Seven Men Waiting For A Bus

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31786, 17 September 1968, Page 1

Seven Men Waiting For A Bus

Seven young Londoners are waiting for their double - decker bus to arrive at Lyttelton from Australia before they continue their drive round the world.

The bus, which was bought from a London scrapyard for £145, is due this afternoon or tomorrow morning. The spokesman for the group, Albert Pigeon, aged 23, said that originally the drive around the world was to have taken 18 months. It had already taken two years and they did hot expect to arrive back in London until Christmas, 1969. All seven come from South-

end-on-Sea. The eldest, aged 26, the youngest 21, they have been close friends from school days and have made several tours of Europe together. The double-decker is the third bus they have owned. It is 13ft high—lft lower than the normal bus height. The present drive, said Mr Pigeon, was planned in Amsterdam at Easter, 1966. Eight months later they were on their way through Europe to the Middle East.

In Kuwait they felt the effects of the seven-day conflict between the Arabs and Israel last year. “We were working with Arabs for an American company,” said Mr Pigeon. “They were very hospitable until the war broke out but because of Nasser’s propaganda telling them

that Britain and the United States were supplying the Israelis with arms they turned hostile. We were stoned, spat on, and the windows of the bus were smashed.

“We had no news of the war but that from Arab sources which informed everyone that Tel Aviv had been wiped off the map,” he said. From Kuwait the party travelled through Iran, Afghanistan, and West Pakistan to India from where they had planned to ship the bus to Australia.

“Because of the closing of the Suez Canal shipping was boycotting Indian ports and going on to Singapore so this was something of a financial crisis to us,” he said. “We managed to ship the bus from Madras to Singapore

but after that six of us went to Darwin where we worked to get enough money to pay for freighting the bus to Australia.” In Darwin their bankroll of $333 was stolen on Christmas Eve and it was the attendant publicity which brought Qantas to their assistance. The airline shipped the bus and one of the group who remained with it to Australia on the condition that they agreed to do a six-week tour of Australia with the bus painted as a Union Jack. The bus has travelled about 40,000 miles. All the men have some mechanical ability, but this has not been called on as the journey has been free of breakdowns. The only near accident was in Jugoslavia where, because

of an avalanche, they were forced to make a 200-mile detour lasting six days over slippery and dangerous mountain paths which previously had only seen the passage of donkeys and ox-drawn carts. As they were travelling down a narrow street in Istanbul the bus accidentally clipped a corner from an overhead balcony, causing the veranda to collapse in the street behind them. In Australia their bus was stolen and they spent a night sleeping in a bus shelter before it was recovered.

When they leave New Zealand, they will go to Mexico and North America. After that they envisage selling the bus when they return to London to buy a sloop for a Mediterranean cruise.