I started driving interstate for Dad in 1969. I started on a Ford Thames (with a 120hp Perkins) and shortly after a 1418 Mercedes Benz 6 car carrier that Dad had designed. Still doing mainly Ford work. We'd load out of Homebush and deliver direct to Ford Broadmeadows, but on the way home we would deliver direct to dealers, but as we had interstate plates on the truck we had to cross the border back into NSW before we could start unloading. I'd leave our depot at Villawood about 7am on a Sunday morning and after 5 hours of hard driving arrive in Yass. It was before the Hume Freeway opened. Now it's 2 3/4 hours. But it was through the middle of Camden, up over Razorback, down into Picton making sure you kept well to the right as you went under the railway tunnel or you'd scrape the cars on the top deck on the roof of the tunnel, then Tahmoor, Bargo (which still had a very narrow wooden bridge), in and out under the railway lines south to Mittagong. There was Catherine Hill, the Cutaway Creek climb, Ben Dooley Hill coming out of Berimah, and through the Penrose State Forest down through Paddy's River, stop at the Marulan weighbridge to have your logbook checked and stamped, all through winding narrow roads. From Goulburn it was another run across the flats and up through the Cullerin Range, Gunning and into Yass. In the Thames in places you'd be back to low, 2nd. The Thames had no driver comforts whatsoever as it was made for English conditions, yet a heater (or demister) wasn't even standard. Two bucket seats with a gap between where the gear lever and engine cowl came back into the cab. For a short break you'd sleep sitting up, with a pillow on the steering wheel. Longer breaks you'd sleep in the cars on the back. You'd always look forward to having a station wagon as part of the load. But it was a 17 hour drive to Melb in those days going through every town. I think the first town to be by-passed was Kilmore in Victoria, part of the brand new Tallarook Freeway. Coming home was no better because Dad got paid more to deliver to towns west of the Hume Hwy, so it up the Olympic Way delivering cars to Ford dealers in towns like Wagga Wagga, Cootamundra, Junee, Young, Blayney, Cowra, Bathurst, Orange, and Katoomba. The advantage was that sometimes, dropping off one car here, two cars there, you were empty by the time you got to Lithgow. But it was a longer, harder and slower drive home. Unloading cars in the early dawn in Blayney in winter was sooooo cold pulling out the steel ramps, undoing the chocks and ropes. Burrrr. In those days you could do 3 trips a fortnight. These are a couple of photos of the "bubble nosed" Benz I drove.