The road trip is another story, but on the second day we were travelling through the small outback town of Balranald, situated on the banks of the Murrumbidgee River about 850 kilometres from Sydney.
As we passed the now defunct Ford dealership on the main street, the familiar and friendly shape of a Beetle passed through my peripheral vision.
Over the years I'd been thinking of how cool it would be to own a bug again. I'd owned only one before, back in the early 1990's, a brown 1500 which I loved but eventually sold. My main interest though was Kombis, and over the years I'd owned (not at the same time) a 1976 van, a 1970 dual cab ute, a 1969 Microbus and a 1984 Transporter van in which I'd installed a centre bench seat.
Over time, as the responsibilities of becoming a father and homeowner became more onerous, I didn't have the resources or time to keep buying and running a VW viable and I slowly drifted away from the marque that I loved. I reluctantly sold my last VW, the dual cab, in 1996 and bought a cheap Japanese car (much to my chagrin and my then wife's delight).
So 19 years later, with more time and resources, I'd been thinking about how great it would be to own a Beetle again. These quirky little cars are so much fun to drive and you can't deny the history that seeps through each and every one of them. Buying one, however, is fraught with pitfalls. As they become scarcer, there are less good examples around. I'd been warned to watch out for cut and shut jobs, newer cars being passed off as earlier models, and Brazilian imports which were substandard.
I looked at a few beautiful examples which had been restored, but the prices were quite high, and you never knew exactly how much actual work had gone into some of these restos, with potentially some serious problems lurking underneath that shiny new deco and immaculate square weave carpet. My lack of knowledge didn't help there either.
So my decision was to restore my own Beetle, if possible. I knew it would be a great learning experience I could share with Master 11 and we would end up with something we could be proud of. Only one obstacle - She Who Must Be Obeyed. But more of that later.
Back to Balranald. I spotted the Beetle in the dusty showroom of the closed dealership, and my interest was piqued. I turned the camper around at the next street and made my way back, wanting to get a better look. Me and Master 11 peered through the grimy windows and saw a Beryl Green Beetle, quite the worse for wear but mostly intact.
Mmm, looked promising. It was 8am so no-one was around, so I carefully noted down the phone number on the sign and continued on our way to Adelaide.
On our return to Sydney a few days later, I called the number and spoke to Colin, who was in charge of the place I'd seen the Beetle. He said he was selling it for someone else and he would receive a commission which would go towards his project of restoring a replica of Charles Kingsford Smith's plane, the Southern Cross which had been moved from Albion Park south of Sydney. Colin told me it was a 1961 model and assured me there was a motor and an interior, although the interior was "shot". In his words, "just install a battery in it and some fuel and she'll start up fine". I couldn't rely on the veracity of that statement of course. Still, for $1500 I couldn't really go wrong, could I.
That's when the doubt set in. First of all, I would need to return to Balranald with a car trailer to pick the car up. That's a four day round trip as I'd want to take it easy. Then I'd need to spend a lot of money and time restoring it, which would be added to the fact that I'd never restored a car before and knew nearly nothing about car mechanicals.
On the other hand I really wanted to challenge and test myself, plus teach my son about old cars and what technology was like before iPads, Playstations and Netflix (and get him away from those of course!)
So I was very indecisive. Take on this huge job, spend a lot of money, and commit to it for 1,2, 3 or even more years; or just forget about it, treat this idea about restoring an old VW Beetle as a fantasy that would never come true? I decided I'd let She Who Must Be Obeyed decide for me.
"Remember that Beetle I saw in Balranald? I'm thinking of buying it and restoring it together with Master 11. It would be fun and a challenge."
"That's a good idea," she replied.
"You think so?"
"Yes!"
So I had the go ahead! I paid for the car the next day. I came home from work that night and said "I bought that Beetle today."
The look of surprise confused me. She Who Must Be Obeyed exclaimed "I thought you were joking when you said you wanted to buy it!"
Oops!
"Too late now," I answered sheepishly. Apparently the conversation had gone more like this:
"Remember that Beetle I saw in Balranald? I'm thinking of buying it and restoring it together with Master 11. It would be fun and a challenge."
"That's a good idea," she replied.
"You think so?"
"Yes! But how will you ever have time to do any work on it? And where are you going to work on it? Does that mean you would take over the garage? It looks like a wreck!"
Obviously my man deafness had kicked in and I never heard anything from the "but"!
Imagine, she could have talked me out of it!
In early January 2016 we made the trip to Balranald again and picked our Beetle. This was the first time we'd seen it up close. We asked it's history, but after extensive consultation among the gathering crowd of locals (who had collected to see these big city idiots who had driven all that way to fetch a crappy old car from their town) the consensus was that it had sat in a paddock for a couple of years before being bought by another local who had started restoring it (they had only sanded back one door before giving up), who had then sold it to another local who also had plans to restore it but had given up before even touching it, who had then put it in the old Ford showroom cum museum hoping to find it a loving home. Before it's paddock days, it's a mystery.
Over the years the only use the Beetle had received was as a home for spiders, judging by the amount of webs we saw inside.
Nevertheless, we were happy with our purchase, and loaded our Beetle onto the car trailer. That night we set up camp at Mamanga Campground in Yanga National Park just near Balranald, and as we sat in the afternoon sun we started to discuss what we would name our new family member. Several ideas were put forward, discussed and discarded until we had just one name left - Bailey, in part due to it's origin (Balranald) and in another part because it was androgynous (for the time being it nullified the vociferous argument as to whether the Beetle is a he or a she).
We arrived home two days later with our precious cargo, unloaded it and put it in our garage where it now sits awaiting a start. No rush!
I want it to be stock standard, but perhaps with some modern upgrades - seat belts, front and side airbags, power steering, cruise control, central locking, front and rear disc brakes, water cooled engine. Just kidding!
All advice will be gratefully received 🙂
