Almanac Life: The Age of Corona

 

Spotted in a Currumbin car park in 2018 – deserved a photo. This looks like a 1976(ish) Corona. JTH’s was a little older. Same mustard colour though.

 

 

This dastardly virus is not the first Age of Corona I’ve endured. I had almost three years of Corona-worry back in the late 1980s.

 

At the end of 1984, having miraculously secured my Arts degree from the University of Queensland (at that time it was like a resort tucked into the St Lucia reach of the Brisbane River) in History and Maths, I put everything I owned – a Gray-Nich cricket bag, a set of golf clubs, a dinner jacket and a single removalists’ carton stuffed with clothes, a pewter mug, and a few books and papers – into the back of my Mini Moke, put a Dean Martin tape into the radio-cassette player on the front seat, and (top-down) headed for Adelaide.

 

The following year I did just enough to squeeze a Dip Ed out of Flinders University. During that time, I learnt that a Mini Moke was not ideal for Adelaide conditions. To a Queenslander, it felt like Adelaide was shrouded in a Lancastrian mizzle.

 

Just as miraculously, I landed a job back in Brisbane. I gave The Moke (as it was known) to my brother for Christmas and caught a flight back to the warmth of The North. I was to teach Maths and Phys Ed at a small Lutheran secondary school among the market gardens and custard apple orchards on the south-eastern fringe of Brisbane.

 

When I got there, I needed a car. I needed Yatso.

 

During my undergraduate years I’d played at the University of Queensland Cricket Club (and returned to the club once back in Brisbane). The first team I played in was skippered by Gazza, a legendary mid-thirties clubman (the treasurer) and estates lawyer who had, by stealth and deception, put together a strong (on paper), Fourth Grade side. A few of them should have been playing up the grades. I started as the archetypal fill-in player but cemented my spot because I played 500 and understood the restorative qualities of Bundaberg rum. Our side included a combination of undergrads and good-old-boy alumni.

 

The opening bowling attack was made up of two blokes a good twenty years my senior: one, a distinguished academic, the geographer Geoffrey Mac, and the other not. That was Yatso. Indeed, in the days when, to play for Uni you needed to be a student or a graduate, how Yatso qualified for the team was a mystery to me. That was until I learnt, late one night, having just lost an ambitious Slam Hearts bid, that half a term at Kelvin Grove Teachers’ College in 1963 was enough to keep the QCA officials happy.

 

Both had been good bowlers in their day. Geoff Mac still hit the pitch hard and did a bit with the ball. Yatso was hanging on to that particular outswinger that’s produced by the classic side-on action of the 1950s and `60s. However, we found ourselves in the Year of our Lord that was 1981. Which presented its challenges. At the height of his delivery stride he became the victim of Physics, his ample girth taking control, such that he was never able to raise his head sufficiently to see where the ball had pitched, what shot the batsman had played, or to which part of the outfield he’d been dispatched. Momentum carried him well up the track. When, eventually, he came to a halt, he instinctively grabbed at the top of his creams. He’d turn, hitch (he tried to wear the cricket pant over rather than under the tum), and huff, and demand the ball back quickly as he charged back to his mark (during the early overs of his first spell).

 

Everything about Yatso was big. He was a big Zorba man, with bucket hands, a big Fred Flintstone head, a big voice and a bigger laugh. He had a tendency not to listen. This occurred in pretty much every facet of his life: professional, social, matrimonial, cricketing. You knew he wasn’t listening when he superimposed “Yeah mate. Yeah mate. Yeah mate” over everything you were saying to him.

 

“Hey, Yatso. This bloke’s getting a long way across,” Gazza would say, walking towards him from mid-off. (Gazza was a mid-off sort of captain.)

 

“Yeah mate. Yeah mate. Yeah mate.”

 

For a young bloke Yatso was a character in a team of characters. They partied, but they were also good at what they did, or were preparing themselves to do. Apart from Prof Mac, the team included a medical student who went on to do research at Cambridge, helped pioneer heart-lung transplants, and ran hospitals; a GP; a young solicitor; an economist; a mathematician who become a serious actuary in Canberra; and another one who developed maths education strategies. And then there was Yatso. Yatso owned a used car yard on Logan Road in Holland Park. Classic old Brisbane.

 

He looked after vehicular needs of the students in the team. One ended up the owner of a VW Beetle that had seen better days. He’d gone to see Yatso on a very hot day. They were standing outside the pre-fab that was the office looking across the yard.

 

“Look at the Beetle mate,” Yatso said. “Look at it. What a beauty!”

 

“Well, we better have a look,” our pimply student suggested.

 

“Nah mate. Nah. You can see enough from here. Look at the boots on it,” Yatso said, gesturing towards the car.

 

“Boots?”

 

“Tyres mate,” Yatso explained. “Look at `em.”

 

It was enough to clinch the sale.

 

Rumbo was sold a Leyland Marina which he did not even test drive. “Don’t worry about tryin’ it mate,” Yatso said. “The Test’s about to start on the telly, mate. You wanna get home, mate. See that first ball. Get that first beer into ya.”

 

I was there with Rumbo that very hot morning. I had never seen Yatso in work clobber before. He wore short-sleeved business shirt, tailored shorts (small) which he wore under his belly, and long white socks. He had surprisingly skinny legs, and no backside at all. He had the build of a bloke who, in Queensland terms, had “drunk his arse off.” Many of these types, educated by the Christian Brothers around Brisbane, were to be found drinking tinnies in the Don Tallon Bar at the Gabba, Telegraph under the armpit, watching the final Friday session of Shield matches.

 

Rumbo was persuaded and we drove back to his joint in what became known as ‘The Ancient Marina’ home – in time for the first ball of the Test match.

 

So, when I got to Brisbane carless, in keeping with tradition, I knew Yatso was my man. He’d retired from club cricket and I hadn’t seen him for three years or so. I gave him a call.

 

“Yeah, come out mate. Have a look mate. Yeah mate. We got somethin’. Yeah mate. Yeah.”

 

I got to his establishmnet and we wandered down towards the fag end of the car yard.

 

“Darky, mate,” he said, as we ambled along. “Whattya spendin’?”

 

“About 3000.”

 

“Dark, for that brass you’re lookin’ Stralian six, 120 thou on the clock. No air. You won’t get air for that. Good boots. Strong. Or you’re lookin’ mid-70s Japanese four. Good ks. No air.”

 

He paused.

 

“But mate, you don’t want one of those six cylinder Aussie bastards. They’re petrol guzzlers mate. Deadset guzzlers. Ya lookin’ Jap mate. Yeah mate. Go the Jap mate. I’dbe going the Jap mate. Yeah mate. Yeah mate. Go the bloody Jap mate.”

 

By sheer coincidence our discussion finished just as we got to a very ordinary looking 1974 Toyota Corona. He tapped it. “Dark, mate, this has got you all over it.”

 

He’d just traded it. Mustard. 135,000 on the clock. He’d done nothing to it.

 

“How much?” I asked.

 

“$3400,” he said.

 

“It needs a bit of work,” I suggested.

 

“Yeah mate. Yeah mate. Yeah mate.”

 

I bought it. He charged me $3000.

 

I got it home.

 

My first concern came the following morning when my new second-hand Corona wouldn’t start. I rang Yatso and he insisted the RACQ sort it out. Which they did. Temporarily. A matter of weeks later the engine blew up. Yatso did the right thing and replaced the engine. Within weeks it blew up again. Warranty covered that engine, but not the inconvenience, nor doubt.

 

The car never ran well. I must have owned the only Toyota that’s ever overheated. It had that oil-on-the-engine smell about it. All of the time.

 

It might have had a fresh, reconditioned engine, but towards the end of 1987 it was struggling. At the end of the school year I took it down to Brunswick Heads where a few of us played a week-long golf tournament we had at Ocean Shores each December – I reckon it was the year of The Muscular Christianity Stableford Classic. Coming home, the (third) engine blew up on the Banora Point hill. A dodgy mechanic got it back on the road a week and $600 later.

 

But I was loyal to my Corona. It had terrible compression and getting the beast going was a lottery. I was always calling the RACQ. One mecahnic shook his head. He was a Sri Lankan fellow with a very polished English public school accent. We talked cricket for ages and he lent towards me and said, “I am sorry but your car is terrible. I strongly advise you get a new car.”

 

He managed to start it. As far as I was concerned, all my problems were solved.

 

In Grade 11 Maths I that day, I resolved to page through the Courier Mail for new car ads. The first one I could afford I would buy. There was an ad for the Daihatsu Charade, on sale, for $8990. I went to the dealership in Moorooka and said to the bloke, “See that dark blue Charade over there, wrap it up.”

 

He made me go for a test drive. He also got me to start the Corona and he had a look. I kept quiet. As we were negotiating the deal he offered a $3200 trade. I did my best not to splutter. I signed as quickly as I could.

 

Before school, on the day that I was to pick up my new Charade, the Corona wouldn’t start. I rang the RACQ roadside-help number. The yellow truck turned the corner. It was the same Sri Lankancricket-lover.

 

He was pissed off. I told him the story. He got the Corona going and he said, “Seriously, my friend, this car has about two starts left in it.”

 

I got to school. I turned the Corona off. After school I sat in the carpark trying to get the Corona to turnover. Eventually it did. En route to Moorooka I had to go to the bank to pick up the cheque. I was worried. I decided I’d leave the car running outside the bank while I went inside.

 

It all went to plan. Within minutes I was back in the Corona and cruising happily to Moorooka Daihatsu. There was a great sense of relief as I rolled into the dealership. I parked right at the door of the sales office, turned the Corona off, took the keys from the ignition triumphantly and headed in.

 

As I got to the counter a salesman appeared. “Mate,” he said, “Is that your car?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Do you mind moving it?”

 

 

**

 

 

A decade or so later I wrote a version of this story for Modern Nomad. Yatso was called Smithy in the piece. The used car fraternity of which Yatso had been part had kicked on and now his mates ran major new car dealerships around boom-time Brisbane. They had no trouble identifying Smithy as their great mate. The bloke who had the Mercedes dealership somehow found me. “We’re taking you to lunch,” he said.

 

About a dozen of us went to Tatts. We’d started with a couple of beers and were sitting in the dining room looking at menus when Yatso appeared. He had no idea what was happening, but he’d be told to come an hour after everyone else.

 

He spotted me, and realised immediately. He came over, put out his giant hand, shook mine, and slapped me on the back.

 

“Maaaaate,” he said.

 

It was one of the great lunches. A post-Corona lunch. I’m looking forward to one of those.

 

 

 

Read more from John Harms HERE

 

 

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