Seeing THE surviving Epex-Foster self-serve panel in Central Victoria’s Castlemaine recently caught me by surprise. Hadn’t seen one of these ‘two-bob-in-the-slot’ units since pre-decimal currency days.
While the coin box and control unit looked complete, still mounted in the wall of a former garage site, the once-linked coin-operated bowser was long gone, along with all other evidence of the garage’s existence.
Forgive me a bowser-led digression: As a born and bred Melbourne fella working in the UK for a time, I got used to my mechanic workmates raising their eyebrows whenever I lapsed into ‘Aussie-speak’ (using terms native Brits labelled unorthodox). My mention of topping up my tank at a ‘bowser’ was an example. For them a bowser was a mobile tanker used to refuel aircraft or on-site earthmoving equipment.
Being curious about the bowser question I looked in to it. It turns out that the concept of using bowser to describe service-station pumps is pretty much a now-dated Aussie and Kiwi thing – perhaps foreign even to our young generation.
For light relief here’s Irish slang’s take on it – their ‘bowser’ is pretty much interchangeable with ‘dill’, ‘clown’, ‘air-head’ etc. Common usage aside, the bowser was actually a late 19th-century invention by Sylvanus Freelove Bowser of Fort Wayne, Indiana (his parents were obviously quite progressive with baby-name choices).
Now some context around the Epex-Foster self-serve bowsers which were possibly unique to Victoria in the 1950s and ’60s. They were for after-hours use at a time when service stations commonly closed overnight and on Sundays.
Some servos, but by no means all, had a single self-serve bowser that was usually positioned to the rear of the forecourt, well away from the central island hosting the regular bowsers.
The maximum buy that is limited to 10 two-shilling coins ($2 total) wasn’t as silly as it seems. With petrol selling in the early-mid-1960s for around 9c/litre, your 10 ‘two-bob’ coins would buy you over 20 litres, close enough to half a tankful, certainly enough to get you out of trouble until garages reopened.
My standout ‘two-bob-in-the-slot’ bowser memory relates to my Simca Aronde days. Despite blitzing Class B in the 1960 Armstrong 500 by finishing 1, 2 and 3, the little 1290cc Arondes never captured the public’s imagination like their similarly specced French stablemate, the Peugeot 203.
The Aronde was actually quite a lively little driver’s car with decent handling and superb braking – 200kg lighter than an FB Holden, it boasted almost 20 per cent more brake-lining area. And compared with the succession of ‘Flathead’ V8-powered Fords I owned over the period, the Aronde was a real fuel-miser, despite my enthusiastic approach to driving it.
Economical as the little Simca was though, it just wouldn’t run on air, as it reminded me once by sputtering to a halt as I headed home after a late night out. Pulled up near the Yarra in suburban North Balwyn, I knew I was about a mile short of the coin-in-the-slot bowser in East Ivanhoe. But walking the distance wasn’t the issue – I had no container to bring back the fuel.
Then necessity pointed me toward my building-site hard-hat in the boot. Once I removed the internal harness and chinstrap, the bare helmet shell showed promise. It didn’t disappoint – one two-shilling coin delivered more than two litres of petrol that almost filled the helmet shell.
After a very slow and deliberate, but ultimately successful walk back to the stricken Aronde, with the vast majority of the helmet’s precious cargo somehow surviving the journey, I used an improvised newspaper and masking-tape funnel to finish the job. Within minutes I was back at the East Ivanhoe service station feeding a few more coins into the slot to set me up for the trip home.
It took a while to get rid of the petrol stink from my hard hat, though…
Although I ultimately moved the Aronde on to help fund the purchase of a mint, classic Ford – yes, sad but true, another ‘Flathead’ V8 – I always remember it fondly for its superb handling. It was untroubled keeping early Cooper Minis honest on winding mountain roads.
Its finest moment came one winter’s day, on the winding, snow-covered Acheron Way in the Yarra Ranges. Its surefootedness and balance enabled me to safely wash off speed and dodge an oncoming Victoria Police Studebaker Hawk that appeared suddenly out of the bend ahead, totally sideways, totally out of control.