Against All Oddities: A Falcon in Upside-Down Car Land, Part 3

As you’ve surely read in Parts I and II of my tale of college-aged tomfoolery Down Under, by this point in my semester abroad, I’d scratched out an ill-conceived plan—let’s call it the Final Exam of Australia—to drive across the continent in a rickety 1980s Ford Falcon. My buddy Steve, who I had been best friends with since the age of nine, was visiting from America. We waited for my finals to be over, nerves mounting. And then, with a deep breath (and an eviction notice from my dorm), it was time to finally make good on all the grandiose Thursday night university pub plans we made at the Notting Hill Hotel.

As we set off with our many changes of clothes, a disorganized heap of tools, two tents, and a pair of sleeping bags, adventure (if nothing else) awaited. The route? Not exactly set in stone. Would we be devoured by wildlife? Couldn’t rule it out. The Falcon? In a questionable state of readiness.

You see, this particular car had become accustomed to urban life, which was a significant departure from its Outback-traversing design brief. For instance, one could assume that we might encounter terrain wherein a 3-inch drop in stock ride height would be a hazard.

Figuring we might as well start with activities in which a lower center of gravity (and low aversion to risk) were beneficial, I registered for a CAMS event at Sandown Racecourse, just outside of Melbourne, to kick things off. As if unloading and preparing the car weren’t tedious enough, you may remember that by this point, Steve and I were basically living in it. Imagine the three months of supplies and belongings for two people scattered all over the paddock. The scene was chaotic, to say the least.

On the flip side, weather and track conditions were great that day. The car performed fantastically on track, at least until my enthusiasm got the best of me going into a 90-degree left-hander. I clobbered the curbing at the apex and immediately registered that something with the car felt even worse than normal. Luckily, it was our last session of the day, and any alignment issues would be a problem for the road.

Luke, a buddy of mine from Monash University, offered us a place to stay with him and his dad for a week or two, so that was our next stop. All we’d need to pay in return were our professional barn-cleaning services.

The old man ran a jet boat repair shop and deer farm on the banks of the Murray River in a tiny town called Torrumbary. Upon arriving that evening, the first thing we did was crack open a couple of beers and hoist up the mighty Falcon by its tow bar with a chainfall. Not wanting to throw safety to the wind, we chocked up the back with two full-size beer kegs.

The damage was my fault, so I crawled under the Ford to see the extent of it. I’d completely knocked one of the bushings out of the suspension arm. So, we took Luke’s VL Commodore (308, Trimatic, and powered by natural gas) to the local auto parts shop the next morning. After many wonderful days of fixing the Falcon, cruising the river, petting deer, and finding old Holden Torana XU-1 parts in an old shed, we hit the road once again.

Steve and prioritized back roads over highways as we bumbled up through Bathurst (cruising the circuit, of course) and headed into the Blue Mountains to set up camp. The following day, we observed all the sketchiness King’s Cross had to offer and landed at a hostel for a few days. On our way up the coast, I remembered I had a pen pal in Newcastle from way back in the day. Naturally, us two weirdos dropped in on her to say hello while she was working a hotel shift. We didn’t even ask for a free night!

Further up the coast of Queensland, it had been a long several days on the road, and a few schooners of XXXX (aka four-ex) sounded quite refreshing. So did camping on the beach. We stopped the car on the promenade and ducked into a local bar for those beers. The night ended with us rolling out sleeping bags on the beach, where we fell asleep.

All was going swimmingly until a police officer directed his Maglite directly into my eyes. That confused me, but the nudge of his boot startled and scared me completely shitless. Defeated, we crawled back to the Falcon and drove to a more inconspicuous location: between two thick rows of sugar cane. At about 6 a.m., we were awoken again, this time by a farmer. He stepped down from his tractor and, gently this time, shooed us along. Onward and upward!

Amazingly, the car was suddenly a dreamboat, happily devouring the endless kilometers and untold liters of fuel. After many a night between various rows of sugar cane, we reached the end of the road at Port Douglas. That was as far as the Falcon would make it, anyway, because the dreaded ground clearance issues were upon us.

Of course, we didn’t know that for sure until the final of said encounters removed a large chunk of the car’s front bumper. Not wanting to can-opener the floorboard, we legged it up to the shore. After four nights camping in the Daintree National Forest, we had nowhere to go but back to the Falcon, and inland. Checking the calendar, it was also nearing the halfway point of our allotted time. We headed deep into the red dirt, profiting immensely from the Falcon’s enormous gas tank as we bounded down the same lonely stretches shared with road trains.

A long day on Outback roads took us to a crossroads called Three Rivers. This being Australia, there was a pub there, and not much else. The sleepy bar was memorialized forever in a country song by Slim Dusty (one of the best country music names of all time, I might add). If Queensland is Australia’s Texas, Slim Dusty is its Hank Williams.

The pub’s “car park” looked like the best place to spend the night. I checked with the bar staff and I was advised to “have at it, mate.”

Having collected one kangaroo and several rocks by this point, the Falcon’s front end was looking pretty battered. As did we, yet we blended right in here. As the night went on at the Three Rivers Pub, the pool games gradually got more energetic and the air more choked with cigarette smoke. The regulars would help themselves behind the bar and throw a few dollars into a jar. We talked with two girls for a while, and they offered to take us back to their cattle station via the helicopter they arrived in. For several reasons, we politely declined.

The night went on and on. We woke up at about 10:00 the next morning, halfway in and out of a Ford Falcon in the hospitality of the pub car park. A line of school children in their wide-brim hats walked by us. A teaching moment, I’m sure.

No meat pie was going to fix our headaches. About 100 miles down the road was a McDonald’s and a hardware store. At the golden arches, I saw a helicopter pilot with his keys clipped to his belt loop with a double-ended gate clasp. Man, what a badass. We wandered into the hardware store with cheeseburgers, spending about 30 minutes browsing wares simply because the thought of being in a moving vehicle was so nauseating. Having remembered losing my keys some months ago, I navigated to the proper aisle and picked up the same type of gate clasp to avoid future troubles. I never did become a badass outback cattleman in a glass-bottom helicopter, but I do still carry my keys on that clasp 21 years later.

We hit the road, and soon we were back in remote territory. A paved two-lane road with wide shoulders gradually necked down to a single-lane sand road. Note: When you’re behind a road train (aka land train, or giant semi) in the desert, the detritus is unimaginable. I supplemented my broken washer fluid pump by splashing a bottle of water onto the windshield with the wipers going wild—a vain attempt to rinse away the sediment, cow slobber, and feces. Passing opportunities were few and far between, and they needed to be timed very carefully with the changes in the width of the road. Oncoming traffic had to be accounted for in a similar fashion. Certain portions of the road barely showed up on maps.

Ah, yes, maps. This being the mid-2000s, Steve and I were relying on a paper map for the entirety of Australia. That’s a lot of ground to cover; gone was the granularity and detail of my Melways bible, a detailed atlas of Melbourne.

At one point, I was in the navigator seat, and with limited information, I decided it was prudent to take a shortcut. I insisted that we stay straight on Highway 35. We made one last fill-up and ventured down that dirt road. And we ventured. And we ventured. The going got slower, and the sand killed our forward progress and fuel economy. After two stream fordings, we both started wondering what was going on. We were multiple hours down a dirt road with a little bit more than half a tank of fuel, and it was getting dark. There were animals everywhere. We exited the car and used the last bit of daylight to look at the map.

As Steve discovered studying the map on the trunk of the car, “straight” and “on Highway 35” turned out to be mutually exclusive terms. Wherever path we took, it wasn’t indicated on this map. We headed back to the junction of Unknown Dirt Road and Highway 35, but with light fading, the threat of kangaroo collision required constant vigilance.

Having avoided marsupial traffic for quite some time, one finally decided it would hop alongside us for a good 100 feet. Then, out of nowhere, it made a hard left turn toward the Falcon and headbutted the front-right wheel. Shortly thereafter, we met another with the front bumper. Neither were direct hits, but it was alarming enough for us to park the car and call it a night.

We’d slept in the open air dozens of nights at this point in the journey, so we knew better than to do so here in the middle of nowhere. We had been warned of all sorts of wild activities in the area involving humans, spiders, snakes, and other deadly creatures, so we transitioned to sleeping longways in a locked-up Falcon. Less comfortable, but we didn’t die, which was a plus.

Speaking of miracles, Steve and I never got into so much as an argument the entire trip, which totaled about 2.5 months. Nevertheless, we were ready to head back; I had a flight to America to catch in a couple of days. About 10 minutes before closing time at our Monday college bar, Dooley’s, we arrived caked in who knows how many layers of dust and grime. We received a hero’s welcome from our friends, who had already returned for the following semester.

About two days later, Steve had already flown back to Raleigh. I was saying my goodbyes, both to my mates and my Falcon. I did so with one, solid single-peg burnout that blanketed the entire residence hall parking lot. The RA had called the cops, I later learned, but they were too late. I was already on the road, gone.

I flew back to America but left my Falcon in Melbourne for future generations of idiots to enjoy. Over the next several years, the old Falcon remained registered and served as pub transit by my Aussie friends, and then friends of friends. Its clutch cable broke and was repaired. It got a new tire or two (ahem, probably the rears).

After some time, the car and I ran out of mutual connections. We lost touch, as old chums tend to when distance gets in the way. One day, around 2012, I got an itch to track the car down and import it to the States. I called the Monash halls of residence to ask if there was still a blue EA-generation Ford Falcon around. Lo and behold, there was… and attached to it were a pile of fines. The person on the phone was suddenly curious about my contact information. I hung up.

***

Matthew Anderson is a North Carolina native, professional engineer, car storage landlord, and devoted crapcan connoisseur. He owns a Holden, a Citroën, a Hobby 600 camper, a Moskvich, a Studebaker, an Isuzu, and he thinks that’s it. We don’t ask him too many follow-up questions. –EW