In the ferocious, crisis-ridden world of the automobile, a marathon motorist reclaims his place in Australian folklore. Words: Roderick Eime
He’s Bean Everywhere
M
ost of us think Australia’s heroes are well known. At school we learn about Mawson, Simpson, KingsfordSmith and Chisholm, but still our unknown achievers and record-breakers are creeping out of the cracks. Adelaide-born Sir Hubert Wilkins is now remembered as the first man to fly across the Arctic and take a submarine beneath the ice pack, while Mary MacKillop bounds headlong into sainthood. Yet one man, Francis Edwin Birtles, has almost disappeared into history. Born in Melbourne in 1881, Birtles was a cyclist bent on breaking records. Like a Forrest Gump on wheels, he first set off from Fremantle in 1905 and didn’t stop for seven years. By 1912, he’d cycled around Australia twice and crossed the continent seven times. But his exploits in the automobile are perhaps his most remarkable. In 1912, he completed the first west-to-east crossing
of the continent with Syd Ferguson and a dog. The car was a single-cylinder Brush. Later with Frank Hurley and his brother Clive, he began documenting his journeys creating films such as Into Australia’s Unknown (1915), Across Australia in the Track of Burke and Wills and, in 1919, Through Australian Wilds, following the track of Sir Ross Smith. He continued to set records driving around Australia completing some 70 transcontinental crossings. In 1928 he completed a nine-month journey from London to Melbourne, becoming the first person to do so. Championed by political cartoonist and former host of Aussie Top Gear, Warren Brown, Birtles’s feats of mechanical and human endurance enthralled Brown to the point of obsession. He has even restored a 1925 Bean and intends to retrace Birtles’s route from London.“Eighty years ago he was a household name across Australia,” Brown reminds us, “part action man, part bushman, part madman.”
Birtles’ first attempt at the drive in the prototype Bean Imperial Six was a disaster. The car broke down in India. However, undaunted, Birtles vowed to make another attempt, this time in his own car, the trusty Bean 14, nicknamed Sundowner. This nine-month odyssey, Brown believes, is perhaps the most astonishing motoring adventure in history. Across searing deserts, through blinding snowstorms and steaming jungles, Birtles often made his own roads as he went. In the depression-ridden 1930s, Birtles went to prospect for gold, looking for the notorious Lewis Lassiter in the meantime. He found gold, but the extreme pace of his life had taken its toll and Birtles died of heart disease in Sydney in 1941 – he was 60 years old. Relics of Birtles and his adventures are hard to find, but his most significant legacy is the original Bean motor car on display at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra, donated by Birtles and Bean Cars Ltd in 1929. ■
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Image: Pictures Collection, State Library of Victoria
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