Columbus Was Right

Columbus was Right is Barbara Toy's fourth travel book, published in 1958. Having cruised around North Africa and the Middle East, this book sees her setting off from a chilly November London to drive, as far as is possible, around the world. It has a different feel from her other books taking in, as it must do, many more countries which are necessarily painted rather briefly.
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By coincidence Toy left England a few days after Group Captain Peter Townsend who was also on a circumnavigation by Land Rover (Earth my Friend). At the Austrian customs the official informed her that "Group Captain Townsend passed through here just twelve days ago, in one of those cars" (p11). In Graz (home of Steyr), the hotel waiter told her © L. A11ison --> that "Townsend slept here on his way through".

A common refrain from those that Toy met was that the present country was always fine but in other countries farther on  . . .  it would not be so safe (usually unspoken) for a woman on her own. In fact it was Germany, near the start of the trip, that rated a special mention for a "great consciousness of sex". She is physically a small woman but big on strength of character and quite capable of bullying her way to getting a room out a indifferent hotel receptionist or of arguing a reluctant border official into submission (p69). A woman travel writer also has certain advantages over a man - able to mix with both sexes in all societies and possibly blessed with more acute senses concerning people.

Toy had intended to drive overland to Singapore, a feat recently completed by an Oxford and Cambridge team (First Overland). Townsend was also to manage this, the difficult war-time Stillwell Track through Burma being literally the critical path. Was he perhaps the V.I.P. referred to on p95, "the Rangoon embassy [of Britain] had just flown one of their men to the [Indian / Burmese] border to escort a V.I.P. and engage a team of Nagas to manhandle his vehicle through"? If not Townsend, who? In any case, "the Shan States went into revolt and now it was the Indians who wouldn't allow me into the state which bordered Burma"; so she shipped Pollyanna to Thailand.

After touring the temples of Cambodia and Thailand she set out along the peninsula of southern Thailand and Malaya towards Singapore. There was at that time no defined road, just a tangle of tracks through the jungle. Farther on there was the risk of attack by terrorists.

By the time of this trip, Toy's Land-Rover Pollyanna was nine years old and showing its age. The brakes became temperamental in Turkey, so that she had to lie in the freezing mud to bleed them. The dodgy brakes may have prevented a night-time hold-up and robbery in Iran at "a [road] block made from sacks"; unable to stop "[I] swung down into the ditch as the men scattered.   . . .  I kept up a fast pace and we swung back the other side of the block" (p46). The brakes were finally fixed in Tabris. The gearbox casing also cracked, while traversing the Thai jungle, and was repaired in Singapore.

A ship was then taken to Perth WA, followed by a drive across the Nullabor (still a rough dirt road), through the eastern states to Weipa on Cape York, the Northern Territory, South Australia again and Sydney. One of the reasons for the trip was to visit her sister and mother (although there must have been easier ways) because Toy hails from Australia. Especially because of this, her observations on the Australia of the 1950s (after spending a decade in England), on people, pubs, race relations, the Snowy Scheme, the post-war influx of European migrants, form a fascinating snap-shot at an interesting time in the country's history.

Shipping Pollyanna to California, Toy drove across the USA to New York and a final ship for home. One incident: in the Mojave desert near the ghost town of Calico she met a group of four wheel drivers from the Hemet Cavalcaders in about 30 Jeeps - all surprised by the Landy. What chance that the club still exists?
- L. A11ison © 1999

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