TRIP ROUND AUSTRALIA

Northern Advocate, 12 August 1932, Page 6

TRIP ROUND AUSTRALIA

TWO MEN IN A “BABY” CAB

SYDNEY, August u,

Messrs W. Hatfield and J. Johnston, who left Sydney yesterday morning to make a complete circuit of Australia by motor car, took with them a minimum of equipment. The whole of it, including - two suitcases containing clothing was packed in the rear compartment of their small saloon car, with plenty of room to spare. If it had not been lor their clothing, they might easily have been mistaken for holiday, makers bent on a week-end motor tour.

Mr Hatfield, who has organised the trip, hopes to obtain material for a novel, but he will also rake-films of some of the wilder regions of the north-west, and will contribute a scries of articles to the “Sydney Mail.” The overlanders will make their way through Queensland to Darwin, and, after crossing the Alligator, Adelaide, Victoria, and Ord rivers, will travel down the Western Australian coast to Perth. From then on they expect the route to be comparatively easy. They are confident that there are no obstacles which the car cannot jmss. One item of their equipment is an ingenious ratchet device, which, it is claimed, will enable the car to be pulled from any morass or over logs or boulders. The device weighs only 41b. It is operated in conjunction with a coil of Avirc, which may be tied to a tree trunk, or even to the bumper bars buried in the ground. The travellers will rely on their rifles to provide most of their food for them when in the north-west.

"No one need fear starvation in tlic Australian bush when lie has a

loaded rifle and knows how to use it," said Mr Hatfield. "If the German aviators who wore lost had had a rifle they would never have been in difficult v."

As the small ear left Martin-place at 11 o ’clock, a crowd of several hundred people cheered heartily.