ONELIFE #36 – English

WORLD OF ADVENTURE
“ADVENTURE IS STILL EXTRAORDINARY. TO FIND
IT, TRAVEL, PREFERABLY OFF THE BEATEN TRACK,
AND AWAY FROM THE PREDICTABLE”
TIM SLESSOR, FIRST OVERLAND EXPEDITION MEMBER
In September 1955, just over eight years after the
launch of the first ever Land Rover, two Series I Station
Wagons left Hyde Park Corner in London heading
towards the Kent coast. It was the start of the now
legendary 32,300-mile Oxford and Cambridge
Far Eastern Expedition, a veritable first that would
change vehicle-based expeditions forever.
Their destination was the port of Singapore in
Malaya, the trade hub of south-east Asia and the
farthest point from London on the Eurasian land mass.
Six undergraduates from the two renowned British
universities, fired up by the fact that no land-based
expedition had ever made it beyond Calcutta, had
started making their plans twelve months previously
over a cup of coffee in a student hall of residence.
Former journalist and BBC documentary film maker
86-year-old Tim Slessor, was one of them. An original
member of the Oxford and Cambridge Far Eastern
Expedition and author of the best-selling book First
Overland, he is an intense but immediately likeable
man. His bright eyes and sprightly gait tell the tale
of an individual who has spent a lifetime pushing
boundaries. He is perhaps too an original adventurer.
The first of the 330,000 words he wrote in his
expedition diary from the trip paraphrased legendary
mountain climber and conqueror of Mount Everest
Sir Edmund Hillary, “The main object of our Far
Eastern Project is a jolly good adventure.” Intrigued,
by how an 86-year-old journalist defines adventure
today, there is also the more fundamental question
of whether there are any real adventures left?
Above: Series I Land
Rovers SNX 891 ’Oxford‘
and SNX 761 ‘Cambridge’
during the Far Eastern
Expedition in 1955
Right: Tim Slessor back
at the wheel of SNX 891
at Eastnor Castle after its
recovery from St Helena
and recent sympathetic
renovation by Land Rover
enthusiast Adam Bennett
“We had more opportunities than young people now,”
Slessor says. “Today most of the possible first time
adventures have been done.” Some things do not
change however. “Adventure is still extraordinary, it is
best done with friends and there has to be an element
of risk. To find it, travel, preferably off the beaten track,
and away from the predictable.”
THE ULTIMATE TEST
The vehicles were fundamental to the project, a fact
the Rover Company immediately recognised along
with the chance to generate some very useful public
relations. As Tim recalls, “we thought the Rover people
were joking when they said you have an opportunity to
test the vehicles to destruction.” A year earlier in 1954,
undergraduates had ‘overlanded’ to Cape Town and
back in two Land Rovers. The lesson was obvious. “A
tough four-wheel drive vehicle with low-ratio gears was
essential. We concluded that the Land Rover was the
only car suitable. We needed two and they cost 600
pounds each, but we had 200 pounds between us.”
The team needed financial support and an aim of
conducting irrigation fieldwork provided justification
that sponsors (of which there were 83 including the
Rover Company and the BBC) required. Expedition
cameraman Antony Barrington-Brown (known as BB)
spoke to a young (now Sir) David Attenborough who
had just joined the BBC but would later become the
defining figure of the BBC’s world-renowned Natural
History Unit. BB persuaded Attenborough to support
the team with a camera and film, packing him on his
PHOTOGRAPHY: ANTONY BARRINGTON-BROWN (4)
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