We put the car into a nearby workshop to have the fuel tank repaired. Fiats were not common in Turkey and we had seen no Fiat 600s like ours. The taxis were large American models, 30 years old and very battered. There was also a locally made car, the Anadol, which had a fibreglass body and used Ford mechanical parts. We hoped that Greece, now just 200 miles away, would have Fiat spare parts.
We were enjoying the relative comforts of our Mopark (hot showers and a laundry on site) and used it as our base while exploring Istanbul. East and West are supposed to meet here, and the change was immediately apparent. Every place of interest in Istanbul was crawling with hawkers selling books, postcards and colour slides. Buses arrived every five minutes disgorging tourists who proceeded to ‘do’ the place in a few minutes and then move on to the next attraction.
Nevertheless, Istanbul was an impressive city. We began with the Mosque of Sultan Ahmet (the famous Blue Mosque) and the nearby St Sophia Basilica, a former Byzantine church which is now a museum. The crowds were oppressive, so we tried the Topkapi Palace, home of the Ottoman sultans, but it was not much better. In the crowd we met a Kiwi group from the Oriana travelling in two Commer vans which were having severe mechanical problems. This had required the total overhaul of an engine in one vehicle and a differential in the other, and had lost them 10 days. Our problems were mild in comparison.
We found a quieter place by inspecting a Byzantine cistern, underground near St Sophia. It was built in 532 AD as an emergency water supply in the event of a siege of the city. The vast covered Grand Bazaar in Istanbul was extraordinary. All manner of things were available, but specialities seemed to be leather goods, meerschaum pipes, agate and gold, particularly the popular puzzle rings. Touts were everywhere and hard to shake off. People even approached us asking if we had anything to sell, such as a camera or tape recorder.
Somewhat reluctantly we continued our journey. We wanted to try to find the site of the Anzac landing at Gallipoli, but had only a vague idea of where it was. We headed towards the town of Gelibolu; our Gallipoli is a corruption of this name. We camped overnight in a pine grove near Kesan. Next morning as we prepared to leave, a van of Australians pulled up, returning from Anzac Cove. They kindly gave us directions as the site was unmarked and hard to find. It is, in fact, near the town of Eceabat, 45 miles south of Gelibolu. There were numerous little cemeteries dotted all over the area, each well kept with Turkish gardeners in attendance. The main memorial and cemetery on a hill at Lone Pine was peaceful and very moving.
We returned to the main road at Kesan and crossed into Greece without difficulty. Next morning we awoke to the sound of a village church bell, rather than the call to prayer of the muezzin. We had left the lands of Islam behind. The people, too, were different. Up to our last day in Turkey we had been asked continually by people along the way for cigarettes. Last night, after only hours in Greece, we were offered cigarettes twice by friendly villagers, one with a brother in Australia. People waved and smiled again as we passed, even the girls.
There were now several routes we could take across Europe to London. The fastest and most direct way was northwest through Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, but it would not be very interesting. We decided to head south to Athens and then catch a car ferry from the west coast of Greece to the ‘heel’ of Italy, bypassing communist Eastern Europe. Our chosen route was through Macedonia, the country of Alexander the Great, to the pleasant fishing port of Kavalla, then on to Thessaloniki, the second largest city in Greece. We found that petrol prices had doubled since Turkey. Just out of Thessaloniki, on a good road, a rear spring on the Fiat broke with loud ‘twang’.
Fortunately we had already seen Fiats in Greece, including the little 600 model. The Fiat dealer had a replacement spring and even a new distributor in stock. The spring had broken in two places this time, but not where the weld had been made in Pakistan, that remained intact after all those miles. The entire engine was removed and the front and rear crankshaft oil seals replaced. A new distributor was fitted, the rear spring replaced and the car was serviced.
We set off in high spirits next morning, but at a routine stop noticed that we were still losing oil from the engine. A mechanic in the next major town, Katerini, decided that the leak was from the camshaft welsh plug, and promptly removed the engine again. He then found that the leak was actually from the sump gasket where it curved around the main bearing housing. The engine need not have been removed to fix it.
It had been a very expensive couple of days, but more positively, there was now a motorway all the way to Athens. We continued past snow-capped Mount Olympus, home of the gods, and Thermopylae, where a monument celebrates a battle where a small group of Greeks halted the mighty Persian army of Xerxes I in 480 BC. Here we diverted from the highway to visit the ruins at Delphi, ancient home of the Oracle, which sit high on a mountain overlooking the sea. Although it was only May, the tourist crowds were overwhelming.
Not far from Athens the Fiat’s engine emitted a horrible screaming sound, which turned out to be a fractured generator pulley. It was soon welded in the next town. It was not a happy day for the car, as we had already been sideswiped by a harvester on a narrow mountain section of the road, suffering minor cosmetic damage.
The traffic in Athens in the tourist season was mayhem, particularly around the Acropolis. The crowded ruins of the Parthenon, the pinnacle of classical Greek architecture, were somehow an anticlimax after all we had seen in Asia. However, they provided an interesting link with our earlier travels. Construction of the Parthenon began in 447 BC after the invading Persians had destroyed a pre-existing structure on the same site. The Greeks subsequently had their revenge in 330 BC when Alexander the Great in turn burned the Persian capital of Persepolis.
One of the great pleasures of Athens was eating souvlaki in the al fresco cafes of its old Plaka district. The local wine retsina, however, with its peculiar taste of turpentine, was something of an acquired taste.
From Athens we drove south, across the spectacular Corinth ship canal, onto the Peleponese Peninsula. We were headed to ancient Olympia through beautiful Arcadia, best known for its nymphs and shepherds, and the Pipes of Pan. Simple shepherds still lived there in small stone huts tending their flocks. Apart from the stadium, there was little left intact among the ruins at Olympia, the original home of the Olympic Games.
Minor problems continued to plague the Fiat. First, the generator pulley fractured again and had to be re-welded. Then the separate cooling fan pulley shattered completely. A village mechanic welded the pieces back together again sufficiently until, in Patras, we were able to get a new replacement. A short ferry ride took us across the Gulf of Corinth back to the mainland. We then travelled north through Dodoni, with its well preserved ancient theatre, and Ioannina, a lake-side town with a strong Moslem heritage, to the port of Igoumenitsa. We booked on a car ferry to Otranto in Italy via the island of Corfu, where we could stop off. We found that this was quite a lot less expensive than taking the alternative ferry to Brindisi.
Kerkira, the main town on Corfu, was delightful, although clearly a well developed tourist destination. We found a camping ground 5 miles north at Kondokalion. In giving the Fiat an overdue service and clean, we made a disturbing discovery. The left front suspension assembly had collapsed and had been driven through the floor of the car beneath the passenger seat. The damage looked horrifying. We could not drive the car any further, but it seemed sensible to wait until we reached Italy, the home of Fiat, before attempting repairs.
A Canadian couple, Fred and Pat Ager, kindly offered to take us with them around the island during our stay on Corfu. And in one of those amazing coincidences on the road, while shopping one day for food in Kerkira, we met yet again Vic and Chris O’Connell, who had been on the island for a month. Our days were spent exploring the island with Fred and Pat by car, or sailing with an English couple, David and Carol Richards, on their small yacht. Evenings usually involved a late dinner in one of the many outdoor restaurants, entertained with Greek music and spontaneous dancing by the staff and guests. We had five days of welcome relaxation after over three months on the road.
Sadly we left Corfu, sailing first along the coast of mysterious Albania, before turning west for Italy. In Otranto the front suspension assembly of the Fiat was removed and the shattered mounts hammered back into place. Then, like a giant jig saw puzzle, the pieces were laboriously welded together again. We hoped the repair would now hold until London. The bill seemed to us excessive, even by Australian standards, but our complaints were fruitless and we paid it reluctantly in the end.
Heading north towards Naples, near Potenza, we were overtaken and frantically hailed by an Australian girl with her Italian husband. She had been in Italy for 12 months and had not met a single Australian. She was living with her husband’s family and seemed quite homesick. We had a drink and a chat with her before continuing. On nearing Naples, we diverted briefly to see Sorrento, and continued on to a camping ground near the ruins of Pompeii. It was my 25th birthday. Some years before I had made it a personal goal to travel overseas by the time I was 25, and that I had now achieved beyond all expectations. I reflected that the most difficult part of this trip had been to take the first step, to make the commitment to go.
The ruins of Pompeii were impressive by any standard, and strangely familiar after seeing my grandfather’s Kodachrome slides so many years earlier. We tested the little Fiat again by climbing the road up Mount Vesuvius to the crater and it did not let us down. After seeing the sights of Naples, a mixture of extravagant luxury and squalid slums, we joined the Italian autostrada system for the run to Rome. The toll charges varied with engine size, and for once it was a benefit to be in a little Fiat 600.
Rome’s traffic seemed no worse to us than Bombay or Tehran as we joined the crowds at the traditional historic sites of the ancient city. As we toured the Coliseum and the Pantheon, both nearly 2000 years old, I recalled that at that time there was an equally creative civilisation building its great monuments in Anuradhapura in the jungles of Ceylon. The grandure of St Peter’s Basilica was awe inspiring, but surely also equalled by the serene beauty of the Taj Mahal in Agra or the majestic mosques of Isfahan. For me, perhaps the most interesting place was the Roman Forum, as there I was able to visit many of the places mentioned in my high school Latin lessons - the Curia (Senate Chamber), the Arch of Titus, the Capitol and the Temple of the Vestal Virgins. I was struck by the scale of things. It seemed that Ancient Rome, which had once ruled much of the known world, was such a small place. We were suffering from cultural overload as we headed out of Rome along the Via Appia Antica, the Old Appian Way.
As we joined the Raccordo Anulare, the ring road around Rome, we were surprised to see so many prostitutes sitting by the roadside on a stool or box waiting for custom. Outside Pisa we camped under a bridge near some other travellers. In the morning we discovered that they were gypsies. Their traditional clothes and tattered tents were just like those we had seen in Turkey, except in Italy, instead of a horse and cart, they travelled in an Alfa Romeo. In Pisa we climbed the leaning tower and stood where Galileo had dropped weights in his study of gravity. Pisa is only a few miles from Florence which, of all the historic cities of Italy, must be the most beautiful. Yet its treasures are also the art works by such masters as Michelangelo, Leonardo di Vinci, Botticelli, Rembrandt and Rubens, inside its elegant galleries and palaces. I was so impressed I returned to Florence a year later to see more of it. In contrast our next destination, Milan, was a large industrial city and, apart from its cathedral, not so attractive.
Our route led on through Como, in the Italian Lake District, into Switzerland. The Fiat’s hill climbing ability was tested for the last time on the St Gotthard Pass which had gradients of up to 10% and reached 7000 feet elevation. The weather had changed and the blue skies we had enjoyed most of the way from Colombo were gone. Nothing would stop us now as we descended towards Zurich. We allowed ourselves one last stop before the run to London. In Stuttgart we visited the impressive Mercedes Benz automotive museum and also the then rather modest Porsche factory.
The extensive German autobahn system took us to Cologne and then on to Brussels in Belgium. Continuing to Ostend, we caught the evening ferry to Dover. We camped a few miles down the road to Canterbury and entered London under blue skies the next day. It was 29th June 1969, four months almost to the day since we had left Colombo.
Against the odds we had arrived, covering 14,533 miles in the gallant but troublesome little Fiat. Of the US$800 I had begun with in Colombo, just US$50 remained. Not only were my finances depleted, I was also some two stone lighter than when I commenced the journey.
My immediate emotion on arriving in England was very like one of coming home after a long absence. So much was familiar, although I had obviously never been there before. But I was comfortable. It was a familiar culture. One adventure was over and another would now begin.
In London, I quickly found work on oil drilling rigs operating in the North Sea and off the coast of West Africa. With finances replenished, I bought a duty free Alfa Romeo sports car and spent three months in the summer of 1970 touring Europe again, visiting 15 countries and covering another 13,000 miles. I returned to Australia in early 1971, with the car, to resume my career in the oil exploration industry. Stuart became a photographic salesman in Wimbledon and for a period continued to use the Fiat around London. Unfortunately it was involved in an accident and, sadly, was sold to a car wrecking firm for just five pounds – they were not very keen to have it. Today the Fiat 600 Multipla is considered something of a classic model and is quite rare and valuable.
The illustrations for my story were selected from a larger collection of 274 photographs from the trip which I have posted elsewhere on the Flickr website –
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