THE WORLD'S LONGEST TAXI RIDE

Remembering the epic 1988 London to Sydney Great Taxi Ride, a £31,000 fare for one humble black cab

- JOHN MORGAN

"Excuse me," said the elderly lady standing next to me outside Buckingham Palace. "Do you know what time she will be appearing?" I glanced at my watch and replied: "Oh, I don't think it will be very long." In those moments, I reflected on how I had come to be standing outside the palace on a glorious, blue-sky July morning in 1988, waiting to be picked up by a black cab... that was going to take me to Sydney, Australia.

I had first come up with the idea some 20 years earlier. I was at Crystal Palace on a sunny Sunday morning in November 1968, somewhat in awe as I witnessed the gathering of cars setting off to do battle in magical-sounding faraway places such as the Grossglockner, the Khyber Pass and Wagga Wagga, as competitors on the London to Sydney Marathon rally.

But then life intervened. A career, marriage, raising a family and emigrating from old South Wales to New South Wales, Australia, meant it wasn't until I was wandering through the Royal Botanic Garden in Sydney with a new colleague 18 years later that the notion came up again in conversation. The like-minded - and aptly named - Edward 'Ned' Kelly liked the idea. "Let's do it, John," he said later that afternoon.