![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.phototimetunnel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/car-crop-1.jpg\")
Astonished, Mr Garthon told us a little about the car and put us in touch with its previous owner. It\u2019s quite a vehicle, weighing a couple of tonnes and powered by a four-cylinder, 5.5-litre engine. Cars like it appear to have been assembled from parts used in World War I staff cars, hastily prepared for the postwar consumer market. This particular Crossley is unusually complete for a veteran car, having suffered a bad rear-end smash many years ago and being left for decades unrepaired. The car\u2019s previous owner, John Corby, told me from his Port Macquarie home that he had bought it in 1956 from an Arthur Rose, of Scenic Highway, Adamstown. Mr Rose died shortly after selling the car, but he told Mr Corby that the car had been in his family for a long time. Mr Corby spent years working on it before selling it to his friend Mr Garthon. Mr Garthon was a long-time prominent car dealer in Sydney and some years ago was awarded an Order of Australia for his vintage and veteran car restoration work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The day the plate went missing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
How the plate came to be buried in the bush at Jesmond is anybody\u2019s guess. It must certainly have been separated from the vehicle for decades. A little light was shed on the mystery by Arthur Rose’s daughter, Gwen Parlane, who clearly remembered the day the plate was missed. It was in the 1950s and she was putting her bicycle away in the shed where the Crossley was also stored when her father exclaimed that somebody had been “at the car”. He flung up the bonnet of the Crossley and immediately saw the builder’s plate had been removed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n “Dad was furious that it was taken”, Gwen said. \u2018\u2018He said it was a really important part of the car. It was something that proved what it was and when it was made, around the time of World War One.\u2019\u2019 Nobody could ever suggest a motive for the theft. One idea was that the thief might have known somebody named Crossley and stolen the plate as a namesake gift, but there\u2019s no evidence for or against that theory. For old Pop Rose the theft was a burr under his saddle until he died. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The old \u2018\u2018Croz\u2019\u2019 was part of the family and well-known around Newcastle for many years. It is reputed to have brought up the rear in more than one city May Day parade and Gwen\u2019s brother Trevor recalled driving down Hunter Street in the Croz with his wife-to-be in the back seat, \u2018\u2018waving like the Queen\u2019\u2019. Crossley was for many years a favourite make of the British royal family and in 1927 a dozen of them were imported to Australia for the visit of the Duke of York at the opening of Parliament House. There was a Rose family legend \u2013 which has proved impossible to confirm \u2013 that their Crossley had been part of a royal motorcade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It’s nice to think that, by a stroke of luck, the old car has got its long-lost builder’s plate back where it belongs. Old Pop would surely be pleased.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In April 2008 I took my son Oliver metal-detecting. We’d been to beaches a few times, but this particular weekend we decided to go to bushland near the Newcastle suburb of Jesmond. We chose the spot of a former settlement named “Hollywood” where people built shacks during the Great Depression of the 1930s. There isn’t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6062,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"right-sidebar","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"ocs-gregs-blog","ocean_second_sidebar":"0","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"on","ocean_header_style":"custom","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"0","ocean_custom_header_template":"13702","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"0","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"0","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"on","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"0","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"off","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[5040,635,498,5041,1],"tags":[829,831,830],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.phototimetunnel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/car-photo-old.jpg\")