Once More To The Other Side of the World!!

So, having thought I'd managed to gather as much research material as I will ever need, late last year I was able to track down three more Marathoniers in Australia, all of whom have an extraordinary story to tell of their motorised trek from London to Sydney in 1968.  Two in particular had proved illusive since I started this mammouth endeavour in 2011, so I was thrilled to make contact with them - at 24 years old, three young Aussie women were persuaded to join the throng of 250-plus competitors, and pilot a brightly painted Morris 1100 along the 10,000 mile route, all the while writing a column for a Sydney newspaper.  Christened 'The Galloping Tortoise' (a nod to Aesop's fable and a 1967 publicity stunt during which the car raced a light aircraft across Australia), I will be very excited to listen to their recollections of close-shaves with bandits, getting horribly lost in the deserts of Iran, and generally coping with competing in what was very much a man's sport in 1968.

Will also be meeting a man who, together with two other crew mates in a Ford Cortina, managed to collide with a bus in Teheran, and ended up in jail, and another competitor who drove his Volvo from Sydney to London, all the while making a film, before lining up at Crystal Palace to make the return trip, only to hit an army truck in India and end up in a local hospital needing plastic surgery and falling under the care of a local maharaja who made sure he and his co-driver wanted for nothing!

An opportunity not to be missed and so tomorrow I once more fly off to the other side of the world.  A very old friend has generously offered me a place to stay in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, which will help with costs and give me a chance to catch up with someone I first met when I was 18 years old.  It's autumn in Sydney, which means it's spider season in the Blue Mountains.  Just as those leggy house-spiders start to creep into British homes as the summer gives way to winter, so it seems that Funnel Web spiders do much the same in NSW.  I was talking to a doctor-friend of mine the other week, and he was recounting how he worked in NSW for 6 months - rule of thumb for your average Aussie is 'if something nasty bites you, make sure you catch it and take it to the Emergency Department'.  That way, the medics will know what antidote to administer.

Good grief!

As before, I shall be keeping a blog of my further adventures down-under.  Happily it won't be quite as mad-cap as last year (and hopefully not as damp).

Now, where did I put those DVT tights?