Juvenile Locomotion

A nostalgic mood can be triggered so easily and at times so unexpectedly, ignoring intervening years and leaping back to childhood escapades. In a recent television flashback about life in Brisbane in the early forties, there was a very brief glimpse of a boy curled up in a car tyre, just rolling along. It was literally a two-second shot, but the rest of the programme disappeared as I returned to my childhood days, about age nine or ten.

In retrospect, it seems that the boys of our street at that time seldom moved unless accompanied by a car tyre. Forget about those sissy hoops seen in English comics ! [ Only two sisters lived in our street and they were not allowed the freedom to wander that the little males were given.] So tyre-rolling was strictly a boys' preserve. This period was probably between having a scooter and not yet acquiring the long-desired bicycle. The tyres chosen were usually tall and narrow like those on an old T-model Ford, unlike today's chubby donuts which are useful only for moving cars. Because they were relatively light, the tyres were easily bowled along by hand and therefore they were hurtling up and down our street most evenings just before dusk, or accompanying us across country to Kedron Brook, or even as far as the Yankee Dump where they might be discarded or exchanged for a new model for the trip home. There was no sentiment in tyre bowling circles. Tyres are more suited to rapid transit than a boring walking pace so most tyre motion was done at a running pace. Despite my nickname, there were no fat boys in our neighbourhood.

By far the most fun we had with tyres was to curl up inside one, (like the boy in the TV clip), grip the sides tightly and allow a mate to propel the tyre down our dead-end street. A black right hand was the sign of a regular tyre propeller. I can remember the excitement and laughter, but strangely not the gravel rashes that must have accompanied our fun. Not one family in our street owned a car, so the street was invariably our domain.

If, at any time, the street was declared out of bounds by higher authority there was always the back yard. This did not even require a "driver" as the house was on the side of a hill, so gravity did the job of propulsion, and in emergencies the back wall of the house provided a brake, admittedly a little abruptly.

Sadly, we became "too big" for that game, or someone was hurt, creating an embargo on tyre trips , or maybe a pair of narrower tyres attached to a bicycle frame automatically ended the era of the used tyre propulsion. It was fun while it lasted !