Resurrecting

Wayne Woonton salvages a family heirloom

- Wayne Woonton

The rescue and rodding of a family heirloom, this 1935 Ford pickup has been in Wayne Woonton’s family for 81 years. After decades of hauling wheat, fruit and being worked hard delivering other goods around the Mallee, then neglected, this 2.5 ton truck has been resurrected in hot rod form at the experienced hands of long-time rodder, Colin Bates. Wayne not only shared the interesting history of his hot rod truck, he also took these photos himself at his home in Sunbury. His story begins with a line many hot rodders have heard over the years, “Why would you spend money and time on a piece of crap like that?”

“My dad, coming off the wheat farm and out of his dad’s blacksmith shop, where they looked after AEC Tippers from the local Gypsum mine, started out on early trucks, borrowed/ leased from a local carrier, in the mid/late 1930s when he’d contract to supply Mallee roots from the local cockies and rail freight them to Melbourne.

Pre WW2 he shifted camp, literally, from camping out on the 640 acre wheat blocks, as he and his brother collected stumps, to camping in the front yard of a cousin’s vineyard, 40km closer to the river, and finding more regular work on the vineyards and as assistant engineer/doorman/classer at one of the local dried fruit packing sheds.