Old Girls On The Road – Tracey Walker

Adolf Hitler said he liked his women young as they were like malleable candle wax.

Teenage years are a very important time for forming the foundations of who you will become as an adult. My advice to young teenage girls would be not to have a steady boyfriend in those years, so that you can grow yourself without input from one prominent, or dominant, person. But I know as a teenager I would have never listened to that advice from anyone so my wisdom is superfluous and I’m not sure I’d bother trying to impart it.

I had my first boyfriend from years 13 to 15.   I broke up with him because his jealousy was stifling. Then I was alone all of a week or something before I met my next boyfriend. He was six years older than me and we went out together for 7 years. And boy did he fuck with my head in those formative years. It was impossible to shed his thoughts and opinions even though I did manage to summons up the wherewithal to realise that he was controlling me. It took years and years of professional therapy, DIY therapy – which for me was exorcising the crap through writing and creating, and an eleven-year stint of being single to dispel the particularly damaging ideas that had been planted in my mind by him. I can finally accept, for example, that it’s not the worst thing in the world that my boobs droop after bearing four kids and getting old.  And now with that sort of negativity pushed away I am able to embrace the positive residue left from that relationship and others.  

When I was 15 that controlling boyfriend taught me to drive in a V8 1960 Ford Fairlane on a 3000km round trip from Brisbane to Kynuna. My head still swivels when any vehicle pre-1970 crosses my path and my idea of a good weekend or even an annual holiday is a road-trip.  Last year my current partner and I spent our annual leave driving 4000km’s. I put that holiday right up there with my couple of overseas trips.

Since I was 16 I have owned five Mk2 Cortina’s. I bought my most recent one about 3 years ago when my sad and addled son wrote off my practical but boring Camry. It was a horrendously stressful phase of our lives and the thought of replacing my car with yet another predictable lady’s car made my stomach and heart churn. Scouring the classifieds I jumped to the classic car section, maybe just maybe there would be a Mk2 up for sale. I could get excited about that and I really needed some joy! I set myself a price limit and if there was one listed I would go for it.

Next year, Blanche, my 1967 Mk2 Cortina turns 50. I decided I would like to celebrate her birthday in some official way. I asked my daughter if she would make some fancy little cushions with Blanche and 50 embroidered on them and hot pink pom poms as a trim. I would then put under the back window for all to see. And then I thought, why stop at that? When I throw a party I like to throw a party!

They say write about things you are passionate about and it’s really only dawned on me in the last few years that old cars are a passion for me. The 50^th celebration plans for Blanche have grown into Old Girls on the Road. Before I did the Gunnas workshop with Dev (Friday 30 Dec) I had a lot of ideas on how I was going to go about producing Old Girls, but I’m very thrilled to say many of those ideas have gone out the window of the scrumptious Continental Cafe. Before, I was excited but a little bit daunted. Now I am still excited, but it’s all feeling very doable and I just can’t wait to start doing.