working nineteen to the dozen and the road all but flooded. We made it to the Arts Factory, and ducked inside to keep dry. This was the backpackers’ hostel where we would be spending the night. It’s very famous and one of the most used in Australia, with over three hundred and fifty beds. There are loads of little rooms called cubes, and there is also a tented village, as well as a number of different-sized communal tepees.

The manager, Peggy, greeted us. She came hobbling round from behind the counter on a pair of crutches, her right leg plastered to the knee.

‘So what happened to you?’ I asked her.

‘Too many tequila slammers: stiletto slipped on the table and off I went.’

‘You broke your foot dancing on a table?’