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FIRST OVERLAND NEWSLETTER 33The latest news of the 'First Overland' DVD, based on Antony Barrington-Brown's original film footage of the 1955 Oxford & Cambridge Far Eastern Expedition from London to Singapore. |
The Nairn Bus, The Ghost Road (and present-day Myanmar), a new (?) route from India to China, and London-to-Singapore... in an E-Type Jaguar!
Oh, and Tim Slessor's latest book "which doesn't have a Land-Rover in it". But it does have Butch Cassidy's Model T Ford!
Well, they made it... but they couldn't afford not to! As many of you will be aware, The Millionth Land Rover Discovery came off the production line in Solihull at the end of February, and immediately set off for the Beijing Motor Show, having popped in to the Geneva Show first. It's no secret that China has now become a very important market for Jaguar Land Rover's prestige cars, and there's even plans to assemble them there. So it was essential for the Millionth Discovery (and its two identical siblings) to arrive on time, in one piece, and suitably dirty after 8.000 miles and 13 countries in 50 days. Which (of course) they did.
And there was a clear 'First Overland' tie-up. Latching on to the fact that Adrian Cowell's original idea had been to drive from London to Hong Kong (where he was brought up — it was soon changed to Singapore when Tim Slessor pointed out that it was less risky politically, but a more impressive, longer journey), Land Rover claimed that to finish in China would be a recreation of the original 'FO' plan. OK, if it pleases the marketing department, so be it — at least the heritage was acknowledged.
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And acknowledged to the point at which an authentic Series One Land-Rover was involved, travelling as far as Munich before turning back to allow the three Discoveries to maintain a more realistic speed. My friend Michael Bishop (who introduced me to Arthur Goddard, the original Land-Rover Project Engineer — see the 'Stop Gap' DVD and 'They Found Our Engineer' book) was involved in piloting the Series 1 (and a number of journalists — I wonder how they coped with no synchromesh on First and Second!) to Munich, and I'm hoping to catch up with him soon to hear more of the story. |
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Part of the celebrations included a gathering at the Royal Geographical Society in Kensington, to which Tim Slessor and Pat Murphy were invited — again, a nice touch to acknowledge the heritage. The Series One and the Discoveries all carried the legend 'For Barrington-Brown' in honour of BB, who had died just a few weeks before. The colour scheme, by the way, was intended to mimic the dark and light blue of Oxford and Cambridge, overlaid with the same graphics as on the Discoveries. Hmmm...... Otherwise, congratulations to Land Rover, and every one involved. I'm not going to go into more details of the journey here, but you can read more on Land Rover's own Millionth Discovery pages. |
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'First Overland' — the book and BB's original film — have inspired many hundreds (thousands?) of people to undertake adventures of their own. And still the emails come in... Victor Brumby from Berkshire sent a couple of pictures:
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I would just like to add my penn'orth of info in support of the myriad bods who seem to have headed for Dover in the mid-60's with a view to avoiding the £10 charge imposed by the Australian Government to ship Poms out there for la vie en rose. I attach a pic of the LWB petrol Land Rover which three other men and myself embarked in Sept. 1965 on said trip, taking the Turkey-Iran-Afghanistan passage.
The Indo-Pak border closure caused a long delay in Kabul. In 1968, I performed the return Singapore-Dover journey, but this time in a new Peugeot 404 estate, which (with great respect to Solihull) was a perfect and luxurious variant of steed for such a purpose. The pic shows a failed attempt to drive from South India to Ceylon across Adams Bridge.
Thanks, Victor. And the ubiquitous Peugeot appears in our next story. Very many rainy seasons ago, Brian Stewart sent me an email with memories of his Middle East travels. He said:
I read the 'First Overland' book at the age of about 10, back in the 1950s, growing up in Africa (where a Series 1 "Landy" was the only mode of wheeled transport). Fast forward a few decades, and my work took me out to assignments in various parts of the Middle East. In the mid '70s I drove with my new wife overland to Jordan.... not in a Land Rover but in a Peugeot 504. From there we also went to Iraq (those were the days!). Then in the early '90s we did the same route again, this time in a Jeep to Syria where we spent three years. A third overland trip took us from the UK to Kuwait – and back – in the same Jeep in 1998-2001. Other overland trips have taken us into the remote deserts of Oman (Toyota Land Cruiser), to Tunisia (Range Rover), and into the Algerian Sahara (Jeep and Toyota). Coincidentally I also spent three years in Singapore — but did not manage to travel there or back overland!
Now retired, we are settled in Scotland. I happened to be doing some research into the 'Nairn buses' [See more below] which used to do the desert run from Beirut and Damascus to Baghdad, and came across your website and the story of the re-issue of the Tim Slessor book and the creation of the DVD.
I was incidentally interested to see when browsing your newsletters that you also had comments from Tony Cantor, now Ambassador to Armenia, about his travels in Burma as a young diplomat (Newsletters 16 and 26). I too was a British diplomat, and spent much of my 35-year career in and around the Middle East, starting in pre-civil war Beirut (where through friends I got involved in driving a film crew round Lebanon and Syria covering the Bekaa car rally) and — after assorted travels, expeditions and adventures in Jordan, Syria, Tunisia, Kuwait and Oman — ending up as Ambassador to Algeria in 2004-05, where we had the dubious delight of driving around in seriously-armoured Range-Rovers and Land Rover Defenders. A lot of dusty miles, remote border crossings, moments of anxiety and despair..... but also the sublime joy of sleeping under a desert sky glittering with stars, the delight at the kindness of strangers encountered along the way, and the pleasure of many memories.
As I look out of my office window, looking at the fog that's rolled in off the North Sea in this, one of the wettest Springs the UK's had in decades, it sounds wonderful.
I also had a very long phone chat a few months ago with Colin Heathcote. Ever since I started talking 'First Overland' with Land-Rover enthusiasts, there was this constant rumour about 'some madman' who drove from London to Singapore in (of all things) an E-Type Jaguar. Well, Colin is that 'madman'. He didn't try the Stillwell/Ledo road, but went via the Karom Koram Highway and into China. As he said, "Just don't ask how I managed it!!!!!!"
Having once hired a V12 E-Type for a weekend for my wife's umpty-tumpth birthday, and brought it down the lane to our farm, my first question to him was just 2 words..."Ground Clearance?" He replied "Under 3.5 inches!!!!!! I subsequently drove from Panama to Alaska in 2008, Cuba last year and most of Australia next October......the most travelled E Type....?"
Colin and Tim Slessor met after the Singapore trip, and have remained friends. Whether I'll remain one with Colin is yet to be seen — I wrote copious notes on our phone conversation, but they don't seem to have survived the ruthless clean out that I do in my office once every decade (whether it needs it or not... wow, I do have a carpet!) Very sorry, Colin.
And finally, from these Travellers' Tales, Cam Ford wrote from New South Wales in Australia: |
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Obviously, Cam's use of the word 'buses' mustn't conjure up images of London Routemasters, or even Nairn Buses (we will get there soon!) These were essentially 'mini-buses', and an alternative to the traditional VW Kombi was the Commer 1500.
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That right hand publicity shot just creases me up — I wouldn't fancy attempting a trans-world trip in such a cramped vehicle, and dressed like that! At least they had solar toupees!
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Cam also writes: |
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Ajit Krishnamohan is a keen 'First Overland' fan, living in Bangalore in India. That's him in the picture, driving a friend's restored Series 1 Land-Rover on the local roads. In recent weeks he's sent me a number of links to fascinating web pages. |
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The first is from 'Saudi Aramco World', originally published July/August 1981 (but still visible online). It's a review of 'The Nairn Way' by John M. Munro and Martin Love (and it's only fair to point out that the small print at the bottom of the page says that Martin Love is assistant editor of 'Aramco World' — well, no point in editing a publication if you can't plug your own book (or even DVD!) in it.)
The article starts:
There's an old maxim that says, if you want to succeed in business find a need and fill it. And that, in a nutshell, is the story of Gerald and Norman Nairn, the men who pioneered the famous bus route across the Syrian Desert — the Nairn Way.
Tim and BB, of course, introduced many of us to the articulated air-conditioned buses that crossed the Syrian deserts, but this web article reveals more. For a start, the Nairn brothers set out in 1919 to run (with the help of an Arab family in Beirut) a car sales business in the city. It was not a success, and they then had a second idea — to use the unsold cars to start a taxi service between Beirut and Haifa, in Palestine.
This was a success, and they had to increase the frequency of the service to meet demand. They ran out of cars from their showroom, and started to buy in specially. For a while they tried Stanley Steamers... but the lack of water in the desert, and poor kerosene, made them unsuitable. Second-hand Caddilacs were tried, but there were still problems. As the article says,
The track between Acre and Haifa, for example, included an eight-mile stretch of beach which was often flooded at high tide. The Nairns, equal to the challenge, took along a young boy who would ride on the running board and wade out in front of the car when the beach was underwater to find out if the water was shallow enough to allow passage of the vehicle.
Shades of Tim Slessor wading into 'crocodile-infested rivers' in the 'First Overland' DVD.
The last Nairn Bus ran in the 1970s, overtaken by air travel no doubt. The web article is a good read, and you can find it here.
Ajit's second link was to the web page of 'Outside' Magazine, October 2003. This is a fascinating, if rather frenetic (and, to an armchair traveller, alarming) account summarised by the magazine as:
Winding a thousand miles from India to China, the Burma Road was built to defend China in World War II, but the atomic bomb made it irrelevant and the jungle reclaimed it. Mark Jenkins vowed to do what no one had done for nearly 60 years — travel the entire Burma Road — and discovered the madness of present-day Myanmar.
Of course, things have changed somewhat in Myanmar in recent months, but October 2003 isn't that long ago. I can't help feeling that Mark frequently pushed his luck — he's certainly a much braver (reckless?) man than I am, and his challenges to the authorities landed him in a lot of bother that did little to deter him. If you are of a similar nature, then you'll enjoy his account, which you can read here. But you'll need a bit of perseverance — the article is carried over 19 pages, so you'll need to click 'Next' quite a few times.
Ajit's final links arrived just this morning. The 'Times of India' has an online article that starts:
There has always been this old lore about a hidden road to China through the north-east . One of the earliest Muslim conquerors who wanted to find out more about it was Muhammad Bakhtiyar Khilji, the first Sultan of Delhi. In 1206, he entered Assam seeking passage to Tibet; but the expedition ended in disaster as the local king defeated him and destroyed his army. The British first mapped this road in the 19th century. Now, almost 150 years later, a filmmaker claims to have found the road that could give India the fastest land access to China.
Mrinal Talukdar has made a 26-minute documentary about the road, that starts from Tinsukia in upper Assam and goes on for some 300km through hilly terrain before reaching Kaho, the last village before the border with China. He believes this road needs to be opened up to facilitate bilateral trade between India and China, which stands at $74 billion. With India planning to expand it to $100bn by 2015, this road could become a vital link between both countries. In 2004 India had considered re-opening the Ledo Road, but gave up the idea because of the sheer physical difficulty of clearing 400km of forests, and dealing with the Myanmar government. You can read more (once you've waded through the many adverts) on the Times of India website.
A less advert-peppered version of the story can be found on the Aksharadhool website.
To someone living in a small, comprehensively-mapped country like the UK, it seems incomprehensible that there could be a part of the nation so remote that only the locals know their geography and what goes on there. I suggested that to Ajit, who replied:
I'm sure the locals always knew about this road, and quite possibly others too that are yet to be 'found'. So why wasn't news about it leaked before? I suspect the primary reason is that the north eastern region just doesn't figure too prominently in the minds of people from the 'mainland' so to speak. Quite sad really for the people who live there. I doubt many people from Bangalore could name the 7 northeastern states or their capitals, let alone know about the smaller towns such as these.
And I thought that our village on the edge of the North York Moors was a bit 'forgotten'!
Finally (and to bring us back to the original 'First Overland'), Ajit has given me a link to a website with contributions regarding the history of the Stillwell Road and Pangsau Pass, with many photos from the time of World War 2, and how things look today. You can read it here. Thanks, Ajit, for all your information.
When you work in television, there's an unfortunate tendency to believe that your medium is premier — the only (or at least the best) way of getting information to an audience. After all, 'everyone' watches television, whereas not everyone reads books, magazines or newspapers. That is, of course, arrogant tosh. You only have to consider the 'First Overland' DVD and compare it with Tim's original book — 'BB's film footage certainly illustrates the London to Singapore journey in a magnificent way... but it only tells the surface part of the story. I grudgingly admit that if you want to know the detail, you have to read the book.
And that's been brought home to me in a fascinating way in the past few months... and Tim Slessor's the man who's proved it. Back in January I had a phone call from James Ferguson of Signal Books (who published the re-print of 'First Overland'). "Would I like to see a copy of Tim's latest book, and maybe review it for the Newsletter?" Well, of course, I said I would. It arrived through the post, and I put it on the table beside my chair. But somehow, what with the newspapers and the Land-Rover magazines, it never came to the top.
And then I had a call from Tim himself, on an apparently unrelated subject — he had a couple of DVDs of programmes he'd made for the BBC 'The World About Us' series, and wanted them converted to the American NTSC TV system to send to friends in the American West... could I do that? Yes, in a rough-and-ready one-off way, so he sent them.
[I'll digress to admit that I'd not really appreciated how much the BBC had featured in Tim's life after the London to Singapore Expedition, but until he retired he had made a specialisation of films about an area he loved (and where he lived for a year as a teacher of English as a college in Nebraska)... the American West. In fact, I've since apologised to him for any arrogance I might have inadvertently shown when I interviewed him and BB for the DVD... with hindsight, he clearly was more experienced at it than I was!]
In the course of converting the programmes, I naturally watched them — and found them fascinating. The first one, 'Yellow Trail From Texas', followed Dale and Margie Starks and their team, as they made their way northwards through the MidWest and up into Canada, harvesting the ripening corn with a fleet of combines, working 16-18-hour days as necessary to catch the crop at its best. This was made by Tim in 1975, and he only appeared in voiceover. But the second film, 'The truth about Red Cloud, General Custer, Butch Cassidy... and John Wayne', was made in 1977, and Tim was in-vision Presenter as well as Producer. And here's a Tim Slessor that 'FO' viewers would find hard to recognise. No 'Malayan Jungle' hat, but something more in keeping with his location and subject matter — demin shirt, jeans and cowboy boots. But it was, of course, the age of flared trousers... an age that none of us who were there wish to remember (he said, thinking of his wedding photos!)
And what was the subject matter? The title says it all. Tim was looking at the history of some of the events that characterise the 'Wild West'... the takeover of 'Injun' lands as the settlers pushed west, and the fierce battles that took place. Red Cloud, leader of the Oglala Sioux, who wreaked havoc on the 18th Infantry in the Powder River battles in 1866. General George Custer, defeated by Crazy Horse and his men at Little Big Horn. And Butch Cassidy... a legend with a mystery attached. All the iconic Wild West, brought to us by Tim, walking in the actual places where the battles took place.
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Which brings us back to the book. When a couple of days of 'sniffles' left me in the warm in front of the fire, it was a perfect opportunity to read it... and find that it was, to a great extent, the 'Book of the Film(s)'. Tim had brought together the material from those two programmes, but fleshed them out with all the minute detail that the television had no time for. The title, 'More Than Cowboys', comes from an oilman he met while they were both waiting to check into a hotel in Casper, Wyoming. "What was a Brit doing in Casper? Writing a book about the West? Well, mind you tell them that it was a whole lot more than just cowboys!" And it was. In some respects Hollywood has done American history a dis-service. We know what happened... the settlers moved west, looking for land or gold; the 'Injuns' objected and fought them, and the Cavalry got involved trying to keep the peace. There were fights, and people on both sides died. Then the cattle ranchers covered the land with Longhorns... and fought the 'Injuns' some more. And they also fought the farmers, who wanted to grow crops. Oh, and the railroad came... and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid robbed banks, and (if the cinema film is to be believed) died in a hail of bullets in Bolivia. All so simple. But of course, it wasn't... and Tim digs up some wonderful nuggets (if I may use a 'them thar hills' term). When the New World was first 'discovered' (and I know that this Euro-centric view is politically incorrect... but the way we regarded the Native Americans is an important part of the story), much of what we now call the Mid West was claimed by the French, who called it 'Louisiane'. The Eastern seaboard lands were in the control of the Americans (now independent from the British), and there was obvious scope for conflict. In 1803, Napoleon, realising that it was going to be ruinously expensive for France to defend her territory against American expansionism, agreed to sell Louisiane to them for the (then) colossal sum of $15-million. But to the Americans it was still a bargain, because of all the riches they would now have access to as they progressed west. The only trouble is, they didn't actually have $15m to hand. But Barings Bank in London did... and loaned the money to the Government to make the biggest real estate purchase in history. Which is why some of the most important documents in the history of the USA are not in the Smithsonian, or in a glass case in the White House... but are in the vaults of ING-Barings in London. And Tim Slessor has handled them. |
And from that point, Tim takes us through the American history that I sketched a couple of paragraphs back, but giving chapter and verse. He admits that he's relied on scores (maybe hundreds) of other writings about his pet subject, but in this book he brings them all together. And where the other writing may conflict, he presents both sides... often following one argument first so that we can make up our own minds as to who did what in which battle, and who was to blame for defeat, and then presenting the contrary side to leave us suitably undecided again. And through all this there are little paragraphs (written in italics) of his personal experiences in the present day, filming for the BBC, researching for the book, or just revisiting a part of the world that he loves so much.
And if you know Tim's voice from the DVD, then you can hear it coming back off the page. And just as he knew which quirky little stories to tell about the journey from London to Singapore, so he keeps our interest alive in what might otherwise have been a rather dry history of gunfights and vested commercial interests. For instance:
Relationships between the Native Americans and the Europeans were never going to be smooth — it was a culture thing regarding the concept of land ownership. Yes, the various tribes had their territories, and on them they hunted the buffalo... but in their eyes it was never their land, their buffalo. You couldn't own these things, any more than you could own the wind, the rain, the air you breathed or the water you drank. So when the 'white man' said (through interpreters) that the State Government had given him the rights to the land, the tribes said the equivalent of "OK, whatever!", and expected to carry on much as before. When the soliders and settlers began to exercise their 'rights', conflict was inevitable... and bloody.
But once those conflicts had been 'resolved', there were still some wonderful stories from the developing land. The early settlers from Western Europe planted the wheat they were familiar with... and failed when the long stems were flattened by the prairie winds. But the Mennonites, and other refugees from the Russian steppes, brought their shorter-stemmed varieties with them... and what thrived in the steppes thrived in Wyoming. Within a decade everyone was growing Russian wheat, and the Bread-basket of America was born.
And how did those Mennonites get to Wyoming? Knowing that railroads only got rich by hauling goods, the Acheson, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad (and others) advertised in the 'emigrant' countries of Eastern Europe, offering land alongside the railway lines to those who would set up there. Even now, Tim says, as you follow the Trans-American railway routes you'll find a city where the diner menus are in English and Swedish, and another where the surnames are predominantly 'Rooshan'.
In fact, two of Tim's other nuggets are also railroad based. As the gangs of navvies pushed the rails into the centre of the continent from both sides, rough temporary towns would be erected to house them, usually on one side of the railway line. And not far behind would be the travelling hangers-on... the bar owners, the traders, the 'ladies of fortune'. They would set up the opposite side of the railway line, often in quite sophisticated portable buildings. But although the railroad company could keep some control over their own premises, they had no say in what went on 'the other side of the tracks' — an expression we still use today for parts of cities which may not be quite as salubrious as the main civic centre.
And a technical lesson in metallurgy and acoustics. In the days when the railroads were king, and the trains ran to the strictest timetables, prairie town folks used to set their clocks and watches by the 'Mournful Whistle' of the train as it rounded the bend into the station. It would be a steam whistle, of course, fed by steam from the loco. But when the inevitable change came to diesel power, there was no steam for the whistle... and folks complained. Oh, the new locos had horns, of course, but they were powered by compressed air... but they weren't the same as the old 'Mournful Whistle'. And why not? Well (says Tim) it appears that when you blow steam through a copper-bodied whistle it immediately starts to expand, and subtly change its shape. Even a steady blast of steam will produce a changing note as the whistle itself changes. You don't get that with cold compressed air.
But what of Butch Cassidy, and 'a legend with a mystery attached'? Well, Robert LeRoy Parker (aka George 'Butch' Cassidy) and Harry Longabough ('The Sundance Kid') were real people, who were indeed the leaders of The Wild Bunch — a gang of polite robbers who targeted banks. The 1969 Paul Newman, Robert Redford and Katharine Ross film wasn't that far from the truth for most of the way through. And then came that iconic ending, with Butch and Sundance cornered in Bolivia, and running out into a fatal hail of bullets. End of story, roll credits.
But Tim's found accounts that two 'Yanquis' were employed at a tin mine in the Bolivian Andes — even trusted to go the bank to pick up the payroll, despite the mine manager knowing their true identity. They were straight and honest with him, and he apparently turned a blind eye to their past until they themselves decided to move on... too many other people had got to realise who they were. Over the next few months more banks were robbed, and payroll mule trains ambushed by English-speaking Americanos. In November 1908 it was reported that the two bandidos had been killed in a shootout with Bolivian gendarmerie. But, says Tim, it's by no means clear that it was Butch and Sundance who were killed — there's a lot of uncertainly and confused reporting, and the method of that final robbery didn't follow their usual pattern.
And there's the fact that at least a dozen people from Wyoming and Utah claimed in the 1920s and 30s that they'd seen their old friend Butch 'passing through'. There was the garage owner in Rock Springs who was positive that the man who came by in a Model T Ford with a trailer full of camping gear was Cassidy. Another old friend recognised the man in the Model T and trailer, as did the Mayor of the town of Baggs (where The Wild Bunch used to hang out).
But maybe the most impressive witness was a Montana rancher named Boyd Charter, who Tim interviewed for his 'World About Us' programme. Boyd's father had been a minor member of The Wild Bunch — he held the horses while the banks were being robbed. Boyd recalls that one day in the early 20s a stranger calling himself Bill Phillips arrived at the house in a Model T with a trailer — his father let the stranger camp down by the river for a few nights, and was clearly very friendly with him. He warned Boyd and his sister not to talk of him outside the ranch... and much later revealed that the stranger's name wasn't Phillips, but Cassidy.
Tim says he believed Boyd Charter's tale, and I'm not going to argue with that. I've gone on about the book here at great length, but as Tim said to me "There isn't a mention of a Land-Rover anywhere in the book — I'm sorry about that — but I still hope that you enjoy it." I did... greatly — and I know that many fans of his first book will too. 'More Than Cowboys' is a smashing, intriguing read, available from Signal Books.
Well, another long Newsletter... and now the Inbox of travel memories seems to be empty. We'll need more for the next Newsletter — if you have them, then please let me know at firstoverland@teeafit.co.uk. Thanks.
What we will have is a look at what was said when the Companion Book Club brought out its popular copy of the original 'First Overland' book.
GRAEME ALDOUS
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