Peak Hill, Australia is a long way from Wellington in Somerset in the south-west of England. Further still to Doncaster in the UK. But that is the journey made by a pink Matchbox Ford Capri, originally bought by a little boy a long time ago.
That little boy is now 58-year-old Tim Goodwin, who along with his wife, Cathy, runs the Peak Hill post office in the town of about 1,000 people, in central NSW.
Goodwin reckons that Ford Capri was one of the first toys he bought just after the car was released in the early 70s. After he washed the family car, he collected his pocket money on a Friday and raced down to the local toy shop to buy it.
Goodwin and his two brothers Guy and Mark used to play with their Matchbox cars on a homemade dirt track in the back yard in Wellington. Other kids would join in, competing to run the fastest race, urging each other on and aspiring to hold the fastest record.
“I always loved Ford Capris. I have never had a real one. A couple of my teachers used to have them. You know, they were gods. A Ford Capri is an Englishman’s Mustang. I guess if an Australian in the early 1970s wanted to race Matchbox cars, it would have to be a Capri or a Mustang versus a Monaro,” Goodwin says.
“I played with it with all my other toys out in the dirt around the strawberry patch. We were making rally tracks and stuff like that. And when it gets chipped, you’ve got to paint them haven’t you? And so that’s what I did.”
He couldn’t paint it in the house so when the boys were old enough to reach the high door knob on the garden shed, they were allowed in to paint their toys and modify them at the workbench.
Goodwin cut off the tow bar “because rally cars don’t have a tow bar”, painted the car red, except for its registration plate, and then left the little Capri to dry. (These are the crucial details that made all the difference tracking down the toy in later life.)
When the Ford Capri disappeared from the shed, Tim always blamed his brother Guy. Toys would go missing from time to time, and Tim assumed that Guy, an “entrepreneur” of sorts, had sold the car.
“I always blamed Guy. And then one day, I was up in my bedroom. And I saw this kid who lives in the next street. And he was in the garden shed and he was taking my toys. I was gutted.
“Then obviously you start growing up and your toys just go into a cardboard box or whatever and you forget about it, but I have always loved Ford Capris. I have even got proper workshop manuals, that’s how much I love them.”
Life moved on. He moved to Australia in 1994, met Cathy and had two children. Ford Capris were admired from afar until one day, almost absentmindedly, he plugged the search parameters to eBay.
“I don’t even know why I looked on eBay. I typed in Matchbox Lesney Ford Capri. I went on to about third or fourth page or found something that looked familiar. I see my Ford Capri.”
It was a car, mostly red, but chipped to reveal the original pink paint and the pink registration plate of his beloved Capri.
The seller was in Doncaster, about 370km away from his little town of Wellington, Somerset and he bought the car for $34.62, including postage. The seller couldn’t remember where he got the car, as he buys job lots or picks up vintage toys from markets across the country.
When the package arrived in the post office, the car was tightly wound in bubble wrap. Sitting on the lounge, he was shaking like a child at Christmas, eventually resorting to his pocketknife to get through the wrap.
“Fingers crossed everyone! It’s my birthday! I’m excited! I can’t get into it. Help! It’s my toy! It’s my toy!”
Like the character of Dominique Bretodeau in the French film Amélie, whose childhood memories come flooding back after the return of his old toys, Tim returned to his own youth.
“I can remember the dirt track me and my brothers made in the strawberry patch including dirt tunnels, where you drive your car through and go over the top. I remember that and the dog playing around as well. Just so many memories came back.
“I’m totally gobsmacked that it still exists and nobody has changed the bits I’ve done. It hasn’t been painted over again. It’s all my handiwork. Now it’s up on the mantlepiece and that is going to have pride of place wherever I am.
“When we go away this weekend, I might even take with me because I don’t want to lose it again.”
