There is one car that missed the cut....car number 33 was quite different. It was about 1973 or so, Pam had made a friend at her work, Janet, Janet's parents owned a cattle and crops growing property near Kumbia in Queensland's South Burnett area. We were invited to visit the property and a friendship developed with Janet's parents, Rod and Val , we were to go to the property on many occasions from then on.

I dont recall just how large the property was but it wasn't small. At about the same time I had an interest in shooting, Rod was happy to allow me to traverse the farm, shooting many rabbits, roo's and  the occasional Dingo too. I thoroughly enjoyed the walks I would do, mostly alone.

At one point Rod was having a lot of his fences damaged by a sudden and huge increase  in damage to his fences, I would gladly help him to repair the damage, my experience with farm fencing back when I worked in the NT, a couple of years previously. Rod asked me if I could devote a little more time to removing some of the kangaroo's he was having an issue with...I organised for a workmate, Chris, another shooting enthusiast to join me. Chris' neighbour had this old Holden station wagon for sale and we thought it would make a good 'shooting platform' to take to Rod's property. We both split the cost, I wasn't as I recall it wasn't much, the neighbour was pleased to get rid of it.

I drove it up, Chris followed me in his car, the old thing was not in good condition but it made the trip ok, we did have to stop a couple of times to top up the radiator and add some engine oil but it was ok.

Once we got it up there we carried out a few 'modifications', with Rods angle grinder we cut a hole in the roof, removed the rear seat too...the rough cut edge around the  hole was made safe by slitting a length of old water hose and sliding it over the edge, a bar was welded to the rain gutters and it ran across the roof and became a gun mount.

It was totally successful, with this old heap and with  little care abought scratching the duco we drove that thing all over, it had a limited slip diff and would amaze us as to just where it could go. Realistically, I dont think we did a lot to cull the roo's but it was fun doing it. We eventually broke the sub-frame and Rod pushed it into the old quarry with his tractor. That was a very memorable part of my life...Val was to die sometime later, Rod sold the property and moved to an aged care facility near the coast. Janet moved on somewhere as did Chris and again like many times in my nomadic life, contact was eventually lost.

 The car was a HD model Holden 1965 and this model has a story of its own: The HD followed the EH Holden, the EH was a very good seller, some 256'000 of them actually...not so the HD however, just 178'000 were sold, and it is common knowledge that one of the dislikes about the HD was the frontal design of the mudguards, there was this weird protruding section on each side of the headlights...see photo on the left below, this design copped a lot of criticism, some thought it presented a real danger to pedestrians. Whether it was  the criticism or lower sales it was 'redesigned' and the following model, the HR was basically the same shape but with different front mudguards...see photo on the right below. 252'000 HR's were sold. It is well known by car buffs that the HD Holden was Horribly Designed and  the HR Hurriedly Rectified.