Travel Book Review ~ Top Deck Daze by Bill James

I love this book to bits. The author and his Aussie expat mates in London ran bus tours across Europe and the hippie trail in clapped out old London double decker buses in the 1970s. These were no frills 18-30's type tours run by the seat of their pants, and often in countries the guide had never even been to.

The hero of the book is Graham 'Screw' Turner who became chief bigwig at Flight Centre, he has an amazing 'can do' attitude. My favourite passage of the book is on one of their first tours and they couldn't get their double decker bus on the ferry to get from Spain to Morroco: the bus was just too big, it just didn't fit, and the officials would not allow the bus on the ferry. It looked like a very disappointing early end to the tour. But Graham 'Screw' Turner's solution went like this:

"Spy, go and get the bus. Get everyone on board and be back here by five-thirty, but park out of sight on the Avenue Marina, then come and meet me back at the terminal." Spy and I looked at each other and shrugged. There was nothing else for us to do so we caught a taxi back to the campsite and rounded up the punters who were drinking by the pool. 

We parked the bus as arranged. At five minutes to six Screw came running towards us, jumped into the drivers seat, fired up the engine and hurled the bus through the ferry terminal gates, only slowing enough to throw a ferry ticket at the gatekeeper through the open window of the cab. Screw had only paid for a minibus but there was no time to discuss such technicalities.

The ferry was just about to depart on its final sailing for the day. We zoomed around the terminal building and caught sight of the last car dissappearing through the ferry's door while the whistle blew, signalling for the vehicle ramp to be hauled away from the ferry's stern. Screw ignored the frantic gesticulating of the stevadores as they jumped clear of the bus as it careered up the narrow camp. There was a horrible grinding noise as the chassis scraped the lip of the stern as we came level with the deck. There was just enough room for the bus to perch on the ferry's rear deck, with the bus's top deck inches from the ferry door, and its back platform over-hanging the ferry's stern so far that if you stepped off, you'd go straight into the Meditteranean Sea.

By this stage the vehicle ramp had dissappeard, the ropes were untethered, and with three loud shrills of the horn and a full head of steam, we powered out of the port, Morocco-bound, before it had really dawned on us what had happened.

The book is chock-a-block with great yarns like this. A lot of stuff they did just wouldn't be possible in the more regulated world of today, ode to be travelling in the 1970's... I read Top Deck Daze while on holiday with an esky of beer by my side and the the beautiful Clarence River in front of me, it was pure heaven.

Details: TOP DECK DAZE Adventures on the frog and toad by Bill James. Published 1999 by Hal Books. 334 pages. We usually have it in stock, click here to check. You can also pick it up on eBay etc should we not have one in stock.