Legendary Land Rover tales

I have been reading a few travel stories of late (as I do) and I suddenly realised they had one thing in common – all these great adventures had been undertaken in Land Rovers.

Not the glitzy thing they call a Defender nowadays, but the original Land Rover – basic, utilitarian, uncomfortable to a fault, but capable and endearing.

Of course, many people would have read the series of books – Blast the Bush; Bush Bashers; Too Long in the Bush; Beating about the Bush; Still in the Bush; and End of an Era – by Len Beadell.

These yarns tell of his and his team’s, the Gunbarrel Road Construction Party, exploits as they surveyed and graded roads across the Outback, west of today’s Stuart Highway, in the 1950s and ’60s. The six books are a great read, full of history, adventure and all told in Len’s laconic and humorous style. While the Landies don’t feature prominently, they are always there in the background, whether in the prose or in the accompanying pics, doing the job as unsung heroes, as what they were.

3

Then there’s First Overland by Tim Slessor, an account of the grandiosely named, The Oxford & Cambridge Far Eastern Expedition. While not the first motorised trip from London to Singapore (as often claimed) this journey undertaken in 1956-57 has taken on more of a life of its own, helped along, no doubt, by the marketing gurus at Land Rover. It’s not a bad yarn though and well-worth reading, the latest 50th anniversary edition of the book having a forward by Sir David Attenborough.

Then there is Dragoman Pass by Eric Williams. What a life this bloke had, even though you probably have never heard of him. A navigator in Bomber Command in WW2 he was shot down over Germany and taken prisoner, before escaping and making his way back to England. His second book and his great escape story, The Wooden Horse, made him famous.

In 1956 he and his wife left England and travelled behind the Iron Curtain which had descended over Europe after WW2. Written in a fiction style to preserve the life of people in the communist countries that helped them, it’s still a good yarn; although I’m not sure where fact ends and fiction begins.

Teresa O’Kane’s book, My Life with N’Doto, is a story of a five-year love affair with Africa undertaken in 2010 in a 40-year-old Landie. It’s her second book on travelling through Africa, her first being, Safari Jema, A Journey of Love and Adventure from Casablanca to Cape Town. They are both pleasant reads, evocatively told, which will make the most chair-bound of us get up and want to travel to this incredible continent.

A darn sight more adventurous is, Crossing the Congo, by Mike Martin, Chloe Baker and Charlie Hatch-Barnwell. Setting off in 2013 from Kinshasa, they travelled from south to north through the Congo basin, on a journey they were told wasn’t possible. It’s a great modern-day adventure well-told, with fabulous photos.

Finally, there are the stories of Australian born Barbara Toy, who from the early 1950s did some of the most incredible solo voyages I have ever heard of. While I’m reading Travelling the Incense Route, she wrote nine books all told on her exploits, and what exploits they were.

Loving desert country, her first major trip took her from London to Baghdad in 1950, followed by a seven-month expedition through Libya in 1952. In 1953 she explored Saudi Arabia and in 1956-57, she drove around the world, including a stint in Australia where she drove from Perth to Sydney – and don’t think it was as easy then as it is today!

3

Len Beadell bogged whilst filming with the BBC; 1974.

Her 1959 expedition took her through Libya to Kenya, while her sixth major expedition was in 1961 from Timbuktu to Tripoli. In 1990 at the age of 81, she again circumnavigated the world as well as retracing the route of Hannibal and his elephants over the Italian Alps.

Most of those trips were in her much loved 1950 80-inch Series 1 Landy, nicknamed, ‘Pollyanna’. In 1960, Rover, who had started to sponsor her, insisted she change vehicles for a more modern Land Rover, which she didn’t want to do and considered the later model less reliable. She later bought Pollyanna back and drove it around the world again in 1990. After her death in 2001 the vehicle was sold to a keen Landie owner and takes pride and place at selected car shows.

So, while you’re home or sitting on a beach somewhere, get your nose out o the iPad or iPhone and read about some great adventures … all in old-style Land Rovers!