One of Mum’s closest friends was Holden dealership royalty.
Helen Shack would visit often. Quite the thrill for me was that she always had a different new car, and she would gladly demonstrate the remote mirrors and power windows of her latest model Statesman.
She was also kind and generous. Bringing gifts for any of us was not unusual. One gift she brought for me was a promotional model of the new 1968 Holden HK Premier sedan. I was a child of only 4 or perhaps 5 years of age, but I already recognised what I had been given and, further bloody more, knew it was correct in scale, detail and shape!
For reasons completely unknown, I recalled this gift the other day. Seriously. Stew my foot and call me Brenda. I know I only had it and enjoyed it for a short time. It was possibly fragile. Was it real? Did I really receive it, or was it a figment of early childhood imagination, from that dawn period of earliest memories that are so ethereal, we sometimes have to ask someone close to us if they really happened.
Predictably, Google came to the rescue. To my absolute astonishment, here is the grey-blue Holden Premier promotional toy, as correct in colour, scale, detail and shape as my memory of it from 52 years ago.
I don’t know how the mind does this. I’m not particularly fussed in finding out, but I do love finding out plenty of other things. The fun in mysteries, sometimes, is keeping them that way.
