By GARRY HOWE
STAN Hamilton can’t remember missing a Yakkerboo Parade in the past 40 years.
He reckons he has driven in most of them – more recently in his magnificently restored 1946 Chevrolet Maple Leaf – and he has carried some pretty important cargo around the streets of Pakenham, including the Gazette’s own Wally Wombat.
“I have been doing the Yakkerboo Parade since it started,” he said. “I used to live in Upper Beaconsfield and we would bring the fire truck down for it.”
For this year’s 40th anniversary parade, Stan decided to celebrate his neighbours in Pakenham’s Snodgrass Street and had the likes of Jean Cooper, Billie O’Reilly and Norma Marshall on the back.
He says there are 11 people in Snodgrass – nine women and two men – in the nineties and the slogan on the back of his truck was “Adventure Before Dementia – 500-plus Years of Knowledge”.
“I think Jean’s the only one in her nineties (on the truck),” Stan said. “I had a few more teed up but they had to pull out at the last minute. If it had have gone to plan we would have had 700 or 800 years between us.”
Stan hasn’t hit the magical 90 mark as yet. “People ask me how old I am and I say I’ve got my OBE,” he explained. “Over Bloody Eighty!”
He had a bit of a surprise for the Yakkerboo crowd, with the gorilla and elephant statues on the back of the truck equipped to squirt water as he drove past.
A few people got wet, but they were compensated with lollies thrown out by his passengers.
“They all had a ball,” he said. “They thought it was hilarious.”
The 1946 Chevrolet Maple Leaf is Stan’s pride and joy.
He bought it in 2005 as a “beat-up old wreck” out of the Gazette classified ads and spent the next two years completely restoring it.
“I stripped everything off and started again. It was like a jigsaw puzzle being put back together.”
Stan remembers bringing it home to a hostile reception from his late wife Beryl, before she realised it had belonged to the Jeremiah brothers, fencing contractors and hay balers from Pakenham South.
When Beryl (nee Stephenson) realised it was the same truck that used to drive she and her family to the pictures in Kooweerup for a sixpence apiece, she took a shine to it as well.
“When I finished restoring it, she was so proud of it too,” he recalls.
