Australian author, cartoonist and adventurer Warren Brown and Matthew Benns near a red pyramid, the third biggest in Egypt. Close to a defence site, this place was closed to foreigners until recently. Photo: Supplied.
On Wednesday (15 January), cartoonist and adventurer Warren Brown and editor-at-large Matthew Benns, having crossed much of the world, braced themselves for a catastrophic lightning strike.
In goggles and driving from Tenant Creek in the Northern Territory to Camooweal in Queensland under pelting rain, a lightning bolt suddenly struck the road in front of them, and other bolts exploded around them.
“We’re sitting in this open car thinking, ‘We’re next, this is really bad’, and then the rain became impenetrable, but we still had to keep going until we could get out of it and that went on for a couple of hours,” said Warren, who left London with his companion in September last year.
Warren is re-enacting the 1927 journey of an Australian adventurer who drove a 1925 Bean 14 Sundowner car on a 26,000-km journey from England to Australia, which took nine months.
On Thursday, one of the Bean’s headlights fell off and bounced off the road and into the bush, but they managed to find it and continue on the last legs of their epic journey, which is due to pass through Goulburn on 28 January. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will be among the welcoming party when they complete their journey in Melbourne.
“I’m feeling great. It’s been a long trip and it’s been terrific,” Warren said. “It’s great to be back in Australia to be perfectly honest. No one has got sick or hurt or anything like that,” he said. “The car has performed faultlessly.”
The cartoonist who lives at Middle Arm near Goulburn heaped praise on Goulburn mechanic Tony Jordan, who has been following them in a support vehicle keeping the 100-year-old Bean running like a locomotive. “He has been fantastic and onto any problem every time,” Warren said. “There is a lot of regular maintenance of course, regular servicing, making sure the oils are changed.
“From London we drove across Europe down through Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Albania, Greece, went across the Mediterranean to Egypt, drove from Alexandria to Cairo, saw the pyramids, all that sort of thing, down to the Red Sea, cross the Red Sea on a ferry and then drove across Saudi Arabia,” said Warren, who was so inspired by Francis Birtles he wrote a book about the early adventurer.
“We are the first Australians to have ever driven across Saudi Arabia. We didn’t know that, but the Australian ambassador took us to lunch, very excited that we had done it,” he said.
He said the Austrian Alps were bitterly cold with snow on the mountains, then in Dubai 47-degree heat blasting them as they were stuck in traffic meant the car was boiling its head off. “It was about 65 degrees so Matthew and I had heatstroke for a couple of days after that,” Warren said.
“Later on we were in Malaysia and had a personal audience with the King of Malaysia, which was very exciting, and saw his current car collection at the palace.
Now working their way down from Queensland they are scheduled to be marking Australia Day at Government House in Sydney.
When Francis Birtles came through the outskirts of Goulburn on the original journey he had a canvas bag tied to the back of the car which rubbed on the rear wheel and caught alight.
“A lot of nitrous cellulose film in the back of the car caught fire and exploded and they just managed to put the fire out with a chemical fire extinguisher that they had,” Warren said.
The car had to be dragged into Goulburn where it was rapidly repaired and sent on its way.
“Birtles said that was the closest he had ever come to death,” Warren said. “The locals sort of chipped in and got the car going again.”
Now, the National Museum of Australia has Birtles’ Bean, which still has the scorch marks from that fire near Goulburn.
Warren can expect a more favourable journey into his hometown. He is patron of the Southern Tablelands Community Foundation (STCF) and executive member Bob Kirk said the STCF was planning a reception for the Goulburn adventurer on 28 January.
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