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First car bought by Sidney Kidman while in England.Here it is shown at a family picnic at Belair National Park in 1912. Presently the car is being restored in Scotland and the owner would love to hear from anyone who has any information or photographs of the car, either with or without Kidman. Martin Shelley, latest owner and restorer stated; it might be worth mentioning that my hope for the car is to return it to Australia once it’s restoration is completed. The history of the vehicle is absolutely bound up with the Kidman family, and once I grasped the importance of the car and it’s first owner, it simply had to be restored to its original specification. The car was stored for decades at Wilpena Station in an unserviceable condition until around 1960 when a bushfire swept through the property, destroying most of the buildings and vegetation in its path. There must be local people still alive who remember the bushfire and the subsequent clean up when the wreck of the car was discovered when the collapsed tin roof of the Motor House was removed to reveal the car. After the clean up, a motor enthusiast from Victoria called William Kirkcaldy acquired the wreck but he was killed in a road accident about a year later, so the car was passed to another old vehicle enthusiast called John Robertson from Montrose in Victoria, who preserved the wreck unrestored for over 40 years. It passed to a younger man shortly before Robertson died in 2002, and he started to look into restoring it but realised he lacked the skills needed, so he took it to a swapmeet at Bendigo from where it was seen on the internet by an English collector who arranged for it to be shipped back to UK. When it arrived back in the UK, the new owner decided to offer me the car as I'm a well known restorer, and my journey began. I would love to find anyone who knew of the car when it was stored at Wilpena Station before or after the bushfire.
After partial restoration and final completion
If you can help please contact South Australian History (southaustralianhistory.com)
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