1960's travels

My wife had a rush of blood to the head and decided to go through boxes of old photos. This coupled with my purchase of a great little slide/negative scanner from Aldi created a fit of enthusiasm to discover a lost youth. Here are a few photos from a trip a mate and I did after leaving school at 17 in 1965.

This was the old Australian Mapping Survey Landrover we bought in Melbourne and hand painted green with a brush. We went to Eveready to get sponsorship (they still did that sort of stuff in those days) and got more batteries than we could use in a lifetime but no money in exchange for a sign.

We boosted the funds working in Hadfield's Foundry in Perth then got a job with Western Geophysical on oil exploration about 300km inland from Carnarvon. This is the 4X4 Inter which was used as the "jug buggy" (picking up the ground microphones - jugs - used to read shock waves from explosives to get an undergound rock profile). Was I ever this skinny?

These are the gelignite sticks we stuffed down the hole. 17 year old kids pushing electric detonators into the sticks without one minute of explosive training, safety procedures or instruction!

Skulking in the shade waiting for the call on the radio to pick up the jugs, drive them to the front of the line and lay them out on the ground again in 45 degree heat.

Promotion comes to those who wait and after two weeks on the jug line you suddenly get elevated to the 4X4 Inter 190 water truck to support the drill rigs. They had an awful gearbox which took some practice before non-crunching changes occured.

As a result of skill, daring and a shortage of workers further promotion happened after another 10 days and you suddenly became a drill helper (still driving the water truck). I note that I am becoming skinnier by the minute!

All good things come to an end so we headed for the Kimberleys in the faithfull Rover finding this nice place to camp.

We passed through several fairly substandard towns going north. I think this is Broome which today is a tourist Mecca with modern buildings, parks and 4 star hotels.

Calling in to the council office in Derby we asked for a job. "Can you drive a tractor?" "A tractor, we were born on one (never sat on a tractor in our lives)", "Report to the foreman at the camp on the Fitzroy Crossing road about a hundred miles out.

Once again fate favours the brave and after two weeks the bitumen tanker driver was put in Broome jail for three months for supplying grog to one of our aboriginal workmates. The foreman held auditions to drive the spray tanker and after all the older volunteers had stuffed up tanksfull of tar by changing speed and wandering all over the road he asked me to have a go. It was pretty easy driving the Albion bogie drive Reiver after the training I got in the Army Reserve (CMF on those days) on GMC's while still at school.

I won the job, doubled my pay and even got an offsider 3 times my age to operate the spray levers on the back. There was one minor problem in that WA did not allow anyone to get a truck licence until 21. The foreman said "17 is pretty close to 21 and anyhow there is nothing on the pay sheet saying how old you are"

I managed to squirrel away enough money in the next few months to put a deposit on a Commer prime mover in Melbourne on my return.

My wife looked at this photo of our tent in the Kimberley and could not believe how neat two 17 year old kids kept their donga. She said my standards have gone down hill since then - might have something to do with having someone to pick up after you?

Lang, What a great adventure and experience that would have been, what great memories to have. [smiley=thumbsup.gif] [smiley=thumbsup.gif] [smiley=thumbsup.gif] I wasn't adventurous enough in my youth to do any thing like that [smiley=cry.gif] [smiley=cry.gif] [smiley=cry.gif]
Colin

Great stories Lang, thanks for sharing.
David.

Great Lang
Reckon there would be some stories from that tent

Thanks for the stories and photos Lang, fantastic viewing! Very envious too, I actually spent a bit of youth up that way (as a 'ringer' on a station on the gibb river road) but nothing quite as adventurous. Broome's sure come on, bet derby wasn't much back then.

Did that 4x4 R190 have disc wheels on the back? What was the drill rig mounted on?

Not certain what the Inter had on the back but am pretty sure it would be the same wheels all around. We had two drill rigs, one another 4X4 Inter like the water truck and one 6X6 Inter of the same type.

We had a D7 pushing the track which had to go straight so if it ran over a hill the drill truck had to be winched up the side and hang off the dozer rope while a hole was drilled at the exact distance from the one before.

Lang

What an interesting set, making us feel that we were there. Thank your wife. Like double-declutching, there are skills which help improve the outcome.
The Aldi cheapie tends to offer a poorer tonal range than expensive machines, but these ones have come out ok. Any tone problems are with the original film and lighting conditions. All scanners exaggerate blemishes on the original. The platen or slide glass has to be cleaned with care. Slides must be cleaned with care: preferably with an airbrush. Mine has worn out, and I am having trouble buying a replacement. I am using a well worn soft handkerchief, and still not doing well. As with a different thread, I have taken one of the worst of the originals, and reprocessed with Photoshop. I pulled out some blue to improve the shadow, at the expense of the clouds going bilious yellow. I enhanced the contrast, and then cloned out the blotches: they were too big for the automatic despeckle to do anything useful without introducing unwanted side effects. I also boosted the red, to enhance the soil, and it didn't damage the flesh tones (machines are easy to cure; people are tricky). I couldn't bring up our hero any more without the rest looking false: there is a limit to what can be achieved in shadow.
I reckon that the job took about 20 min. I also tried the Microsoft software: it added even more blue.

Roderick B Smith
Rail News Victoria Editor

Thanks Rod. I just stuck them in the scanner covered with dust - as you can see. I have not looked at them in 40 years! The original slides are pretty faded.

I seem to remember the Inter was an AAB120

Lang

AWESOME STUFF LANG

Reminds my of my time with the old Department of Civil Aviation building airstrips on all the mission stations in the Territory (early 70's) Yep, I was skinny too back in those days.

AWESOME STUFF LANG

Reminds my of my time with the old Department of Civil Aviation building airstrips on all the mission stations in the Territory (early 70's) Yep, I was skinny too back in those days.

Any Photo's for a new thread ?