Holden FJ

Well, not my pride of place, but my first car was...

I bought for $950 a 1955 FJ Holden Special.

Oh, how good.

And you've

I love the point that it was done badly, but if it's done well, it...

The great things I remember of some F- uh, FJ Holdens, the sort of early '50s sort of Holdens, the group got together and they were dancing the Jitterbug together.

That, the-

Yeah, lovely stuff

Thanks to Watch Smoke Alarms.

[upbeat music] Well, if you fire up the hotted-up FJ Holden and cruise past the Parthenon Milk Bar on Hunter Street, that's what I'd be doing in Newcastle today.

Uh, because we're wishing a very happy eightieth birthday to a true Australian legend.

Technically, it was yesterday, but he's probably having a milkshake today.

And I would have thought for many reasons a lot of people would reminisce about that.

In fact, between now and 11:00 we'll, we'll go on a bit of a retro holiday theme, uh, with a bloke who's written a terrific book about retro Australian holidays.

But, uh, Russ said, "I actually owned an FJ Holden" and I...

And we laughed at ourselves.

And, uh, he had two brothers and three sisters, and Jim and Nancy, Jim Barry and Nancy Barry, his parents, um, kind of adopted me because, um, Pete and his brother, um, Mark, lived on one of the farms.

And, um, Pete collected, still collects FJ Holdens.

So he'd find this FJ Holden hearse in, like, Renmark or something, and he'd say, "Right, Ferrari, you haven't got a life, so you can come with us.

And we're going up there and, um, getting this hear- this, this car, and you can drive us all back, and we're gonna have a pub crawl home."

All the young women in Newcastle walk down the main street," which is called Hunter Street for reasons that will become obvious later on in the song.

"All the young men in Newcastle drive down Hunter Street in their hot FJ Holdens with chrome-

[laughs]

... plated grease nipples." Yeah, so it was all a bit like that.