History
Late Poppa’s response to ‘53 FJ restoration? ‘You’ve done a good job, my boy!’
By Richard Bruinsma
Sunshine Coast car lover Clinton Bazley knows his late Poppa would have a glint in his eye and few choice words to say about his grandson’s sentimental labour of love.
The pristine 1953 FJ Holden ute was recently restored by Clinton to factory specs, repainted in its original surf green and with gleaming chrome, and is now a magnet for appreciative eyes whenever it cruises the streets of Caloundra.
The only downside to Clinton’s experiences now is his Poppa, Merv Wolski, who drove the old farm workhorse for decades while working at Dalby, is not here to relish a relaxed cruise in his beautifully restored ‘girl’.
“I know Poppa will be looking down, going, ‘You’re done a good job, my boy’ - that’s how he used to say it,” Clinton said with a smile.
“It means a lot to me. I learned to drive in ‘the old girl’ back when I was only a little fellow – probably 30-plus years ago – out on the farm.
“I’d be sitting on Pop’s lap, and he’d be working the accelerator, the clutch and the brake for me - because I couldn’t reach with my little legs - and I’d be the shifting the three-on-the-tree and steering it on the old dirt road on the farm.
“For me, the ute has that sentimental value, and you can’t put a figure on that, really, can you?”
The FJ was purchased brand new by Shearer Farm Machinery from Johnson’s Holden in Dalby, before it was bought by Merv’s employer, Waltons Farm, in 1965, for the princely sum of £100.
Poppa worked with it daily until his retirement in the mid-1980s, when he himself bought it and continued to use it as his Dalby town runabout – applying some ‘renovations’ of his own.
“Originally, when he bought it back off the farm, the old girl was looking pretty worn out… he just gave it an acrylic paint job, with a brush, from an old paint tin in the back yard,” Clinton laughed.
“He gave it a while slap of paint, the old house paint, and he just thought that looked amazing, beautiful, and real fresh and white.”
Clinton remembers many school holidays spent with his Poppa, including adventures in the well-used ute.
“He got into go-karts when he retired and moved into town, and he built a couple of karts, and we’d throw two go-karts into the back of the FJ and take it out to the Dalby kart track and race each other around in school holidays,” he said.
“And he didn’t care too much for the vehicle – it was known as a work horse and he’d throw whatever he would in the back, and the condition was pretty banged up in the tray – so it needed a bit of work.”
When Poppa was diagnosed with dementia and surrendered his driver’s licence in the late-1990s, he parked the ute in the back yard, and there it sat for the following decades. Still, Clinton had never hidden his dream to one day acquire the ute and restore it to factory condition.
“It was banged and knocked around, and the paint was flaking off, as you can imagine, as it had sat out in the back yard on the Darling Downs for a number of years, but overall, because it was a country car, it had very little rust,” he said.
“I think, if you had had a car like that, sitting for that amount of time here on the Sunny Coast, she would have been full of cancer.”
Poppa passed away in 2017, and Clinton's grandmother Pat didn’t have the heart to part with the ute, so it continued to rest quietly in her back yard.
“It has a lot of sentimental value; when he arrived home from work in it, she used to greet him with a cup of tea, so she found it difficult to let it go.”
However, that all changed with one phone chat in May 2022.
“She called me up and said, ‘Would you still want the FJ?’ and I said, ‘I’d absolutely love it’.”
Clinton immediately headed to Dalby and trailered the ute back to his Sunshine Coast work shed; his long-anticipated rebuild started that very same day.
“In terms of the restoration, it was very smooth. It was easy to source the parts I needed… obviously I utilised the parts I could salvage - all the chrome work that you see, that’s the original, all the original bumpers, I just sent them all to a Brisbane chromer and they repaired and re-chromed everything,” he explained.
Poppa had already bought a spare rubber and seals kit, so all the rubber was easily replaced.
“There was nothing really missing off the vehicle, so I either sourced new items that looked better than a restored item – or was cheaper – or I just stripped it down, cleaned it up and painted it myself,” Clinton said.
“The motor was still in very good condition. We just stripped it and checked the bearings, checked the cylinders, checked everything, put in new gaskets to avoid any future oil leaks, but, other than that, the motor was in really good running order.”
Clinton purchased an original Holden owner’s manual to confirm that beautiful pastel green paint.
“I had it sand-blasted and stripped back here on the Coast, and trailered it down to Brisbane. Kev and Steve of K&S Customs – it’s a father and son team down there - worked on it for about four months, doing all the panel work and the paint for me, and they were quite surprised with how good the conditions of the body panels were, considering the age of the vehicle at 70 years old.”
And all the effort has paid off, with the ute now turning heads and attracting curious onlookers everywhere it goes.
“It’s quire humbling, really, when people give you the thumbs up as you drive along, and people point and stare; it’s not often these days that you get to see a piece of Australian motoring history cruising along The Esplanade at Golden Beach,” Clinton said, proudly.
“It’s Brisbane-built, a Queensland car, and for me, being Queensland born and bred, that in itself means a lot. It’s only another 30 years, and it’ll be a century old.
“The reason I wanted to go to town on the resto and make it look like it has just been driven out of the factory, is to do my Nanna and Poppa proud, and I think I’ve done it justice.
“Nanna hasn’t seen it yet, so I’m excited for her to come down and take her for a drive, and I think there’ll be tears.
“You can’t put a price on a family heirloom, and I’ll never sell it; no matter how much money people come up and offer me, it’ll always remain in our family.”
No doubt Poppa would smile and agree with that beautiful plan.
Modifications
My ute has recently undergone a full restoration over the last 11 months.
It was previously my pops ute from Dalby. Please see the story about the old girl above. Many thanks
