2nd World Trip (1962 -1963)
Twelve years after first setting foot in South Africa I watched Dad’s Rolls Bentley being hoisted out of the hold of the S.S. Uganda (later requisitioned for the Falklands war) in Beira, Mozambique, then Portuguese East Africa.
We were embarking on the 2nd World Trip because Dad and Mum, who were going anyway, realised that neither Scoop or I were headed for University. Scoop, a budding artist, because he didn’t see the point, indeed he turned down the opportunity of seeking a scholarship to Cambridge. Me because I had been in the bottom three of every class I’d ever attended.
So Dad offered us a place in University of the World.
He generously paid for our ship journeys (Cabin Class - Mum and Dad quite rightly travelled First), and our car, a Hillman Husky - theirs was a Hooper Body Bentley. Mum and Dad stayed in hotels, naturally, while Scoop and I happily campedin Africa, Australia, Canada and the USA or, very occasionally, stayed at a YMCA.
The was an adventurous necessity as we'd agreed to earn the cash needed for food and accommodation, which we did by working for Dad on the ships, I would type his books onto three sheets of carbon paper, Dad wrote a book in a week, I managed to type them it two. I wrote articles for a car magazine, and chapters for the family book on Africa - Optimists in Africa. Scoop wrote, and had published, a sketch book: Africa Holiday.
In Australia we picked peas, worked in a cannery and, because huge floods delayed us in Queensland for so long that we missed the boat our parents had booked to North America, I worked for a month in Sydney's iconic bookshop: Angus and Robertson. That more or less paid for our unforgettable three month crisscrossing of Noth America.
The 2nd World Trip became my rite of passage.
