Remembering the epic 1988 London to Sydney Great Taxi Ride, a £31,000 fare for one humble black cab
WORDS JOHN MORGAN PHOTOGRAPHY JOHN MORGAN/EDWARD KELLY/MIKE DILLON
Excuse me,” said the elderly lady standing next to me outside Buckingham Palace. “Do you know what time she will be appearing?” I glanced at my watch and replied: “Oh, I don’t think it will be very long.” In those moments, I reflected on how I had come to be standing outside the palace on a glorious, blue-sky July morning in 1988, waiting to be picked up by a black cab… that was going to take me to Sydney, Australia.
I had first come up with the idea some 20 years earlier. I was at Crystal Palace on a sunny Sunday morning in November 1968, somewhat in awe as I witnessed the gathering of cars setting off to do battle in magical-sounding faraway places such as the Grossglockner, the Khyber Pass and Wagga Wagga, as competitors on the London to Sydney Marathon rally.
But then life intervened. A career, marriage, raising a family and emigrating from old South Wales to New South Wales, Australia, meant it wasn’t until I was wandering through the Royal Botanic Garden in Sydney with a new colleague 18 years later that the notion came up again in conversation. The like-minded – and aptly named – Edward ‘Ned’ Kelly liked the idea. “Let’s do it, John,” he said later that afternoon.
And so, outside Buckingham Palace, after two years of planning, it was finally happening. During that preparation we had grown from two to six. Guy Smith was an archetypical, never-short-of-a-word London cabbie and Kanelli Tsiros was a Sydney taxi driver – both selected via competitions in their home cities. Award-winning Australian film-maker Mike Dillon would capture our every move, while Charles Norwood, a former London-to-Kathmandu expedition leader, was to be our unflappable mechanic and logistics coordinator, or ‘fixer’.
“Here she comes,” I said to the lady standing beside me, just as the dozens of photographers saw our guest approaching in a 1987 Carbodies FX4, with cabbie Guy at the wheel. Dame Edna Everage was the perfect person to start the meter running on what was to be the longest taxi ride in history, a charity fundraising epic going from Buckingham Palace to the Sydney Opera House. And the press throng loved her.
“The meter is on,” Dame Edna announced triumphantly as she sent us on our way, from one Australian icon towards
