THE BOY & THE PLANE

Stories of one’s childhood are often told amongst family members and not publicly, Great Australian stories in itself is a story of many people and places but it just so happens that one of those places and the people features more than most in Great Australian Stories, that place being the small Mallee town of Ultima. Situated twenty miles South West of Swan Hill on the Sea Lake road, it is where I spent four years of my childhood between the years of 1962-1966, and I have fond memories of that time.

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.