Motor car arrives

NT - 1908

"There was great excitement in Palmerston last Thursday when three men alighted from a motor car pulled up in front of the Victoria Hotel.

The motor car was the first to have travelled overland from south to north and it was the first which most people up here had ever seen.

The trip from Adelaide had taken 51 days when South Australian pastoralist Harry Dutton and mechanic Murray Aunger set out in a late model Clement - Talbot car. It was fitted with pneumatic tyres and auxilliary wheels which could be bolted to the standard wheels when extra traction was required. They picked up a hitchhiker in Alice Springs - telegraph operator, Fred Allchurch.

Mr Dutton acknowledged he was generously welcomed in Palmerston and stated: 'On that account alone I would repeat the trip. The crossing of the continent has demonstrated the reliability of the motor car in negotiating tracks which are possibly unequalled in difficulty anywhere in the world'

The motor car may be the conveyance of the future, but it will be many years before it supplants the horse, or even the bicycle in the Territory. Dutton and Aungers 51 day time for their crossing was, after all, much longer than that taken by cyclist Al McDonald, who rode from Darwin to Adelaide in 29 days in 1898."

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