Sydney (Chapter 10 - Arriving in Sydney)

The pace in Sydney is faster than in Melbourne, or, for that matter, anywhere else in the Commonwealth. The traffic, and there's plenty of it, really moves. Although the city is not new and the streets were initially designed for horse-drawn traffic, there is little of the frustration that confronts the motorist in the centre of London. The pace is fast but not furious as it is, say, in Paris, and in no time at all we had whisked through at a steady forty-five miles an hour, to pull up at our destination, the NSU agents Hazell & Moore, just a stone's throw from the famous Sydney Harbour Bridge. It was a glorious Monday evening, with a cloudless blue sky over the city, and Nita and I, once more carried on the crest of a wave of modest achievement, were in the highest spirits. We had exactly £9 15s. (Australian) left.

Jack Crawford, manager of Hazell & Moore Ltd., was a tall, iron-grey-haired man of some sixty years, with an inexhaustible enthusiasm for two-wheeled travel, and, through experience, he knew the first requirements to make two hot, dusty travellers feel right at home. In his modern showrooms, we sat down in the pleasant coolness and just enjoyed the iced beer in the tall glasses, with the condensation running down the sides. No one said much until the glasses were empty. Then, under the shrewd guidance of Jack and his assistant, Arthur Knutt (a one-time Birmingham lad), we formed a battle plan.

'I bet,' said Jack, 'you've precious little cash left.'

'That's right,' I answered, not surprised; for our host seemed to know all the answers.

'Well, that doesn't matter. No man has experienced life until he's been broke in a strange place, but the first thing you'll have to do is to remedy that fault.' I mumbled agreement, regretting that our aboriginal interlude would have to be postponed yet again. 'So it's up to you to find your fortune in this big city of ours. While for our part' (here he glanced at a report on our scooter handed to him by a white-coated mechanic) 'we'll put that Prima of yours into apple-pie order. Not that it isn't basically sound, but from the first report the motor sounds a bit sick.' I said that having lived with it for so long we had not really noticed any deterioration in performance, although she was a bit reluctant on hills and sounded far noisier than we felt she should.

For our first night in the big city we were given the address of a cheap and cheerful (and somewhat doubtful) hotel off Pitt Street. It served us well for one night, however, and after a bath we slept like the dead, ready to tackle the job-hunting first thing next morning. It was obvious that at least another two months' stay was ahead of us, although I am glad now that it was-as it happened, we nearly got away with one week's stay and five hundred pounds, nearly, but not quite.

Returning to the agents in the morning we found a small Press reception waiting, and the next hour was taken up with interviews and a series of photographs of Nita and me, looking suitably rugged, adorning the scooter. We made the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald and the sequel was an invitation to appear on a television' quiz' programme and be grilled by one of Australia's greatest comedians, Jack Davey. A master of spontaneous wit, he had us and the rest of the audience chuckling over our forerunners' efforts. His humour, though slightly sadistic, was none the less extremely funny. The dialogue, completely unscripted, went something like this.

Davey (to intense, humourless rural woman): 'So you work on the farm, huh! Out there in all weathers in gum-boots and things?'

'That's right, Jack.'

'And you don't mind being out there in all the mud and everything? '

'Oh no, I love my work.'

'Uh, huh, any children?'

Woman (with suitably hushed voice): 'No, Jack, I haven't any children.'

'Well, just goes to show, you should never have worn gumboots. . . .'

We had a choice of subject and chose Geography, in the desperate hope that we had gleaned something of the subject on our various travels. Between us we managed to scramble through the preliminary questions: where is Mount HekIa, the Midway Islands, and why is the sea salt, etc.-when suddenly the bell rang and we were in line for the jackpot.

'How much in the kitty this week?' asked Jack Davey.

'Four hundred and eighty-five pounds,' replied a sweet young thing, wreathed in little more than smiles.

Nita and I glanced quickly at one another; we were already on our way to the north, and I was visualizing my last glance at Sydney Harbour Bridge.

A fanfare of music and the usual build-up. Then, 'Here comes the five~hundred-pound-jackpot question. Which is the nearest foreign capital to London? You have thirty seconds to answer.'

Neither of us said Brussels. We went all round from Dublin to The Hague, from Copenhagen to Oslo, and rather hopelessly as a last resort, Paris. Ironically for us at that moment, Brussels was the one European capital to which neither of us had been. So, with hopes of a quick cut to the open road again dashed to the ground, we left the studio in a black mood, with ten pounds consolation and two packets of soap-flakes.

There was no alternative, therefore, but another spell of work. We made another television appearance in Sydney's 'In Town Tonight', but there were no get-rich-quick opportunities on that one. Perhaps in the final analysis it had turned out for the best. 'Easy come, etc.', being a hackneyed but profound cliché.