At last. Some progress. On the World Nissan Cedric Museum proposed for Bonalbo. I warned against getting too jiggy too early and that there’s many a slip between cut and lisp, but the snowball in hell has grown to be a rolling boulder, and it just might come to rest in Peacock Street, Bonalbo. Yay!
What? What? Yep. Yep. We’ve got a site for the museum. Definitely. Probably. I can’t give you a full assurance yet, because the thumbs-up/thumbs-down lies in the palsied hands of Kyogle Council. Yes, I know. Council decisions of late have all the reliability of a Trump tweet, a high tackle/drug test wrist slap, hydroxychloroquine for what ails ya or Brocky’s Energy Polarizer. Still, we’ve got to give them a chance to do the right thing. We’ve knocked up a very sound and compelling business case which smacks the furry, golden ball fair and square into their court.
The big news is we’ve got a venue. Bonalbo CWA have reclaimed their CWA rooms in Peacock Street. They’ve got big plans, but they don’t need all that space. They’re open to letting us use some of it for the World Nissan Cedric Museum. These women are legends. Thank you. Mwah (with your consent of course), mwah, mwah!
But my Mum always warned me not to put all my eggs in the one biscuit. Not everyone is deep into Nissan Cedrics.
We get that, so we’re planning another big drawcard: the Bonalbo International Spirit Level Display. Radical, I know. But Bonalbo is an ideas town more than willing to think ahead of the curve, out of the box and three levels upstairs.
We’ll be soliciting donations. We’re after anything and everything, from your Stanley Fat Maxes and your Rabone Chestermans, your Golden Grampus Splirit Handy Of Level Tool, your brickie’s line levels to your old bushie’s jam tin on a plank. If you’re a bullseye level freak, don’t be shy: we welcome diversity. Of course the Holy Grail would be a 1661 Melchisedech Thevenot, and we’ll have to set up a GoFundMe for that, because those suckers are exy as heck.
Speaking of Holy Grails, we’ve been researching our fingers off and putting out more feelers than a depraved octopus and now have reason to believe that we could acquire Poncie Ponce’s 1964 Nissan Cedric for our museum, and posterity (Poncerity?).
Poncie Ponce? Who is Poncie Ponce? Come on! Poncie Ponce. THE Poncie Ponce. Legendary actor, taxi driver and ukulele virtuoso of Hawaiian Eye TV series fame. Legend has it that he was first choice for the Travis Bickle lead in Taxi Driver, what with his taxi driving experience, but was passed over because he refused to lose the stupid little hat and the ukulele. Contemporary correspondence between Martin Scorsese and studio execs indicated that Ponce lacked menace, and the role was given to Robert De Niro. Sometimes you can be just too friendly.
Anyway, Poncie Ponce (I just love saying that name) rode a wave/drove a taxi full of popularity all the way from Sunset Beach to Australia and beyond. Apparently he was contracted to Channel Seven in Melbourne for promotional work in the early sixties. He was provided with a spanking new ’64 Nissan Cedric in Papaya Yellow and could often be spotted pulled up at taxi ranks chewing the fat with the world-weary cabbies.
Eventually Poncie moved on, but the Papaya Cedric stayed behind. Somewhere. There are those who say it had an uncredited cameo in the first series of Underbelly as a yellow car at the back of a wrecker’s yard where some scag baron or other gets capped, but it’s very dark. Looks more like a Camry to me. Anyway, the hunt goes on. If you find any leads just pass them on to me c/- IndyNR or Alice Piddens, Bonalbo CWA.
So the game’s afoot, the ball’s in play, the balloon’s gone up and the cat is out of the bagpipe. There’s a lot of work to be done yet, but we’re all optimistic. One thing’s for sure. Dannielle DeAndrea of the Nissan Cedrics is still up for it, to sing at the big opening. Actually, last time we spoke she said Careful what you wish for but she’s enigmatic like that.
A lesson to us all
Bullgoose
and then