Transcript of AE 1440 - The Goss: The Cars We Drove Growing Up In Australia

Pete:
Dad.

Ian:
Pete.

Pete:
Which family car were you the proudest of? Because I have a feeling it's one that we were probably embarrassed to be seen in.

Ian:
You reckon?

Pete:
Nah, nah. It's probably. I reckon it would. I don't know, it's a toss up...

Ian:
It's, the one that I liked the most was probably the Toyota Land Cruiser.

Pete:
Oh, okay.

Ian:
80 series Land Cruiser.

Pete:
The white one that we had?

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
Back, what, 15 years ago or more?

Ian:
Yeah. 20 years.

Pete:
Why that one?

Ian:
Oh. It's just. Well, it's the first four-wheel drive I'd owned. It was the first one that we used to. We could actually fit everything in...

Pete:
We had that Subaru. Was that all wheel drive?

Ian:
Oh the little red Subaru. Yeah.

Pete:
Yeah. Some sort of weird red sedan. Oh, no. Wagon type.

Ian:
Yeah. Little red wagon.

Pete:
Isn't that a four-wheel drive.

Ian:
Yeah it was, but yeah, it wasn't...

Pete:
Not real ones.

Ian:
Not real. Well, it's real in the sense that it actually had low range and everything else, but...

Pete:
You didn't take it off road!

Ian:
It wasn't. It wasn't a family camping vehicle.

Pete:
Yeah.

Pete:
G'day, guys. Welcome to the Aussie English podcast. Grab a cuppa, get comfy and let's have a yarn. So today we're talking about the cars our families drove. Not the best cars on paper. The ones we remember. The one Dad loved, the one the kids hated, and the one that somehow kept going forever.

Pete:
So what was the first car you could drive regularly? Was it yours? Was it someone else's?

Ian:
Mine.

Pete:
Yeah?

Ian:
Yeah. I was trying to remember the dates and times just. Yeah. Because my, my, my father had a car for work when he was working with the, what was at the time state insurance office.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Doesn't exist anymore. It got subsumed into another, bigger insurance company. So he always had a car for work, but he was the only one who could drive it. And so mum couldn't drive that. And so she didn't have a car until we were probably...

Pete:
She couldn't drive it because she wasn't allowed to.

Ian:
Wasn't allowed to. Yeah, wasn't allowed to. It was a government car.

Pete:
Yeah, okay. It wasn't insured for her.

Ian:
Yes. And so then she bought a car when we were, I think I was about eight years old. It was an old Austin.

Pete:
Austin Healey.

Ian:
No, no, not just an old Austin, Austin A40.

Pete:
A British made car?

Ian:
British made cars. Yeah. And then she had a series of cars. By the time I had a driver's license or was learning to drive, she wouldn't teach me to drive in her car, you know. And so...

Pete:
Why? Why, Dad? Were you a bit of a hoon? Bit of a lead foot?

Ian:
Well, I wouldn't know!

Pete:
You hadn't driven before, yeah.

Ian:
Well, I had driven before. My grandfather taught me to drive in his car when I was about 14. And, but yeah, by the time I got a learner's permit, I was, you know, 17 and then I didn't actually do anything with it until I could buy a car of my own. And I was 18 by the time I could afford to buy a car and didn't get a driver's license until I was 19.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
And, but even then, I had to drive my own car. My mother wouldn't have let me drive her car. It was just. Nope. It's my car. You don't drive it. The end.

Pete:
Is that the same for your dad? Like he wasn't allowed to drive it either because it was her car? Or was she like, no kids...

Ian:
He used to drive my car!

Pete:
Yeah. Okay.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
That's right.

Ian:
Because I had it for a year before I could, you know, before I could drive.

Pete:
Why was she funny about that?

Ian:
I don't know, she was just funny. I think it was. Yeah, it was her car. And look, to be honest, it was the first new car that she'd ever owned.

Pete:
Okay. So it was just something very special. This is mine.

Ian:
Yeah. And, you know, just not going to let anybody else drive it. I don't I mean, dad was a perfect- in fact, Dad- Well. Well, she was a good driver as well, but, he was a perfectly safe driver. He actually had a state government award for state government employees for safety on the road. Like he'd been driving for 25 years without an incident or something in a government vehicle. So, I don't know, she, I think she was very possessive about this new car that she had.

Pete:
It's always funny, those people that are out there, we were just talking about. So there's a guitar sitting behind Dad. You guys probably know I'm into guitars. And I was telling, Dad was asking, do you have any fenders at the moment? You've got two here, but do you have the other ones you used to have? And I used to- the first guitar that I ever owned that was mine was a Stratocaster that Dad bought for me, 500 bucks, or something?

Ian:
Something like that.

Pete:
With an amp.

Ian:
I think it was...

Pete:
A&B Music in Geelong.

Ian:
And about your 16th birthday.

Pete:
Yeah, probably around that time. That was after I got the braces, you know, for my birth- literally on my birthday!

Ian:
Literally on your birthday. Yeah, yeah. Here's a guitar and toothpick.

Pete:
Yeah. Enjoy. But I, so I have this guitar and I remember I was telling Dad, my best friend in high school had another Fender Stratocaster and he was super possessive of it. Don't even look at it. Don't touch it, don't pick it up. Don't smell it. Don't, just don't even be in the same room with it. And I was like, it's funny how now, because I have a lot of expensive guitars. It's my thing, but I'm much more of a, oh, do you want to borrow it? Do you want to play it? Like this is for everyone? Like I want you to experience it. I'm, I'm, you know, like, obviously I don't want you to damage it, but they're there to be experienced and to share that kind of thing. But when I take them to the guitar store, there are loads of people that you end up meeting and they are not like that at all with their possessions. They're much like my old mate Marcus with his Stratocaster, who would not let you look sideways at it. So it sounds like your mum is similar, but with cars.

Ian:
Yeah, well, with that car I don't know about anything else.

Pete:
So, what about your first car?

Ian:
My first car...

Pete:
The one you saved up for.

Ian:
It was a Holden Torana.

Pete:
Torana.

Ian:
Torana, and not the later models, which were the sort of the young guys hoon cars.

Pete:
What did you, what colour was it?

Ian:
It was white. It was 1968 white Torana. And it was the old HB series before the L series, which were the, the sporty ones that, that people used to hot up. Mine was your, your sort of mother's, the old mother's car. Perfectly reliable. It only had about ten moving parts. So if anything went wrong you could basically fix it by yourself. And when you buy a ten year old car back in those days, well, 7 or 8 year old car, lots of things did go wrong with them.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Which is funny now because 7 or 8 years is not old for a car these days.

Pete:
Well, that's sort of appearance of them's kind of modernised to where they're all, they all look the same now.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
I think it's just it's kind of all become this standardised, very bland world now where no one's really trying to push the boundaries of what appearance is or colours are or anything. And they're probably also very, very restricted by the shapes and dimensions based on regulations and everything. Right.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
So the oh, anyway, my point is I find yeah, you're right. You look up, I'll look at a car and I'll be like, I don't know, maybe it's a few years old and they'll be like 2007 and you'd be like, whoa, 20 years like, fair enough.

Ian:
Yeah. But still working.

Pete:
Yeah. Whereas I feel like you can see when you look at cars from the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, the change..

Ian:
Oh yeah.

Pete:
Is rapid between how they appeared, what they look like.

Ian:
Right. Lots. Yeah. So that was my first car. And eventually it died after about four years.

Pete:
Then you just couldn't be bothered putting more money into it.

Ian:
Well, it got to the point where it needed some serious repairs on the engine.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
And they were going to cost me twice as much as the car was worth.

Pete:
Yeah. That's it. So just buy another one.

Ian:
So I bought another one. I bought an old Valiant station wagon, which is a great car.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Went about 150 miles an hour in a straight line. But don't expect a stop or turn a corner in it.

Pete:
It's a boat.

Ian:
Yeah, exactly.

Pete:
Boat on wheels.

Ian:
But it was good fun.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
That was a car that I could sleep in as well. So.

Pete:
Yeah. So what did you have to do to afford it, Dad? You had to sell your body? How did you save up for these cars?

Ian:
Well, the first one I bought, when I was 18, I bought working at a, I worked at a local hardware store.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
From the time I was about 15 years old, on weekends and school holidays. Started off at a dollar an hour.

Pete:
Make it rain!

Ian:
Yeah. And saved up enough money to buy a, a racing bike.

Pete:
That's right.

Ian:
Ten speed racing bike. It cost me $145. So.

Pete:
Yeah. That would have been like what, the equivalent of $1,000.

Ian:
2 or $3000 bike now. Still have it!

Pete:
Yeah, that's right.

Ian:
It's still- falling apart and rusting.

Pete:
Still riding it?

Ian:
Ah, no. Um, and...

Pete:
Do you plan to?

Ian:
Yeah, no. And, and then I also had a couple of, you know, holiday school holiday jobs working for the landscape gardener who lived across the road, just as a labourer.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
That was paying a bit better money than a dollar an hour. And, well, I was thinking by then I was earning $3 an hour in the, in the shop.

Pete:
Really?

Ian:
By the time I was 18.

Pete:
That's pretty impressive to go three times pay rise like. I remember working at the pizza store making ten bucks an hour off, I think. Cash in hand.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
So that if I'd been paid $30 an hour when I turned 18, that would have been ridiculous income, you know?

Ian:
Yeah. A dollar an hour to $3...

Pete:
So you were getting slave wages?

Ian:
I was getting slave wages. I was getting 15 year old slave wages.

Pete:
... it was more the equivalent of you getting paid $3 an hour.

Ian:
Pretty much. Exactly.

Pete:
Yeah. Gotcha. That makes more sense.

Ian:
They used to buy me lunch every Saturday as well.

Pete:
Oh, okay. Yeah, cool.

Ian:
I'd get- I'd worked...

Pete:
Did they let you take your chains off every now and then to work?

Ian:
Exactly. I'd walk. I'd work from 8:30 in the morning until 12:30 and I'd go...

Pete:
At night.

Ian:
Yeah. Take home $4 and they would close at 12:30. But then they would always buy fish and chip lunch.

Pete:
Yeah. It's probably worth more than you...

Ian:
And then we. And then we go off to athletics. Yeah. Because the guy I worked for was the, the coach of the athletics club that I belonged to. So he'd go off to athletics in the afternoon on a Saturday.

Pete:
Do you feel like the communities were just smaller back then? Like, did it feel like everyone was sort of into this? Yeah. You watch TV shows like dramas, right? That are usually set in small towns. And this is probably the same no matter no matter what country the drama is set in, but they always end up kind of creating a very, very small spider web of connections between main characters that don't seem to really reflect reality, at least today. You know, the the fish and chip owner isn't also going to be the footy coach who's also the main character. At the church or something. You know, it's.

Ian:
Well, I...

Pete:
It feels like old Australia used to be more like that.

Ian:
I, I grew up in in Beaumaris, a suburb of Melbourne. But it's, it's a, it's a small country town.

Pete:
Or it was.

Ian:
That that's a suburb in the middle of suburbia in Melbourne because it's, it's one of these weird places that it's like a middle class ghetto, because it has no train service going to it. The two train lines, one stops two suburbs before it and the other one goes past it. And so you've got a bus, a couple of bus services that go through it. So buses are the only public transport. There's no commercial, large commercial buildings or anything. There's a few warehouses and stuff in the northern part of it. But the southern two thirds of the, the suburb is just residential. There's not even a large supermarket. There's an IGA small supermarket in there. And now it's one of the most sought after wealthiest suburbs in Melbourne. But it still doesn't have a supermarket. It's one of those places that. And so it's still, you still go there and it still feels small and local. And and so, you know, the local shops where you go, there are really only, there's one shopping centre, but it's not a mall, it's just a horseshoe shaped street, you know, street shops and, you go there and it just feels like still a small community. It's, it's one of those weird places. And it was certainly like that 60 years ago.

Pete:
Do you think that they've actively maintained that and prevented big.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
Because I imagine...

Ian:
Absolutely.

Pete:
Mcdonalds, Bunnings, Safeway, Woolworths, whatever they would have been eyeing off that area and being like, where can we get set up here?

Ian:
And it's zoned, zoned residential, you know, certainly south of Balcombe Road, where, you know, I lived, which is. Yeah, Balcombe Roads is big east west main road that goes through and cuts the the suburb. And BlackRock the suburb next to it, in you know, half.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Well in two. There's three quarters on the south side and a quarter of it north of it. And most of the north part is still residential, but there's a little bit that borders with the suburb of Cheltenham that's become much more sort of warehouses and a few small factories and things, but there's no big commercial development at all. It's one of those weird places. So yeah, grew up with that sort of community feel, and I'm pretty sure it's still the same. I go there now and it, it looks different because every house in there is worth 2 to $5 million...

Pete:
Yeah, it's ridiculous.

Ian:
I know, but it's, but it's that, it still has that little community village feel about it.

Pete:
It's we're getting a bit off topic, but it's worth chatting about. I feel like that with Ocean Grove. So our hometown or my hometown, I guess. I consider myself now a native of Ocean Grove. We moved here...

Ian:
Since you were nine. Yeah.

Pete:
When, when I grew up there, you had like middle class and lower class Australians living there. There were some upper class, well, like richer Australians, but by and large the majority were middle class Aussies. And now it feels like when you go to Ocean Grove, it's middle to upper class Australians, especially around the centre of the town. Right?

Ian:
Well, the old town.

Pete:
Those houses now are all two, $3 million properties.

Ian:
Plus.

Pete:
Yeah. And it's weird because it kind of feels like the soul has kind of gone a bit. And I feel like when you drive down these streets, there are all these developed houses where.

Ian:
They all look the same.

Pete:
Well, they're mirror image townhouses, so all of them have been knocked down, the original sort of characterful houses that were there from, what, the 50s, 60s, 70s, have been knocked down every time I assume someone dies and they sell the property to, you know, get rid of the inheritance or whatever. And then someone gets one of those, you know, architectural mirror image townhouses to split that property in half and maximise...

Ian:
Which is the same as the one next to it and the same as the one across the road.

Pete:
And because they're quite tall, they're all like two storeys. You kind of can't really see the surroundings as easily. So I feel like it's kind of lost its vibe a little bit from when we were younger. The main street's still nice.

Ian:
Yeah, but it's one of those places, one of those places that you go when you. Yeah, we moved there 30 years ago and it's sort of, you know, it's it was just past Paradise, but still pretty close then.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
And you, it's when you move into Paradise, you want to lock the doors behind you.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
You want, right, not to change where the last people to ever move in here. Yeah. Yeah. But it's never going to work that way.

Pete:
I always get that vibe when I watch the TV show Sea Change.

Ian:
Yes.

Pete:
Like, and if you guys haven't seen it, if you get on iview, ABC iview, if you're in Australia, you can sign up for free. If you're overseas, use a VPN and you can. Yes, but, Sea Change is on there for free with subtitles that was filmed in our neighbouring town or I guess all along the coast, but it was...

Ian:
Bits in Ocean Grove, bits in Barwon Heads,

Pete:
Barwon Heads.

Ian:
There's bits in Melbourne, there's bits all over the place. So.

Pete:
And that, I guess that show, for me at least, is the quintessential Aussie small town vibe that I'm nostalgic for that...

Ian:
It's probably is the place that you grew up in. But yeah..

Pete:
But I'm very, I don't know, it's very like everyone knows each other. It's friendly, it's near the beach and you're kind of like, oh man, I, I sort of miss those places.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
I feel like they've kind of gone.

Ian:
Yeah. Well, they are a little bit, but again, it's, it's obviously a fictional.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Location, even though we know we can look at it and go, I know where that was filmed, but we never got a sense of the size of the town.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
But you got the sort of implied sense that it was small.

Pete:
Yes. And I guess that's because..

Ian:
Whereas you combine Barwon Heads and Ocean Grove are the two towns on either side of the Barwon River with the bridge in between. And you combine those and they've got a population of 20,000 plus, which is..

Pete:
Outside of summer.

Ian:
Which is, which is not- yeah. Which is a permanent population, which is not a small village. Yeah. That's Barwon Heads is only probably 3000.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
And that's doubled in size in the 30 years that we've been here. So, it is a small village, but Ocean Grove isn't. So.

Pete:
Yeah. It is- I love, I love being in the town that I'm in now and knowing people all over the place.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
I went to the fish and chip shop. I go to the same place and there's this Chinese couple that run it and I'm always like "Ni hao, meinu!" Which is like, "hello beautiful lady".

Ian:
Yes.

Pete:
And it initially the lady was like, "What do you want?" Like, didn't realise that I was trying to speak Chinese. So you order something and then anyway, so the other day, I don't know if I told you or not, but I went in and we've had this good relationship ever since she realised I was trying to speak Chinese. She's like, "Hey, ni hao!" And she all of a sudden was like, "You YouTube guy?" And I was like, I was like, yeah, I've got a YouTube channel. She's like "Aussie English? You YouTube, Aussie English guy?" And I'm like, yeah. And she's like, "Where are your videos? You no make videos anymore?" And I'm like, I know I've been lazy. I'm sorry. But it was just. It's funny now we just every time we see each other, there's just that sort of like, "Hey, Pete. Hey", you know? And so I love that vibe. And there's a few different stores where we go and go into the school and seeing the same teachers. And it's nice having that kind of, you know, the place you go out and you see people working in stores or walking around and you're like, oh, I know that guy. I know that guy. Anyway, back to cars. So what did you do to afford it? You were working.

Ian:
Yeah, just working for a few dollars a week. And, and then my first year at university, which was I bought the car in probably, I don't know, September the year before I went to university and I just finished school.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
And then, first year at university, I was on a scholarship from the state government, for, they were back in the early and mid 70s. There was a shortage, a severe shortage of high school teachers. And so they were paying people to go to university and become a high school teacher.

Pete:
You lucky son of a bitch.

Ian:
Which at the time.

Pete:
Not only was it free..

Ian:
I know, but I got paid to go. But they would have paid my fees as well if they had been...

Pete:
I'm still paying off my bloody HECS debt fees...

Ian:
Well, you were there for 12 years, but.

Pete:
Yeah, but I only I only had to pay for the first, I don't know, seven.

Ian:
Yeah. And so I was earning money then. Yeah. Like it was 2500 dollars a year or 2300 I think in the first year.

Pete:
I'm in the money!

Ian:
Yeah. Which.

Pete:
I'm in the money!

Ian:
Yeah. That also went to, you know, my mother at that stage decided she wasn't going to feed me, so I had to pay for my own food.

Pete:
You required more food than everyone else combined.

Ian:
Pretty much because I was I was...

Pete:
You telling me you used to eat a litre of yoghurt in a sitting?

Ian:
Yeah. Yeah. Um and, yeah, so I was earning that money. So that helped in terms of buying the car.

Pete:
Yeah, okay.

Ian:
And then, and when that one died.

Pete:
Another one carked it.

Ian:
No. Well When the first one died.

Pete:
Ah, gotcha.

Ian:
Then I had a bit of money to spend on the second one, but my grandfather gave me a few hundred dollars and topped it up to, do that as well. So, yeah, took one of my sisters overseas for a holiday and gave me a couple of hundred dollars to buy a car.

Pete:
Which would you have preferred?

Ian:
The car.

Pete:
And you can drive yourself away on holidays.

Ian:
Yeah, exactly.

Pete:
Yeah. It's funny, I remember I was working at the pizza shop making a threepence, you know, an hour, ten bucks an hour. And then I had a, I had a, you know, how you used to buy video games for the computer and it would come in like a box.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
I had one of those and I'd filled it with, I'd put duct tape all around it and then cut a slit in the top of it to put money in and...

Ian:
So you can't open it.

Pete:
Yeah. Effectively forced me to keep putting money in.

Ian:
The piggy bank.

Pete:
And I think eventually I ended up with $3,000 in there. So it would have been like 300 hours worth of work at the pizza shop. Well, family's home.

Ian:
Yeah. Circus is in town.

Pete:
And we went hunting online. Would have, car sales would have been a thing at the time, I think.

Ian:
Well, they were certainly available online.

Pete:
Yeah. No car sales is in the website.

Ian:
Yeah, I know, but I don't know whether it was that or whether..

Pete:
I think it was.

Ian:
Yeah, it could be.

Pete:
We got a visitor here. Hey, Joj.

Ian:
Hello.

Pete:
My daughter's just showing up. So car sales was was a thing, and I think I found the, um. We were looking for a Vian Commodore wagon.

Ian:
Yes.

Pete:
Some kind of Holden wagon. We had that split between, like, people drove forward, people drove Holden. I was, for whatever reason, decided I was a Holden person and wanted a wagon. And I ended up buying a wagon with a body kit on it. Blue, beautiful blue thing. Had a paint job. And, it was my birth year was 1987.

Ian:
Something like that.

Pete:
So it was the same age as me at the time and a manual, which was cool and had a sound system in it. And it was all, I think at the time it was 3000, 3500?

Ian:
It was basically what you had in your piggy bank.

Pete:
Max it out. And, that thing, I beat the shit out of, like didn't ever service it and it just kept, I mean, I topped up the oil and everything. And looking back, I probably only owned it for what, 3 or 4 years.

Ian:
Or something like that, yeah.

Pete:
But that thing just kept going.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
Like, talk about a good engine and everything.

Ian:
Mhm.

Pete:
And then after what..

Ian:
It, it's the same engine they had in cars for 20 years.

Pete:
Yeah. Well, there's the V6, wasn't it?

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
Yeah. That was, it sounded like farts because they put an exhaust on it as well. So yeah. Going down the street, you know, it always. I'm sure you heard me coming late at night, driving up the hill.

Ian:
[Ian making car sounds] Oh. Pete's home. Yeah.

Pete:
Yeah, exactly. I thought that was cool.

Ian:
Yeah, it was. It was a good car.

Pete:
But then what? I got a BMW.

Ian:
You did.

Pete:
And that was a nightmare.

Ian:
Went completely mad.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Against my better advice, I will have to add.

Pete:
I know. Wow. And you saved me from that one. Helping me pay it off. That was a nightmare. I got that from someone who told me it was fine. My friends looked at it, said it was- gave it the once over and it seemed to be okay. And it was not okay. Had a blown head gasket and needed. I think in the first six months of owning it needed about $6,000 worth of repairs.

Ian:
Yeah. And then $2,000 every time you had to service it.

Pete:
Yeah, it was pretty brutal. So, yeah, don't buy used European cars. Guys run away, get Japanese and Korean.

Ian:
The bizarre thing is that. Yeah. You that car when when you bought it, you paid I don't know what 16,000 or something.

Pete:
Uh, it was 13,000.

Ian:
13,000.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
And, but when it was new, because it was only about 8 years old...

Pete:
120 grand.

Ian:
$120,000. So they lose their value so quickly. And the reason they lose their value so quickly is they fall apart.

Pete:
Once they're outside of warranty. It's not only that...

Ian:
Enormous amount of money on these cars, and they're made for driving on autobahns in Germany. They're not made for Australian conditions and they fall apart.

Pete:
Yeah. That was it.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
So what did your first car look like? Sound like, smell like?

Ian:
It was a little white four cylinder car. It actually smelled good because bizarrely, back in those days, those cars had leather seats.

Pete:
Well, that's what got me with the BMW. I think that's that was the thing...

Ian:
Leather seats in this, this little eight-year-old car that I paid $899 for.

Pete:
Yeah. Crazy.

Ian:
Could not talk the guy down at all. But when you're 18 years old, what are you going to do? You know..

Pete:
Take it or leave it.

Ian:
Take it or leave it. All right. But yeah, there's this sort of red leather seats in it.

Pete:
Wow.

Ian:
The front seats, the back seat was fabric was sort of not leather throughout, but.

Pete:
Yeah. Interesting.

Ian:
But yeah, it was great. Great little car. Little, you know, four on the floor manual. But you know those cars, they they were made to last about ten years. And that's about what it lasted. You know, I kept it on the road for another year and then it just died.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
And, I'd bought the valiant station wagon that lasted for a while until the, the auto transmission ended up going on that it was still working, but it was slipping and it just got worse and worse and worse to the point where eventually you couldn't drive and again, replacing the auto transmission on a ten year old valiant.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Was going to cost me twice as much as the car was worth.

Pete:
Well, that's what ended up...

Ian:
Actually sold, I sold it to somebody for $50.

Pete:
Yeah, that's what happened with me and the Kia. I had I had the Kia Sorento as a family car more recently, and the transmission went as well as both the front and the back diffs.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
Just shattered. And the guy was like, well, front diff will be three grand. Back diff will be three grand. Transmission will be 11 grand. And I'm like, I'm not paying $17,000. This car's worth probably ten...

Ian:
Car's worth...

Pete:
If, if that. Yeah, I was like, just have it. And I gave it to him for 100 bucks and it's still on the road. So he must have repaired it and sold it and made some money. But it's still registered.

Ian:
Yes.

Pete:
So that's interesting. I keep, I think I've seen it once. Right. And I'm kind of like, oh damn, I should maybe I'll keep an eye out and buy it back. Like now that everything's been like fixed like anyway. Yeah. So and that was the BMW. I don't know, that was obviously a very emotional purchase. It was just I wanted a V8 and I wanted something nice.

Ian:
It was a great car, but it was it was an eight-year-old, ten-year-old BMW.

Pete:
Yeah, but it smelled amazing. It was that smell.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
Of I don't know what it was because I've had other leather cars since.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
And they don't have it. But the whatever the BMW had in the way that the leather was made or whatever, had this amazing luxury smell to it.

Ian:
Well, my little Torana didn't have the luxury smell to it, but.

Pete:
Yeah, I can imagine. Just cigarettes, right?

Ian:
No, not in my car. No smoking in my car.

Pete:
Who was the first person you gave a lift to?

Ian:
First person I gave a lift to. Actually. The first person.

Pete:
The homeless guy that lived on the street.

Ian:
No, the first person I gave a lift to was my school friend John, who was also a university friend who- he actually gave me the lift!

Pete:
In your own car.

Ian:
Because he had a driver's license and I didn't! But he didn't have a car. So yeah.

Pete:
Our powers combined!

Ian:
Exactly.

Pete:
We have transport!

Ian:
Yeah!

Pete:
Gotcha. So that's what he brought to the relationship?

Ian:
Yeah. Driver's license. Yeah.

Pete:
I'm trying to think who I would have. It would have. It must have been a friend or something, because I remember, I remember it being a weird feeling of learning to drive as a as a kid, 16 with the L plates and always having someone in the passenger seat with a full license.

Ian:
Then the first time you get out by yourself...

Pete:
And you're like, the car's empty. Yeah, there's no one else in the car. It's weird not having someone next to me.

Ian:
Mhm.

Pete:
That was a strange feeling. Driving and having my own car and being able to drive it around.

Ian:
Yes.

Pete:
And not having anyone next to me, you know, just being like.

Ian:
Freedom.

Pete:
Yeah. That's pretty crazy, baby. Yeah. Where did you go? Simply because you finally could.

Ian:
Wilsons Promontory.

Pete:
Yeah, in the Torana?

Ian:
In the Torana. Camping with my little two person hike tent. And back then, I didn't have any camping gear, in the sense of cooking stuff and whatever. So one of the reasons for going to Wilsons Promontory is it's got a great little campground. It's my favourite place in the world anyway, but it's got a great campground, which has a shop there and a takeaway food place so you can buy food and you don't have to be cooking or anything. So. And I stayed down there for about 4 or 5 nights. It was over a, it was a break at university. And it must have been, wasn't the Easter break. It was a mid-year break, but it was, it was just outside when the university holidays and school holidays didn't overlap.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
That was the time when universities were still working on three terms and schools had gone to two or something. So so it was yeah, it was one of those ones that was just I'm just going to go to Wilsons Promontory because I can.

Pete:
And what did it feel like? What was it like having the keys, having the car, not not having anyone else with you?

Ian:
It was it was the freedom. It was that, hey, this is I can go to a, I can go to the place and do what I want when I want, how I want. And it's not that, you know, I'd been travelling on my own since I was about 16. I went first time I, you know, went to Sydney, I went to Sydney, caught the train to Sydney by myself when I was 16 and was camping up there. Again, no cooking facilities. So yeah, camped near a campground that's near a shop so you can eat.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
And, so that wasn't, it wasn't that freedom, but it was the, I can get there by myself, you know, I can drive there. I don't have to rely on a train or, you know, go somewhere near public transport. So that was pretty cool.

Pete:
So if that exact car appeared outside tomorrow, would you be happy or slightly terrified?

Ian:
It's like, well, it'd be very terrified because I'm sure it's actually been crushed and recycled.

Pete:
Yeah, I guess the same model then. Maybe not the exact car.

Ian:
They, they, well, it would simply you could not make it to the same standard now.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Because it just wouldn't meet the required standards for safety or because it's. Yeah. No airbags, no seatbelts in the back. No emissions control, none of that stuff.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
You know, this is a 50 year old car we're talking about now.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
60 year old car, 1968. It was built.

Pete:
So imagine you're sitting in in the driver's seat. What do you remember about the interior and inside of it, and what it was like to drive?

Ian:
It was actually fun to drive. It's one of those weird things. It's just a dinky little, little old lady's car, really. But it was it was fun to drive because it's a manual. And, you know, I haven't had a manual for 100 years now, but it was almost hard to find. They are. They are, and rightly so too. I mean, who wants to be changing gears? But it so it was fun to drive and, and it was easy to drive because it's a tiny little car, you know, in terms of weight, you could fit five people in it, three in the back and two in the, in the front in bucket seats. But it was easy to drive because it was small and light, to the point that I got it bogged once and two of us picked up the back, the back of the car and moved it out of the bog so that we could drive it out. So.

Pete:
Yeah. Gotcha. I'm trying to remember. I like being in the van wagon.

Ian:
Would have it picked that up.

Pete:
No, that would have been two tons.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
It had like a woollen seat cover over it. And I remember the, just the feel of holding the gear stick, you know, as well as the steering wheel and just. Yeah. Going. And I think it got to the point where it was getting harder and harder to get into third gear.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
So you would have to like there was a crunch or something wrong with the transmission and you would just have to go one two and then. Mhm. And then four...

Ian:
Double de-clu- Or you could double de-clutch probably to get it into it. But you wouldn't have learned how to do that.

Pete:
No probably not. Not that I remember.

Ian:
Because I taught you to drive in an automatic.

Pete:
No, I learned to drive in the Hyundai. The Hyundai Excel.

Ian:
Oh yeah. But we did, we did lots of driving in the, in the Land Cruiser. But.

Pete:
Did we?

Ian:
But your mum had the Hyundai manual.

Pete:
Yeah because I did, my test was manual.

Ian:
Test. Yeah.

Pete:
I wanted to. I had to. I was like, I'm a man.

Ian:
Yeah,

Pete:
Boy, I got to learn. All my other mates that love cars are learning manual. What?

Ian:
The manual driver's license is.

Pete:
It just licenses...

Ian:
A driver's license.

Pete:
Really?

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
Ah. Got back in my day. I know, like I think it was. How did it work? I think it was more that you got a manual license, probationary license. And then once you got a full license, you could drive whatever.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
But the probationary one was either an auto or manual, as in everything. Yeah. So what car do you picture when you think of us as a family?

Ian:
Probably that horrible yellow Mitsubishi van.

Pete:
So, yeah. So you should go through the order of the cars that you've had. Cover that first. So you had this. The earliest one I can remember is a white. Was it a Ford..

Ian:
Falcon.

Pete:
Ford Falcon station wagon.

Ian:
Which I really liked. But your mother hated it because it didn't have power steering.

Pete:
It was like a boat. Yeah!

Ian:
It was like driving a tank.

Pete:
Yeah yeah, yeah. So it required a lot of strength.

Ian:
It did.

Pete:
And then what? So that, that died, didn't it?

Ian:
That died.

Pete:
I remember you sold the number plates or the radio to the neighbour or something.

Ian:
Yeah. Sold it to the neighbour and he came and towed it up the hill. Yeah, then we had the Mitsubishi van.

Pete:
Okay. So the Mitsubishi van was the...

Ian:
I know we had- before that, before you came along that probably my favourite car that I've ever had. You know, I, I said originally the, the Landcruiser, but the first car your mum and I bought one much to your grandmother's disgust. When we...

Pete:
Which grandmother?

Ian:
Yeah. Well the one who's still alive.

Pete:
Yeah. Okay.

Ian:
When we got engaged, Jo decided she didn't want an engagement ring. She doesn't wear jewellery anyway. And, you know, she wears a wedding ring and occasionally another ring with it. But she doesn't, didn't want engagement ring. And instead of buying an engagement ring, we bought a car!

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
And because I didn't have a car at the time, my old Valiant had died and I was driving my sister's car for a while when she was overseas. And then she came back. Ingrate. And, and so yeah, we bought a car. It was a Mazda 9. 2 9 2 9. It was a great car. It was a station wagon. Great car. And.

Pete:
Why? What made it a great car?

Ian:
Well it was, it was ours.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
And it was really good to drive. Lovely. Mazdas are great. They always have been. Lovely car to drive. And again simple four on the floor manual. And you know we went all sorts of places in that we, we had, our honeymoon was a driving honeymoon. We went to Kangaroo Island. You know, camping out the back of the thing. By then we had camping gear, but if it was peeing down with rain, we could, you know, sleep in the back of the car as well. It was big enough to have it, you know, mattress and sleep in the back of it, even though we were in a tent most of the time. But, no, it was fun. But eventually that died and we got the, the Falcon. Wagon.

Pete:
Yeah, okay.

Ian:
And then that died and we got the, the Mitsubishi van.

Pete:
What made you choose the van? Because I remember it had like, brown seats on the inside, bright yellow colour.

Ian:
Bright yellow colour.

Pete:
I remember the sound of sliding the door open. It's funny how that stays in my head. That sound. And there being these two steps to get up into the van.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
And they're just being loads of space in there to like, kind of put all your stuff.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
And just sit...

Ian:
Well, funnily enough, it's the, the precursor to the Delica that I have now.

Pete:
Oh, really? Okay.

Ian:
Which wasn't four wheel drive.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
But it's the L 300 there now. L 400s. In fact, they've died, and then D5's but, yeah. So that, you know, small four cylinder engine now they've got a V6 in them, but it's a van and you're sitting over the front wheels so it's driving a truck. But it was fun to drive. And again, all the seats lay down.

Pete:
Go to the beach.

Ian:
Yeah, we.

Pete:
Fish and chips.

Ian:
When we were camping, you kids would sleep in the car a few times.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Yeah. They had the, the, the sunroof in it.

Pete:
Yeah. That's right.

Ian:
Open the sunroof...

Pete:
I remember that was a novelty.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
Like whoa.

Ian:
Sunroof in a van. Really useful.

Pete:
Well, let the light in.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
Yeah. And then what you got the Subaru. The red Subaru, after that.

Ian:
We had the Subaru.

Pete:
We had that at the same time. Right. I think...

Ian:
Yes. Yeah. When we moved down to, to Ocean Grove and I was working in the city. So yeah, then it was, well, I need a car and you mum needed a car and so I bought the little red Subaru, which I liked too.

Pete:
Yep. And then the Hyundai Excel, the red one. And that was the first ever brand new car.

Ian:
First ever brand new car.

Pete:
It was like 13, $14,000.

Ian:
Yeah, yeah.

Pete:
Yep. And then pretty much Hyundai. Ever since you've had a trail of those different hatchback. Hyundai is a blue one.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
I30? And then an I another i30.

Ian:
I30 which you have..

Pete:
Which I have now. And then. You've had four wheel drives as well. The white Land Cruiser.

Ian:
Peugeot 307 station wagon for a while. Loved that car.

Pete:
Why is that?

Ian:
Oh, it's the 307 was their rally car.

Pete:
Yeah. Okay.

Ian:
And so it obviously it wasn't kitted out to be the rally car, but..

Pete:
It was a wagon.

Ian:
Yeah. Wagon. But but the, the chassis was the rally chassis.

Pete:
Oh really.

Ian:
And with the suspension and stuff in it. So it cornered like you were on rails. Yeah. It was ridiculous how good it was. But you know, I was, that was when I was, I left Deakin and I was working for myself for a while and then I went to, to D2L the Canadian company. But that way I could lease a car. So I'd leased it. I'd never would have bought it.

Pete:
Why is...

Ian:
It expensive to buy it. But leasing it was fun because all the lease payments were tax deductions.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
But then after when the lease was up after four years, I, traded that in and I didn't replace it. I bought the Land Cruiser. So.

Pete:
Why, what made you switch to Land Cruiser?

Ian:
I wanted a four wheel drive.

Pete:
For?

Ian:
Off road.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
And a bigger car for camping. Going away, camping in.

Pete:
We used to do that. A lot of that with our family. Right? Grandpa. Uncle Paul, us. We used to go to different places around Australia and South Australia and.

Ian:
South Australia.

Pete:
And Fraser Island.

Ian:
Fraser Island, and we went around the Otway's. We spent a few days driving around there, camping and stuff.

Pete:
Yeah. Do you miss doing that?

Ian:
I do, yeah. Well, you know, it's families now. Ten people, not four people.

Pete:
Yeah. So it's tough to get a big four wheel drive and Annika my sister to get...

Ian:
Four wheel drive bus.

Pete:
And we can all go away. You can be the Delica at the front.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
You've also got a Toyota Land Cruiser Prado.

Ian:
Yeah. Which is 15 years old. But it's still going fine.

Pete:
They just go like the clappers, don't they?

Ian:
It's, you know, 300,000km and.

Pete:
Well, they're expected to get over 600,000 or something.

Ian:
Provided you service them.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Go forever. So.

Pete:
Yeah, it's nuts. So which car did mum like the most? And which one she hated the most?

Ian:
Her first Hyundai, I reckon.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Because again, it was a new car. It was hers.

Pete:
Do you remember when I was at school and I was doing a graphic design class, and they had a machine in there that would allow you to cut out your own stickers? And I cut out Satan's wagon and put it on the back of mom's car as a bit of a joke, and.

Ian:
It lasted about an hour.

Pete:
The irony of the Satan's wagon, this red little driving around.

Ian:
Your mum's car.

Pete:
That's it. And yeah, she was. Yeah. Not. Not plussed.

Ian:
Jan. Yes.

Pete:
Which one did she dislike the most?

Ian:
Uh, I don't know. Other than the white Ford.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
She hated that thing.

Pete:
So take one ordinary scene coming home from the shops, being picked up after an activity, or sitting in the driveway while someone got organised. Which details make up? Any of these cars come back to life? Do you remember any of them specifically?

Ian:
Yeah, my mum's old Austin, the first car that she had when we were kids. It's clunky old car, but, we spent a lot of time in that car, going around wherever we were going that previously up until then we'd had to walk or catch buses. So yeah, we didn't go as far, but you know, driving to Dromana from Beaumaris, which now you can do in about 35 minutes. Even then it was 45 minutes. But it was a long, you know, country highways. Now the freeways, but it felt like an adventure. It felt like you were on the road for half a day and, and this little old car and there's, there's a, a hill out of coming out of Frankston. As you come through Frankston, you drive up this hill. Olivers hill that even back then mum would have to be speeding at the bottom of the hill.

Pete:
Getting a run up.

Ian:
To getting a run up, to be able to get over this hill. It's not gonna make it so. And Wheelers Hill, out in Wheelers Hill.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
The suburb, that was one where there were a couple of times where she did not make it up that hill in this car. And had to reverse back down and try again.

Pete:
Jesus. Why could they not make it?

Ian:
Because they're just tiny, little. Tiny, little inefficient engines.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
It's they, they really were made for, you know, particularly English cars. They were made for just driving around the villages and the suburbs of London.

Pete:
They don't really have hills there, do they, in England.

Ian:
Well they, they have hills. But you weren't driving an old Austin around them, that's for sure.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Well not that one. Yeah. That's,

Pete:
I think some of my favourite memories from having the Kia Sorento that we had as well as your Landcruiser was when we had Noah and Joey. They were really young and no, I was always, can I sit in the car? And he would sit in the driver's seat and beep beep beep beep beep. Yeah.

Ian:
Standing in the driver's seat steering.

Pete:
Yeah. I remember we went to Warrnambool and he was doing it in your four wheel drive. The white one.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
In front of the cabin we were staying at. And he was always it was like, can we just go back in the car?

Ian:
Yeah. And he's excited.

Pete:
I think they called the Kia, Papa Car-roo.

Ian:
Papa car-roo?

Pete:
Like dad car.

Ian:
Dad's car.

Pete:
In Portuguese. Yeah. And even now we like Joey's always like I miss Papa car-roo. Can we get it again? And I'm just like, no, I don't want to deal with the transmission issue. Ever again. Yeah, exactly. So what was broken for ages? Because you'd learned to live with it in the car, or in any of your cars.

Ian:
In that, that old falcon. Another reason your mother hated that old Falcon wagon. The tailgate at the back was a wind down window and then a flip out tailgate. Pull down tailgate.

Pete:
Yeah. So you could...

Ian:
And the window winder was dodgy. It would eventually work, but you had to really work at it and. Yeah. Hold your tongue in the right place. And squint. Look at the sun. Yeah. But yeah, that was, you know, one of those ones where eventually I pulled the whole thing apart and fixed it, but. And it was your brain goes, why didn't I do this as soon as it had a problem?

Pete:
Because I had other stuff to do.

Ian:
I had other stuff to do. Yeah. So, but yeah, that was the one that used to drive us all mad where, you, "No,..."

Pete:
No one's gonna...

Ian:
"We're gonna climb over the back." We can't, we can't open the tailgate because the window won't open.

Pete:
I feel like, I wonder how many kids these days are, were around when we had those roll up, wind down windows. Right. Yeah. Like that was such a common thing back then. Power windows was almost unheard of, besides, really.

Ian:
Besides really super expensive cars.

Pete:
Yeah. Like I remember, I think I'm pretty sure that the, the van wagon that I had, the Commodore, the first car that I had had.

Ian:
That had roll up windows.

Pete:
Yeah, all of them. The BMW didn't.

Ian:
No. They had push button everything.

Pete:
Yeah, exactly.

Ian:
Well, it's like a phone in...

Pete:
A phone that I never worked out how to actually use. I know. Yeah. Ahead of their time. I'm trying to think of what else. We would have had, maybe a a switch for the window. I think one of them busted in the car, and I just didn't. I couldn't be bothered. So you would just have to sort of leave it up.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
And the gear, I remember the gear in that VN Commodore that I was just like, ah, I'm not going to be fixed. Yeah it's fine. It survived. But besides that. Yeah. So is there a door, window seat or air conditioner that was its own, had its own special instructions besides the, the back window there for your um.

Ian:
Well the back window was the real problem one. I can't remember anything else.

Pete:
Who was worse at keeping the car tidy?

Ian:
Me.

Pete:
Really? It's my wife. God damn it, Kel.

Ian:
Still am. Well, I keep...

Pete:
Everything has its place.

Ian:
No, I'm tidy in that sense.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
But I eat and drink in the car while I'm driving. Your mother doesn't, and she hates it. No food in the car.

Pete:
Yes.

Ian:
And it was the same when I used to drive her Hyundai. She'd say, don't eat in my car.

Pete:
Which car cost the most to keep on the road? More than what it was worth? My mind is definitely the BMW.

Ian:
Well, yes. Oh, not not more than what it was worth. Because the two that died and, well, three that died, if you include the White Falcon, we just went, I'm not doing this anymore, so we didn't even try and keep them on the road. The Peugeot was expensive to keep on the road because you know, European cars servicing them. Although when I bought it came with the fourth year was the problem because it came with a warranty, a three year warranty at the time, and the warranty service.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
So it was a maximum service. I think it was $450 service...

Pete:
Anything above that...

Ian:
Which at the time, which the time was reasonably expensive. But it was cheaper than you would have bought. And certainly the fourth year suddenly, ah, it's $1,000 to service this car now, not $450 for exactly the same service.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Because, you know, they want people to turn them over when they run out of warranty. So.

Pete:
Yeah. Is that so? Yeah. I guess my next question was like, at what point did it'll be right become we actually need a mechanic and, or to move the car on because it's getting too expensive. And that was it for you with the Peugeot. Was it.

Ian:
Well, it, well it ran out of its lease after four. It had a four year lease, three year warranty, four year lease. And after the four years I went, I either had to pay out the lease and buy the car or trade it in as in hand it back and and then trade it in on something else. And I traded it in on the Land Cruiser.

Pete:
Yeah. What was it like when you were in these cars back in the day driving around? Did you have radio tapes, CDs?

Ian:
Radio only in the Torana, in the Valiant, it was radio only and I put a cassette player in it, which cost me $89.

Pete:
Which back then would have been a lot.

Ian:
Yeah, it was a lot-ish. Yeah, it was a top of the range one.

Pete:
Yeah!

Ian:
Yeah. Crappy one. You could buy one for 20 bucks.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
And then after that, they all had cassette cassette and eventually CDs and then multimedia.

Pete:
The weird one with the BMW was the CD. Where you put the CDs was in the back of the car.

Ian:
Oh the stacker!

Pete:
Yeah, there was like six in.

Ian:
The console that you could choose.

Pete:
Yeah, it was very weird, I don't know. And I remember we had like, so for the, for the era where we had the Holden Commodore. So those 80s 90s, there was obviously that sort of section in the front of the car where a radio thing would just slide in. You could buy one, upgrade them, change them. Everyone used to, and I remember the face of it used to come off and you could put it in a little container and lock it in the glove box so that no one would steal it.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
It's so funny. That just stopped being a thing, you know.

Ian:
Because, well, it stops being a thing when they stop being mechanical.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Because now they're all just completely digital.

Pete:
Yeah, exactly.

Ian:
So.

Pete:
Yeah, so I remember that. And then also like when I had the BMW in order to play. So we had, I guess we had smartphones at that point and also iPods and we had like, you could put in the BMW. There was the tape deck at the front that you could slide a tape into. And I had one of these devices that was a tape, but with the line coming out for you to plug into your phone or your iPod,

Ian:
And you could play directly off that.

Pete:
Exactly. Yeah. And so that was the way that we could listen to really good music there, because I think by the time I was a teenager, you weren't really buying tapes, cassette tapes anymore and using them...

Ian:
Whereas now I just drive along and say...

Pete:
Bluetooth, hey, Siri,

Ian:
Hey Siri, play Taylor Swift.

Pete:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah yeah, yeah. So what music was always on in your car, Dad?

Ian:
Bruce Springsteen.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Van Morrison, the Eagles, Linda Ronstadt, Fleetwood Mac, that sort of.

Pete:
I remember when I, I got that van wagon, it would have been 2005. Karnivool, the band that I'm really into, the Australian one had released their album Themata. And I remember listening to that, that album on repeat in the, the, the wagon with a subwoofer.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
Like just blaring down the street. Yeah. It was just so good. And I have a distinct memory of driving down the Bellarine Highway past, it'll be the Flying Brick now.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
And what's the waterpark there? Adventure Park.

Ian:
Adventure Park, yeah.

Pete:
And listening to the song C.O.T.E. Yeah, just blaring through the speakers.

Ian:
George Benson Breezin'. That used to do that album still, I think the biggest selling jazz album of all time. That used to do, on repeat in my cars for a while.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
In the late 70s.

Pete:
And were you always like when I had this van wagon? It was always driving in Geelong and catch up with everyone, all my mates from high school at the time. So there was like, James, Dave, Pete, Tristan. I'm trying to think Sam Karl there would have been and Sean there would have been about eight of us. And so we would always be at each other's houses with just shitloads of cars in front of the house. Did you have that growing up? Was it the same kind of thing?

Ian:
A little bit, but no, because by the time I went to university, I'd sort of not lost contact, but but didn't have as much contact with old high school friends.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
But the things that I remember about that sort of thing was when I was a teenager at the, the athletics club, we started a, I was an inaugural member of the Beaumaris Athletics Club started off in 1969. And, so there was a bunch of us that grew up in that club for the first 5 or 6 years. And I, you know, started when I was 12 and I'd left it before I was driving. But a few of the people who were 2 or 3 years older than me were driving. And so it was them picking us up and all turning up, you know, was one friend's father had an old Holden ute.

Pete:
Mhm.

Ian:
And we'd go off to athletics training and say, oh, Sean, can you drive us home? And you'd be ten of us in the back of this bloody ute as he's driving around the streets of Beaumaris.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Kids just leaping out of there when they got to their house.

Pete:
That should be illegal now.

Ian:
Oh, yeah! Completely. But it was, it was. It was not quite legal, but not quite illegal then, but.

Pete:
Yeah, it was just looked down upon.

Ian:
Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, I'll, the old, the old ute with us leaping in and out of the back of it. But.

Pete:
Yeah. Was there a car you were genuinely sad to see go, out of any of these ones we've talked about?

Ian:
Probably the Land Cruiser.

Pete:
Yeah, the white one.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
Why did you get rid of that? Was it just excessive?

Ian:
It was just, it was just excessive. We weren't using it off road as much.

Pete:
Yeah. It was just sitting there...

Ian:
Kids had left home and it was just sitting there.

Pete:
I remember the neighbours, right. The neighbours were like, have you seen our white, black and white cat?

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
We got a black and white cat. Have you seen it? And they were looking for it for months. And then eventually you sold the white Land Cruiser. And when you moved it, you found the carcass of the cat underneath the car and you're like, Yeah, so, we found him!

Ian:
We found your cat. Yeah. Because it hadn't been driven for about six months, I reckon.

Pete:
The cat or the car?

Ian:
Both. Yeah. Clearly. And, and so yeah, eventually it was just, you know, it was traded it in. Got, you know, got rid of it.

Pete:
Mhm.

Ian:
Because it would have, by then it would have cost us a significant amount of money to get it back to roadworthy.

Pete:
Yeah. Pick one memory that would sound unremarkable to a stranger, a quiet drive home, a conversation in the driveway, or the sight of someone arriving.

Ian:
Unremarkable to a stranger?

Pete:
Yeah. What's a normal one that you remember that still sticks with you?

Ian:
Car related? Just, I, probably being that being dropped off, after events.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Even to the point when I was older and going to, you know, other athletics events and having people dropping us home. And then when I had a girlfriend who was also an athlete, that was always that. Uh, can you drop me home? Can you drop her home too?

Pete:
I know. I sort of, I missed that point. Yeah. Because you, you had a whole bunch of friends that either didn't have cars or didn't have licenses.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
And it was just sort of a, I missed that part of my life. It's weird...

Ian:
It's like transition. From, from being a teenager to being a functional adult.

Pete:
Well, then that's it. And having the freedom, but also the social side of it where you're actually you're still gathering with loads of people all the time. And there's a reason for everyone to be in the car with you because now it's like everyone has their own car. No one needs you to give them a lift. No one needs you to drop them off.

Ian:
Exactly.

Pete:
And there's something I kind of miss about going through that.

Ian:
And look, we would do it. Even when we all had cars, it was always, you know, going into, you know, Olympic Park, which doesn't exist anymore. It's now where the Collingwood Football Club have their training ground.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
That used to be the athletics track in Melbourne, in the centre of Melbourne. And we compete there every second Saturday. And, there was, who's going to drive today? It wasn't, you know.

Pete:
Who's DD?

Ian:
It might be two people driving for about six people, you know, and you can throw all your gear in the back and javelin's on the roof and all that sort of hoo ha. It wasn't everybody drive themselves. It was always, well, you know, because we're all students, poor. And, yes, we could have all driven, but then you had to pay parking and.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
And so it was know who's driving and then the driving home and we all stop at the one thing, the memory of driving around at that time is no matter what time you were coming home, you stopped at Lexi's hamburgers in BlackRock.

Pete:
Yeah. Is that place still there?

Ian:
No.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
It's now a cafe, but it's, it was just a hamburger takeaway place, but it was open till three in the morning.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
And so. And it had the best takeaway food ever.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
And, and so we used to. Yeah. It was always either we'll stop at Lexi's or I'll meet you at Lexi's. If you were driving in separate cars.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Because we're all coming from the same two suburbs when we're getting home. So, uh, meet you at Lexi's in BlackRock?

Pete:
Yeah, that as well. I miss just.

Ian:
Playing the pinball.

Pete:
Oh yeah?

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
I mean, just having that, being able to just message your mates and knowing they're probably available.

Ian:
We didn't have messaging mates.

Pete:
I know, but you mean contacting them, right? Calling them up, but having those people around. Whereas now it's kind of like, oh, I'll check with my wife. Kids have got this. I can't, I've got this tomorrow. And you're like, oh for fuck's sake,

Ian:
It's alright. When you get to my age, you've got the freedom, but you still don't.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
You want to get together? No, it can't be fucked.

Pete:
I well, yeah, I guess that's it.

Ian:
Too hard. No, I've got a cold. You don't want it.

Pete:
For us all the time. Dad! Where's dad? He's sick. Says he's sick. Yeah. What mattered most when you were buying your first car, what were the things that you were sort of looking for?

Ian:
Getting a car?

Pete:
Or there was nothing specific?

Ian:
It's getting a car. It had to be. You know, I, I really had about $1,000 to spend. So it was a fairly limited things. And yeah, I wanted something cheap, semi reliable, but also and I was never a mechanic, but something that I could fix some of the stuff myself. I was never going to be tinkering as in making it do other things. But yeah. Something wrong? I can pull the I could pull the carburettor out and clean it and put it back again. Yeah. Yeah. Don't even think about doing that in modern cars!

Pete:
Oh, man. The amount of sensors and everything. That was the problem too, with the BMW being so expensive to to fix, you have to take it there. And I remember the guy I was asking him like, what are you plugging in? Have you got like an iPad or something? And he's like, no, we have to pay $35,000 a year to use this stupid fucking device from BMW that then we plug into the cars to then diagnose what the issue is based on. And I'm like, is that the same for all the different cars, like all of the different brands? And he's like, everyone has a different system and you're just like, good God. So he's like, every time you service it, 50 bucks is just for us to use this stupid iPad.

Ian:
Yeah, exactly.

Pete:
I remember like, oh my God, it's ridiculous. Right?

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
But yeah, I think for me, it was just having a wagon because I needed space at the back. I wanted to be able to sleep in the car if I wanted.

Ian:
But you had the bloody subwoofer in the back of it. You couldn't sleep in it.

Pete:
But I could put a surfboard in.

Ian:
Surfboard went in.

Pete:
Whereas if it was a sedan, it was a lot harder to kind of you'd have to shove it out the window.

Ian:
Yeah. Or have roof racks.

Pete:
Exactly. How did you find out whether a used car was any good? What was the sort of test back then?

Ian:
Used to the RACV and VACC so two, you know, car organisations would have tests that they would do. So you could pay a dealer or if you were buying it privately, you could do it yourself to go and have a RACV test or a VACC test. So they would test all of the standard sort of things and then come back with a report, and you then look at it and go, well, I need to, if I'm going to buy it, I need to fix this and this or there's nothing wrong. I'm fine.

Pete:
Yeah. Did you feel pressure, like social peer pressure to get certain types of cars? Because like today, you'll see with young people, men are usually getting some kind of boys fast. Like, large car, you know, sports car, a four wheel drive, something like that. You know, I mean, associated with, I guess, the stereotypical male activities. And girls, on the other hand, you will see them usually in like a hatchback or sedan where they want the transport, but they're not, they're not hanging around like idiots or.

Ian:
No, I, for me, a car was just a, you know, it was a transport vehicle.

Pete:
So you weren't really judged by...

Ian:
A status symbol.

Pete:
Other people.

Ian:
And no, and all the friends that I had, I don't, there wasn't a cult for cars. There are a couple who were in that Holden versus Ford.

Pete:
Rev head.

Ian:
Uh, the rev heads. And they still are, funnily enough. One of them still goes to all the auto shows.

Pete:
Bathurst and everything.

Ian:
He's got a Mustang now because that's the only Ford you can have because they're no longer...

Pete:
Or one of the newer ones.

Ian:
Making Falcon- yeah.

Pete:
Yeah. Gotcha.

Ian:
And, and so, yeah, other than that, there really wasn't much. There was a little click of a few of my friends who drove Minis.

Pete:
Yeah. Okay.

Ian:
You know, Morris Mini.

Pete:
They're still around. I sometimes see them..

Ian:
I know!

Pete:
Pretty expensive too, I think to get the ones that are...

Ian:
The old originals. Yeah. And then if you were really cool, you had a Moke.

Pete:
Yeah, okay.

Ian:
Which was just a tin can, basically.

Pete:
Death trap!

Ian:
Yeah. Pretty much. There's still a few of them around. There's a, there's a guy who was selling one in, in Wellington, about six months ago.

Pete:
Okay.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
Is that the one that's like, uhh.

Ian:
$30,000.

Pete:
It's that beach going type car?

Ian:
Yeah. Yeah. It's like a little, tiny little jeep. Yeah, it's a mini. It's a it's a mini chassis with a little jeep-y thing...

Pete:
Just kind of has a cage and a frame over the...

Ian:
Outside of the frame, and then a like a canvas cover on it.

Pete:
That's right. I've seen them around.

Ian:
Yeah. They've got $30,000.

Pete:
I guess they're just not common anymore.

Ian:
And if it's still going.

Pete:
Yeah, it's been maintained well. What felt like a luxury feature back then in the car? The leather seats?

Ian:
Yeah nah...

Pete:
Or was that just the standard?

Ian:
That was just- well, it wasn't standard, but it was in that car.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
A luxury was having a cassette player.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Because cars didn't come with them until the late 70s, really mid to late 70s. Up until then it was just you got a radio.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
That's. And it was an AM radio. Then they came with an FM radio. That was cool.

Pete:
I think for me...

Ian:
The FM radio. You drive 20km, you've run out of. You've got to put it on a new station.

Pete:
Oh, is that what's happening? It's switching between those.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
I think for me it was the BMW power windows, leather seats and a phone. All at once. The phone. The phone was useless, but it was just like, fuck, there's a phone in the middle of the. You can see it. You can pick it up and be like, hello?

Ian:
Yeah, it's the size of an old phone!

Pete:
Wasn't it? It was very weird just being like, what the hell is that?

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
It was always such a novelty. Everyone who I gave lifts to would always be on the phone, and it doesn't work. You need a SIM card to put in.

Ian:
Exactly.

Pete:
Yeah. Far out. All right, well, maybe we should finish up then, with some rapid fire questions.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
Best looking family car.

Ian:
That I've had? Or anybody's had?

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Best looking family car.

Pete:
Yeah. What? Which of your family cars that you've had do you reckon was the hottest? If you had to go out on a date with the car. Which one was the hottest one? I feel like it'd have to be some European sports car. Right?

Ian:
Well, yeah. Exactly.

Pete:
I'm not going on a date with a Land Cruiser.

Ian:
Or an old Torana. Hey! It worked. That was the car I took your mother on our first date in. So.

Pete:
What happened next?

Ian:
She told me she wasn't interested.

Pete:
Uh, no, I meant, like, did it. So did it work out?

Ian:
Well, you're here!

Pete:
Apparently!

Ian:
That was a few steps down the track, though.

Pete:
Which one do you like the most? Look-wise.

Ian:
Look-wise.

Pete:
The Delica.

Ian:
The Delica! Yeah, the Delica is just cool.

Pete:
Yeah. Most embarrassing car to be dropped off in.

Ian:
Uh. Not, none.

Pete:
Yeah. I'm trying to think I'm racking my brain. I don't really give a shit now, but when I was a kid, maybe it would have been like a small pink hatchback or something.

Ian:
Your old, your mum's old red Hyundai.

Pete:
But even then. Yeah, I think I'm the same as you. I didn't really care. It was just like, whatever. Car that lasted the longest?

Ian:
The Toyota Prado that we currently have 15 years old, still going strong. I bought it new.

Pete:
How was the red Hyundai that I've got? It must be. Is that 2012. So it's 14 years old.

Ian:
14 years. 14, 13 something like that.

Pete:
It's still doing pretty well.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
Best car nickname. Did you give any of the cars nicknames?

Ian:
No. Dilly.

Pete:
Satan's Work.

Ian:
Satan's Work. You idiot.

Pete:
You'll have to tell mum to listen to this episode. She'll be like, you pests. I've forgotten that. Who kept the car cleanest? I'm sorry. Who kept the cleanest car, rather.

Ian:
Me.

Pete:
You did?

Ian:
Yeah. I'm the only one who's ever washed a car in our family.

Pete:
Manual or automatic?

Ian:
Automatic now.

Pete:
Yeah, well, it depends on the car. Right. If you had a.

Ian:
Oh, yeah. If I was driving a Ferrari, I wouldn't want a fucking automatic. Why pay half $1 million and have it change gears for you?

Pete:
Yeah, exactly. Well, isn't that the. Yeah. A full tank or a working air conditioner?

Ian:
Depending on where I live.

Pete:
Yeah. That's it. Tasmania. Oh full tank.

Ian:
Yes.

Pete:
I'd take the aircon, I think. Yeah. One car you would never buy again. BMW.

Ian:
BMW. Yeah. An old Ford station wagon.

Pete:
One car you would happily drive again tomorrow.

Ian:
The Mazda 929, although they don't exist anymore.

Pete:
So that was the van.

Ian:
That was the van. The first, the one that. No, the one that mum and I bought the. Yeah. The.

Pete:
Oh yeah.

Ian:
Station wagon that we bought.

Pete:
Mitsubishi was the van...

Ian:
The Mitsubishi was the van. Yeah.

Pete:
Yeah. You'll have to do a search see if there are any around.

Ian:
Oh absolutely not.

Pete:
I'm always amazed just to finish up. I'm always amazed watching some of those old TV show or TV shows that are set. They're modern, but they've been set in the 80s, 70s, 60s and the number of period correct cars that are around and of all different types.

Ian:
They sought collectors, that that will hire them out, to film companies and stuff.

Pete:
You're like, who? What kind of fucking weirdo buys.

Ian:
A Mazda 929 car...

Pete:
From the 60s and maintains it for 70 years, you know, 60 years. Like that's a very niche.

Ian:
It is.

Pete:
Like. Just in case the movies need to hire it.

Ian:
They need a Mazda from the 1980s.

Pete:
Do you guys need this really unpopular car from the 60s? All right. Well, yeah, thanks for joining us guys. Hope you enjoyed this one. Hope it's made you think about your memories with your cars growing up. And we'll see you in the next one.

Ian:
Bye!

Pete:
See ya!