Telegraph Tourists: Frank Wright and Penryn Goldman

The first successful north-south automobile crossing of Australia took place in 1908 - a carefully organised and expensive venture. Over the next two decades there were not many other successful crossings. Such transcontinental crossings were made by following the Overland Telegraph Line or the railways extending north from Port Augusta and south from Darwin. In 1929, after four years of severe drought, two cars left separately for Darwin via the bush track which was the 'main road' across the continent - a large Vauxhall 23/60 carrying a married couple in their early thirties and six weeks alter, an Austin Seven driven by a lone eighteen-year-old Englishman. The Vauxhall made Darwin safely; the Austin struggled on to Daly Waters and reached there, unable to continue, on the day the Vauxhall (on its return journey south) arrived. The exhausted Penryn Goldman abandoned 'Baby' and travelled back with the Wrights in 'Vauxie'. Frank Wright kept a daily diary and both he and his wife were keen photographers. Penryn Goldman later published a book of his Australian adventures. Winty Calder, Frank and Win Wright's daughter has merged both of these accounts and many photographs to give graphic insights into the pre-World War II conditions of inland Australia to present a part of history when Australian tourism was in its infancy. With black and white photographs.