Anyone living at Woomera, S.A., who had sufficient stamina, could play football in three different codes, each weekend. There was Soccer on Saturday afternoon, Rugby League on Sunday morning and Australian Rules on Sunday afternoon. For a country town of five-and-a-half thousand citizens, it may have been the only place in Australia to have so many different football competitions for that size population.

It was about three kilometres from the Ponds Gate Guard House to the Village and I followed the dusty beetle at a respectable distance wondering if everyone drove so fast or was he putting on a show for my benefit. We stopped beside a long, narrow wooden hut which had a verandah facing east where half a dozen guys sat enjoying a drink or six. I walked over and introduced myself. 'Hi, I'm Barry Rumble,' he answered. 'How long have you been in the circus?' was his first question. 'Only two years, three months,' I replied, 'How about you?' 'Nearly eight years, mostly here and in Sydney.

By the middle of 1960 our part-time wrought-iron furniture making business had built up to the extent that Neville and I were actually making some money and providing it continued to grow and the army didn't throw a spanner in the works, I envisaged taking my discharge in June 1961 and working at it full time. I think the army was able to read my mind because shortly after my birthday in July, I was called to the C.O.'s office.

When the June long weekend came along in 1962 and a friend offered to give me a ride from Woomera, in the far north of South Australia, to St Arnaud, (between Horsham and Bendigo Victoria), I accepted his kind offer; hoping to hitchhike the remaining two hundred and sixty kilometres to Melbourne. I had became quite fond of this economical but unreliable mode of travel during a nine week Army training course at Wodonga Victoria, where, almost every weekend I had successfully 'ridden my thumb' to Melbourne, so I decided to try my luck again.