RON REMINISCES

GEEZ, THIS 400TH ISSUE IS MAKING RON FEEL OLD!

IFIRST wrote for the mag sometime in late 1986 when I had been conscripted to head to Alice Springs and join an AAT Kings trip to the Kimberley. Little did I know that would begin a lifelong friendship with one of the Outback’s great characters, the late ‘Taffy’ Abbotts, and a continuing love affair with the northwest of Western Australia, which we had first visited eight years earlier. We ended up getting bogged for three days in the AAT King’s Unimog as we headed into the then almost unknown Bungle Bungles. Here we met Malcolm Douglas, who had also just heard of the place and was making a movie for his TV show.

By Issue 42 (July, 1987) we were regulars in the mag, with destination pieces, tech stories and Viv’s first ‘how to’ cooking article. I started at the mag as Editor (Issue 46) after delaying the first day in the office because of a three-month trek to the Kimberley – the boss was broken-in quickly to my peregrinate lifestyle. The day after I got back from up north I walked into the office to what turned out to be a momentous occasion in fourwheel-drive history, the launch of the mighty GQ Patrol onto the Australian market.

My first road test for the mag wasn’t too illustrious and only remains in the memory because of all the stupid things I did. I took a test car for a run down in the Otway Ranges. It happened to be the Managing Director’s car – a Daihatsu Rocky – and I drowned it big time, filling it with sloppy mud and water. To say the boss of Daihatsu was unimpressed was quite an understatement! Still, I even owned up to it in the report – well, maybe a watered-down version of it.