Re: Ex Sundowners and Capricorn reunion

Posted by Mike McDermott on Jun 25, 2011; 2:23am
URL: http://sundownersadventures.385.s1.nabble.com/Ex-Sundowners-and-Capricorn-reunion-tp4513404p4522827.html

Hi Graeme,

OK. Since you ask; potted history since.

After returning from an Asian Overland, I was recruited by Bruce Hodge of Goway to courier his 70 day South American overlands for a couple of years. After that, I worked for him in North America as well for a while, including driving one of his vans in a long loop from Toronto through the USA. Then I went back to London, and was appointed by Travers Cox to be one of his tour leaders for his small group exploratory holidays in a company he founded with Derek Cook and Derek Moore called Explore Worldwide. That was wonderful too (although the overlands are still my number 1); it took me back to my old haunts as well as new ones. However, after marrying Anne in the Australian High Commission in New Delhi we came back to Adelaide to raise a family.

At one stage Dick Cijffers (who had been best man at our wedding) was considering migrating to Adelaide where we were going to start a travel business together. However, he was warned away from Adelaide as a place without much of a future, and he went to Brisbane instead where he still runs a travel agency.

Like Dave Yearly, I was a valuer before I ever went on the road, and I got back to doing that. Then in 1992 there was an ad in the paper for a valuer to go to Africa, and so off we went with a couple of kids in tow in early 1993. We stayed there for many years; in fact Anne is still there with our youngest (who was born there). He will finish high school there this year, but will then embark on an international bacca-laureate diploma at the same school. So although we are still together in heart, we aren’t in place. So I like to joke that while most people have nuclear families, we have a nuclear explosion one, with a daughter in Sydney, a son in Canada, a father in Darwin, and a wife and son in Africa.

While I was there, Dick called and asked if I would help him take a trip around South Africa, with him driving one comby and me another. As part of that trip we went to Sun City, where (would you believe), we ran into Sid McKinley, Rocky and Pebbles! Sid, and later Brendon Reid, helped Dick with his tours after that; I didn’t have enough leave entitlements to keep it up.

I began to develop a career as a land policy consultant, and that took me around the world a bit more, but on a South Pacific island I started to get sick, so I came back to Sydney and had an operation to remove a tumour that was crushing my spinal cord. The surgeon had one of the most convincing sales spiels that I have encountered: “Mike, unless I operate, you will be a quadriplegic in a few months, and then slowly suffocate to death”.

That operation mostly worked, so I am still working, but during the operation Anne came over to look after me and had a breast cancer screening at the hospital I was in when she had the time. We both went back to Africa while I recuperated, and we received news from the cancer screening people back in Oz that there was something needing a further look at. It turned out to a malignant tumour. So I had been diagnosed in Australia by a South African and operated on by an Australian in AustraIia, and Anne had been diagnosed in Australia and operated on by an Australian in South Africa! Because Anne had the screening they had caught it early enough, and Anne’s fine now as well.

While all I picked up some consultancy work over there, it was not enough to pay the bills, so I got a job as a valuer again back in Oz – in Darwin this time – and here I am. Being on my own, I have time to do some part time study after hours, which is on the land policy side of things. Just the same, as my dissertation has an autobiographical approach it includes referring to my days on the road; I think that in researching that time is how I discovered the indiaoverland.biz site; Ana and Carl put me on to yours.

I still pick up the odd consultancy – one in Indonesia, and another in Palestine working on Palestine’s land policy – but haven’t had much recently. While there tough, I grabbed the chance and went back to Petra with another Australian on the consultancy team.

So, there it is. I am still occasionally in touch with Brendon and Dick from time to time, and some others, including Allan Maher and Simon Arms. Carl Capstick met his wife Ana on the same trip I met my wife Anne on, and one of our passengers organised a digital reunion of the group in 1979 to celebrate the 30th anniversary. I had gone to a 10th anniversary overland reunion in 1986, but there haven’t been any others from all my overlands; at least none that I know of.

Shame really because - as I am sure is the same with you - in the roles we had when you are with people so closely for the length of time of an overland, you don’t really forget any of them.

All the Best,

Mike