Bill Martin A Relic in Time

The legal age for driving then was technically 17, but Bill’s forthright manner found a way around that small inconvenience.

“I just went to the Beenleigh cop station one day and out comes this big bloke and says, ‘what do you want, young fella?’ I said ‘I want a license to drive me car’ and I pointed outside. The cop said, ‘Well, how did it get here?’ ‘I drove it,’ I told him. He paused a beat, smirked and said ‘Here’s a special license to drive it in daylight hours, sir!’”

Years later, Bill’s third brother married the policeman’s daughter, and the senior sergeant still had a clear memory of Bill from that day.

The 680 has been with Bill long enough for it to be approaching its two millionth mile. I ask him when the first million clicked over, and he leans back on the carcass of a car and scratches at the stubble on his chin.

“Aw shit, must have been back in the 1970s, I reckon,” he recalls.

“I did get rid of it once, though,” he confesses. “A lot of my mates were getting Holden station wagons, so I went and traded the Wolseley in at Eagers Holden at Newstead. I went down the coast for weekend and I absolutely hated it. So on Monday morning I went back to Eagers and I said I want my Wolseley back. Cost me twenty pound to get it back, too. I always said I would never sell it again.”

It wasn’t always smooth sailing with the Wolseley, though.

“My mates used to call it a ‘Pommy heap of shit’,” he laughs. “We used to have races down the back streets of Burleigh and the magic mile at Lynton – the coppers would come down in their early models Falcons and try and catch us.”

Bill loved to drive fast, and eventually the allure of speedway came calling via a chance run in a mate’s car. He continued to race speedway for 18 years, until a severe crash at a Toowoomba meet intervened.

“They were going to take me legs, they were,” says Bill, wincing at the memory. “You may have noticed I’m limping a bit.” He stretches down to point at the scars on his right ankle. “This was just pulp. They were talking about taking both legs, one above the knee and the other below.

“At the time, my sister was a matron at the Royal Brisbane hospital and I begged the Toowoomba hospital to call her. Thankfully, I was flown down there and they managed to save my legs. Got a few other things though, like a plate in my head, but I’m still here to annoy every bastard.” He laughs uproariously.

Seeing any one of these wrecks out of context in a commercial wrecking yard, without nature’s intervention, wouldn’t warrant a second look.

I glance over and notice time and nature has had its effects on Bill, too. He points to the cancers he has had cut out and the persistent battle of age. He blames welding without a shield back in the day. “Those ultra violets,” he muses. “They took a chunk out of me ear.”

There is stillness here, only occasionally broken by the creak of a tree limb in the breeze. The crunch of the canopy floor underfoot almost sounds too loud. Subconsciously, I find my hands behind my back, wandering as if I’m in an art gallery or museum, careful not to disturb the finely curated display of forgotten time.

Bill parked the first car here 40 years ago, a 1952 Wolseley. It’s dead and gone, but he takes me straight to where its motor still lies. Sure enough, Bill pulls back a fistful of grass to reveal the husk of what used to be an engine.

Bill worked for General Motors from 1967 up until 1984, when GM closed down the Acacia Ridge plant.

“I was a bummer,” he explained. I screw my face in confusion.

“I’d just do anything”, he says. “One day I would work in the supply section unloading containers, and the next I would be out stress-testing cars.”

He explains further. “GM used to stress-test the VB out at Augathella; they owned a big sheep station out there. It was about 80 miles to the homestead from the main road and the entire road was dirt. The road dropped down into a creek crossing and a big hop that we used to launch off. That’s where most of them came unstuck.”

“We had to drive them until they busted,” he laughs. “The box subframe used to twist and one day we had three VBs with a gap in between the B-pillar and the roof!”

Bill was given 12 months’ notice that GM would be closing the Queensland plant.

“I started looking for a job,” he says.

“They were happy for you to clock on and then go out and look for work. If you didn’t have a car, GM would lend you a car or pay for a taxi to go to interviews.”

Bill was 38 by this time. “Everywhere I went for a job… I was too old,” he says.

“So when I left, I used that old green truck up there to do pallet-on and pallet-off deliveries. My wife suggested that I should do something with Morris Minors because I was always tinkering with them; anyone can work on a Holden, but the BMC stuff was challenging.”

He didn’t exactly warm to the idea at first, but after 12 months he had enough work to give up the truck delivery work and concentrate on his repair and restoration business.

“I used to have to chase wrecking yards for parts, but these things came along,” he gestures towards the somewhat endless rows of decay. “I used them as my spare parts – if they were any good, I’d do ’em up and sell ’em off.”

There’s a British timeline of early automotive design scattered throughout the woods; Rover, Leyland, Jaguar, Austin, MG, Triumph, Kimberly and of course, Wolseley.

Some of them were acquired through no fault of his own.

“These ones here,” he says, motioning to a Mercedes, a Jag and the Rover with the new addition of 12-foot gum tree branch that has decimated the roof. “Guy I knew just wanted a place to park them for 12 months. Well that was 12 years ago now, and he didn’t even leave me the bloody keys so I could move ’em,” he chuckles.

A keen eye can spot the oddballs amongst the collection; a Torana, a Bluebird, a Honda Civic. Even the occasional Alfa peppers the landscape, all in various states of disrepair, and all waiting for reclamation to the big scrap heap in the sky.

He rattles off intimate details of the mechanical workings of each of the models, secrets to getting at hard-to-reach places, idiosyncrasies that can only be acquired through years of experience that, sadly, will probably pass when Bill does.

A 1974 Leyland van materialises from the dense shrub. It’s something any hipster would trade a kidney for to sell bespoke deconstructed burgers from.

The weather has worn away the last layer of paint to reveal the old signwriting underneath; SunBoard, it says.

Bill seems surprised by the signwriting. The fact that he can still discover something new about a van that has been sitting in his yard for over 20 years is endearing.

As our tour winds down, Bill makes a confession.

“In about a year or so, these are all going to the scrap heap,” he declares. “I don’t want to do too much heavy work any more. I’m 73, I’ve got a motorhome up there I’m working on. Once that’s done, you won’t see us for six months.”

Bill plans to keep a few of the Wolseleys for spares, but he holds no sentimental attachment to anything else here… or so he says, anyway.