In 1925, one hundred years ago this month, Julius Frederick Grant made the newspaper for a “remarkable motor feat”. Julius, my first cousin three times removed, was a mechanical engineer, garage proprietor, and motor expert. He drove his car from the Clyde Road to visit family at Leechy Flat, on the Currowan Creek. It was a trip considered “extremely foolish”, thus making the achievement newsworthy.

Clyde Mountain dominates the area and makes for a steep ascent and descent to most locales. The Clyde Road was “the main inlet for all the goods and provisions necessary for a district that at the time was a seething hive of industry and one of the most important in the State”. Any track from the Clyde to Leechy Flat would likely have been just as treacherous.

Horse-drawn journeys were common well into the mid-1930s, ten years after Julius’ motor feat. Horses were perhaps a more reliable form of transport, and one which might have allowed greater flexibility in navigating the track.

The same year Julius made his notable trip, a Perth missionary named Nevill Westwood made history by becoming the first driver to circumnavigate Australia by motor car. That journey done in a 1923 Citroën, was 14,000 km and took five months.

Reports of Julius Grant’s trip from Clyde Road to Leechy Flat don’t say what kind of car he drove, but as a motor enthusiast, perhaps it was a Model T, the first Ford to be produced by Ford Australia.

Selected references

‘Remarkable Motor Feat’, The Braidwood Review and District Advocate, 25 August 1925, p. 6, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article120720697, accessed 7 January 2025.

‘The Last of the Teamsters’ [part 1], The Braidwood Review and District Advocate, 12 July 1938, p. 7, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article119337029, accessed 7 January 2025.

‘The Last of the Teamsters’ [part 2], The Braidwood Review and District Advocate, 19 July 1938, p. 8, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article119338740, accessed 7 January 2025.

‘The Last of the Teamsters’ [part 3], The Braidwood Review and District Advocate, 26 July 1938, p. 7, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article119337896, accessed 7 January 2025.

Citroen tourer, National Museum of Australia, https://www.nma.gov.au/explore/collection/highlights/citroen-tourer, accessed 16 August 2025.

‘For marks a proud 100 years in Australia’, Which Car?, https://www.whichcar.com.au/news/ford-100-years-centenary-australia, accessed 16 August 2025.