Do you remember your first car? Mine was a VW Beetle. I needed to make a dipstick to find out how much fuel I had in the tank. Cars were very different in those days.

Our first family car was a Ford New Beauty – my father was so proud of it. He called it ‘Airtight Annie’. It took two people to get it started. One to turn the engine over with a crank handle, and another to sit behind the driver’s wheel to work the choke and the spark levers. The battery was outside on the running board and the fuel tank was situated under the driver’s seat. The fuel was gravity fed into the engine. How cars have changed.

        Periodically the family saved enough money to visit my father’s sister, Winifred Winter, and her husband Nick – one of my father’s best friends. They left Wellington in 1930 to go farming at Whitehall at the back of Cambridge.

        One Christmas the family had arranged to spend a holiday on the farm. Normally the trip to Cambridge was via Palmerston North but this was a long expensive drive. Father consulted his IWANTA Road guide and found a shorter route from Hastings to Taihape via Kuripapango. He noted a small petrol pump on his map so he thought we would give it a go. In those days it was only a shingle road. It was not until the Second World War when we thought we were going to be invaded that it was upgraded into a decent road.  At that time our main army was kept in the middle of the North Island at the Waiouru Army Base so they could be rushed in any direction should we be invaded.

        So on Christmas Eve, we set out for the farm from Hastings in ‘Airtight Annie’ heavily loaded with basic supplies and many gifts.

        After an uneventful start, we reached Kuripapango where we had trouble opening a gate in the middle of a bridge, designed to keep rabbits out of Hawke’s Bay. There was no sign of a petrol station and because of our gravity-fed petrol tank, we couldn’t get the car out of the valley. We didn’t have enough fuel to climb up ‘Gentle Annie’. Father backed down using his very large hand brake. The decision was taken to return to Hastings but when he tried he couldn’t get up the hill we had come down. There we were stuck in a valley. When he tried to turn around to go back to a sheep station to see if we could buy some fuel we got stuck between a bluff and a cliff completely blocking the road.  It was starting to get dark so we bedded down in the car for the night. Thank goodness there was no other traffic.

        The next morning mother guarded the car and my father and I set out on foot with an empty petrol can to see if we could find a farmhouse. On that isolated walk, I found a half crown coin on the road. I was permitted to keep it – a lot of money for a child in those days when my weekly wage for chores was one penny. (So my half-crown was equal to 30 weeks of work.)

        Two farm hands came to our aid. We managed to get a can of petrol and to push the car around before backing up the hill. and heading for home.

        Christmas dinner that day was a few leftover stale ham sandwiches.

        We arrive back home 48 hours after we set out much wiser and very tired. After a good night’s sleep, we departed once again for Cambridge but this time taking the long route.  Oh, the joys of motoring in those days.

Geoffrey Moss(mossassociates.co.nz)