A blast from the past

Posted by John Elfes on Mar 11, 2012; 6:58pm
URL: http://sundownersadventures.385.s1.nabble.com/A-blast-from-the-past-tp5555662.html

Funny, i was going through some old papers yesterday and found,a stack of brochures from my trips in Europe in 1978, both courtesy of Sundowners.
Did a 6 week Cossack then a 9 week Europa as they were called then.

Our courier on the Cossack was Gary Griffin and driver the famous Darcy trevor Waller.
on the Europa, courier was Bruce Ryall and driver the happy Ross w Crook.

Ah the memories, hangovers and frustrations i think our europa was Darcys last trip with Sundowners,they gave him the flick I think, I remember we all wrote a letter to sundowners telling them what a great bloke he was and how he saved us etc etc.   We were driving down some poky russian Highway heading to Rumania it was raining some peasant on a motorbike( I think) cut in front of Darcy and the bus swerved and we ended up in a ditch, not a problem expect he coped some rib bruising( or something like that, it hurt) the russkies carted him off to hospital, the bottom bunkers of the bus were damaged, we eventually got out of the USSR into Rumania , then the problems started, the motor on the bus was sort of stuffed, we made it to krakow Poland , Darcy can probably tell the rest of the story without me telling a short story long. I saw the link with his photos named but can;t find them, all the photos I took on camera 1 are slides and camera two are in print will have to dig them up and try to find out how to post them.

Still keep in contact with some of the people we travelled with, others would love to know what ever happened to them.
Friends of the sundowners staff, i remember Feathers!, think I met Rocky, a good mate of mine Craig Duncan worked as a courier and a mate of his Geoff Cashell. Will have to think of more.