Great Scott: Road reporter

Touring in the 1930s

Touring had become so popular with members by the mid-1930s the NRMA decided to set up a touring office to guide them on their road trips. It provided information about the condition of roads and featured reviews of camping grounds and hotels.

For one of the association’s popular first patrols, the touring office became a second home. Mr A. W. Scott was employed under the NRMA’s policy of hiring returned servicemen. As a September 15, 1924 Open Road article described: “He looks just a big, burly boy, always ready for a joke or yarn; but the stern business of war as a lieutenant aboard HMS King George at the Battle of Jutland and elsewhere claimed him for some years. Then he took up flying and crashed somewhere in France.”

In 1924, an “unfortunate illness” – presumably because of Scott’s war injuries – made him unfit for duty as an NRMA patrolman. Under doctor’s orders, he was forbidden to ride his motorcycle. Once he had convalesced, however, he was promoted to the touring office, where he would manage the expanding tourism market.

In the busy office at NRMA headquarters, Scott installed a comprehensive card index system for which the latest and most accurate road information could be referred to at a glance. NRMA members were “cordially invited” to come in and inspect the association’s map room and touring office.

Up-to-date road information

The NRMA noted around the time: “The Tourist Department, under Mr A. W. Scott, had become popular with members. Up-to-date road information always available and a system of daily reports from country centres had been instituted. Mr Scott’s weekly road bulletin was now a regular feature in the Sydney Press and at weekends last minute information was broadcast by Radio Stations.”

Scott wasn’t confined to the touring office. For many weeks, he explored a series of one-day motor trips within reach of Sydney and the scope of a reasonably skilled driver. For motorists itching to explore the state, the maps and information about road conditions he encountered were invaluable.

Open Road’s editor of the time and Scott’s occasional driving companion, A. C. C. Stevens, praised his wonderful ability as a driver and his capacity to administer roadside mechanical first-aid to a car, as well as his resourcefulness in all sorts of ticklish situations. Clearly, Scott’s work as a patrol had not been wasted.

As part of his touring duties, Scott traversed thousands of kilometres of difficult road in an NRMA road reporting car. His intrepid spirit was on full display when he said, “I have taken the Essex Six over roads on which no car had ever been before, nor has ever since appeared, and at no time have we failed to get out of the most hopeless looking positions.”

This article was published in the Centenary edition of the Open Road