[Motoring]. BIRTLES, Francis

3,500 Miles across Australia in a Ford Car, from the Gulf of Carpentaria to Port Phillip Bay [August to December 1913]. Edited and compiled by G.W. Whatmore

[No Place, No Publisher, No Date]/ [1914] (a later facsimile edition, we suggest circa 1980s).

Octavo, 64 pages with numerous illustrations.

Flush-cut two-colour pictorial khaki card covers; an excellent copy.

Trove does not note this edition, but records contemporary editions published in Sydney, Melbourne, Hobart, and Adelaide. All of them are very rare (and we've only seen this facsimile once before). It is reproduced from an original 1914 edition 'presented with the compliments of Messrs. Davies & Fehon Motors Ltd.... Importers of Ford Cars for New South Wales'.

Francis Edwin Birtles (1881-1941) is described by the 'Australian Dictionary of Biography' in one word - overlander. In 1907-08 he cycled from Melbourne 'to Sydney and then, via Brisbane, Normanton, Darwin, Alice Springs and Adelaide back to Sydney, where he was thereafter based. In 1909 he published the story of his feat ... By 1912 he had cycled around Australia twice and had crossed the continent seven times. Birtles next turned to the motor car and in 1912 completed the first west-to-east crossing of the continent.... By mid-1927 he had completed more than seventy transcontinental crossings. Impecunious, he depended on manufacturers to sponsor his expeditions and wrote about many of his journeys for newspapers and periodicals. In July 1928 Birtles became the first person to drive from London to Melbourne, a nine-month part-solo journey'.

Item #144547

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