Angelina
When a party of three weather-beaten men drove in to Darwin on August 20, 1908, in an equally weather-beaten British-made Talbot motor car, they became the first to drive a car across the Australian continent.It was a feat that had taken two years, two tries and two cars, and only after 42 days and their second attempt did they manage to break down the tyranny of distance between Adelaide, the capital of South Australia, and Port Darwin, then the ‘capital’ of the Northern Territory of Australia.
At this stage of the motor car’s evolution, ‘motorists faced a hostile society of luddites, horse-loving reactionaries, regressive law makers and overzealous police’, Dr Kieran Tranter writes in his article ‘The History of the Haste-Wagons’.There were only about 500 cars registered in South Australia; the car of the masses, the Ford Model T, was yet to be introduced to Australia; and the first west-east crossing by vehicle, by Francis Birtles Harry Dutton, who owned the Talbot, was a 28-year-old heir to a pastoral fortune. He lived at his family home of Anlaby Station just outside Kapunda, north-east of Adelaide. In 1907 it was decided that he would attempt the first south-north crossing of the continent, a distance of about 3400km. With him would be Murray Aunger, who Harry’s father had recommended as the companion for the trip. Murray had helped establish the Lewis Motor Works in SA in the late 1890s, and he built the first car in the state in 1900. The Lewis company was by 1907 a major supplier of cars to wealthy South Australians Murray was the brain and the muscle behind the crossing attempts, and Harry was to later say, “the trip’s success was attributable entirely to the ability of Mr Aunger”. Murray, a whizz at anything mechanical, also went on to hold a number of Australian motoring records.The first south-north attempt started in Adelaide on November 29, 1907, in a 15kW Talbot motor car they’d christened, ‘Angelina’. The Talbot cars, built by Clement-Talbot Limited in London, quickly gained a reputation for being well-made, efficient and fast, and it was the first car, in 1913, to cover 100 miles (160km) in one hour. They were also expensive; a factory refurbished chassis was advertised at the time for £450, and a body for £350. That was more than most complete new cars when the average annual wage in Australia was just £158 per year! A four-cylinder 3770cc water-cooled engine with mono-cast cylinders and a bore and stroke of 100mm x 120mm powered the vehicle. It had a rated output of 20hp (15kW). The 1908 model had its power increased to 25hp (19kW) and had a recommended cruising speed of around 75km/h. These English cars often blew out, or dripped, more oil than they actually used, as they had no oil seals. Water use was also considerable, although the Talbots were equipped early on with a water pump, which made them more suited to Australian conditions than many other vehicle makes. The vehicles would also need greasing regularly, with a recommended greasing interval of just 900km.
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