Robert Bateman’s 1957 Land Rover to be restored for tour
Vehicle took wildlife artist, friend on a world tour nearly 60 years ago
Internationally recognized wildlife artist Robert Bateman will celebrate his 85th birthday with his boyhood friend Bristol Foster in late May by opening the Rover Boys exhibit at the Robert Bateman Centre in Victoria, B.C.
It will feature a film, photographs, sketches and letters from a 14-month driving trip they took nearly 60 years ago. The special-order 1957 Land Rover they piloted 60,000 kilometres from England through west and equatorial Africa, India, Southeast Asia and Australia will also be present.
The story of that Land Rover’s discovery in the bush outside Williams Lake after the pair looked in vain for it for decades would make a book in itself.
Bateman and Foster have been friends since they were teenage members of a naturalist club at Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum.
By 1956, Foster had completed a master’s degree in biology at the University of Toronto and decided a break from school was necessary.
He thought a driving trip around the world would make a nice outing. Bateman was an art and geography teacher when his friend invited him to go along.
Foster’s father, a successful Toronto businessman, agreed to finance the Land Rover if they came up with $2,000 each. Conditions included taking photographs and film and keeping a daily dairy.
The friends needed a Land Rover big enough to swallow their gear and to live in. Land Rover supplied the chassis, running gear and front body which was built on May 2, 1957. British coach builder Pilcher, a company that built ambulance bodies, provided the custom rear body for the round-the-world trek.
Foster travelled to England to take a maintenance course in which participants completely disassembled and reassembled a Land Rover. He was joined by Bateman to take factory delivery of the sand-beige, square-bodied, four-wheel-drive Land Rover with a green leather interior, sliding observation hatch and rear bunks.
Naming the sturdy vehicle Grizzly Torque, they wrote and illustrated articles for the Toronto Telegram dubbed The Rover Boys.
As they travelled across three continents, Bateman painted scenes of every country on the sides of the Land Rover. Foster did all the driving with the only mishap occurring in India when he swerved to miss a cyclist, rolling the Land Rover onto its side. Passengers from a bus helped to right the vehicle.
“It was the most free and perhaps the most peaceful time we’ve ever had in our lives,” recalls Bateman. “There were no phones, no appointments and we could do whatever we wanted — stop for three minutes, three hours or three days.”
Foster’s influential father had ensured they carried introduction letters. They spent a day with a crown prince in India. Other highlights included visiting Pygmies in the Belgian Congo.
“They were a race of little people living in the forests with no crime, politics or mental illness, who were perfect ecosystem stewards,” Bateman says, lamenting that they are now culturally endangered.
African adventures included joining members of the Ugandan Alpine Club to climb the Mountains of the Moon at the headwaters of the Nile. In a remote part of India, they were awakened by a group of angry men with clubs yelling at them.
“I didn’t know what to do so I yelled the same thing back. One of the men started to laugh. Then they all laughed and went away,” Bateman says.
The pair ended their trip in Sydney, Australia, and shipped the well-used Land Rover to Vancouver. Foster eventually sold it to a fellow U of T graduate student who planned to do research in Texas.
As the years passed, Foster became one of Canada’s best-known biologists, helping to establish ecological reserves in British Columbia, and was the first director of the new Royal BC Museum in Victoria. As neighbours on Saltspring Island for years, he and Bateman have wondered what became of their Land Rover.
Vancouver car collector and Land Rover enthusiast Stuart Longair would play a key role in its rediscovery. He began importing Land Rovers, keeping some while fixing up and selling others with help from longtime Land Rover restorer Alan Simpson.
Simpson told Longair about a call from a man in Williams Lake in B.C.’s Cariboo Region wanting to sell four vintage Land Rover Series 1 restoration projects. The vehicles were shipped to Simpson’s 5,000-sq.-ft restoration shop on his ranch outside Merritt, B.C.
Just before Christmas, Longair spotted a photograph on an enthusiast’s website of the Land Rover driven around the world by Bateman and Foster. It looked a lot like the unique vehicle he had dragged out of the bush and Foster came to look it over.
“He asked if the driver’s window was still Plexiglas referring to the window that had been broken in the rollover,” Simpson says. “I looked into the slot and, sure enough: it was Plexiglas.”
The serial number confirmed the Land Rover is the Pilcher-bodied Grizzly Torque.
Simpson is working seven days a week to complete the restoration in his shop. A previous owner had stripped all the original beige paint — and Bateman’s paintings — from the Land Rover to repaint it light blue.
The restored custom-bodied 1957 Land Rover is to debut at the All-British Field Meet held at Vancouver’s VanDusen Botanical Garden in mid-May. Then it will be on hand for the opening of the Rover Boys touring exhibit at Victoria’s Robert Bateman Centre.
Bateman is so enthusiastic about the vehicle’s restoration, he will replicate the paintings he put on the sides of the Grizzly Torque, chronicling the trip he and his friend took so long ago.
“The Land Rover represents a piece of my life that was our home, transportation, shelter and protection. To know it still exists and is being restored is a wonderful thing,” Bateman says.