A billycart to some might just be a box with four wheels, but to my mate Georgie and me, it was a very alive and loyal thing of beauty. Like most things, before it could become an object of pride and adulation, it first had to be created. Georgie was the Foreman-in-charge of construction and I was the Supervising Engineer. I first checked off the list of required tools. One hammer. One hand-saw. All present and in working order. After a period of quiet planning contemplation, the real work began. The first and most important requirement was the main body structure. It needed to smack of style and comfort.

This was not going to be a carriage ordinaire, but a vehicle built for maximum super-speed, rough-road resilience, inspired ingenuity, all-weather application, sturdy rigidity, robust reliability and of grandiose but compact elegance. Transportation to be admired by all. Optimum opulance restricted only by availability of parts. An object that would demand envy and lust. We were to be the staunch proud owners, builders and creators. Kids would come from miles around, or in our case about half a mile around, to clamour in envious adulation of our creative genius. We vowed to be humble when our genius was recognised and praise awarded.

Firstly we had to have the main chassis. The basis of all lasting structures was the initial fundamental foundation. Therefore it had to be something that had already been tried, tested and withstood the rigours of use. Although we summised that something round would have the most inherent strength, something square would be the next best thing. A box. Not just any box, but the very best we could find. Mum had a very strong solid box that she called her Glory box. I pooh-poohed that idea because I knew she wouldn’t let me have it.

Between the single-men’s huts and the Cookhouse was a pile of empty crates and boxes left there after they had been taken to the piggery with food scraps from the Mess. We had a choice. We scrounged through the pile of wooden containers arguing the merits of each type. Vegetable boxes had slats missing on the sides so that air could circulate around cauliflowers and cabbages. Apple boxes were without spaces to keep the fruit tightly packed in their tissue paper wrappings. Fruit boxes were lighter than vege boxes but seemed just as strong. After consultations with each other, we decided that both types of boxes were only as strong as the nails that secured them. It was time to make an executive decision. I had seen the real engineers step back from a problem and think about it for a while, so I sat on a box and contemplated the decision making. As if in protest, the box began to wobble and collapsed under me. Being the Supervising Engineer was getting to be a pain in the ar…

Then, just like Felix the cat who had sat around all night wondering where the Sun had gone, all of a sudden, it dawned on me. The problem was all in the nails. Up on the dam-site, in the quarry where they used gelignite to explode the rock walls before crushing the stone, I had seen boxes that were made without any nails. Pine gelignite boxes with the sides "dove-tailed" together. I figured if one of these boxes could hold dangerously fragile gelignite, then it should be strong enough to hold one eagerly enthusiastic young kid. Basic design problem solved. The box even had impressive words burnt into the sides….Danger. Explosives. Gelignite. Beware. As this was to be our prototype, we decided to use the initials of the existing words for the name of our first creation. Georgie immediately wanted to call it the B.E.D. but this only highlighted one of his unfortunate weaknesses. My first suggestion was the BD-X which sounded impressive. Again, because of my executive position in our organisation, I was prompted to think about it for a while. This time I sat on the ground for my deliberations.

Thus, the BG-X was born. Not only had I used the initials on the box, but the BG could also stand for Butlers Gorge. We had always thought that our creation would be ….today a billycart, tomorrow the world… and Butlers Gorge was argueably the centre of the Universe.

Georgie, my dog Tinker and me trudged up the ong steep gravel access road, past the top of the dam-site to the huge quarry in the side of a solid rock hill. Holes were drilled by jack-hammers and gelignite lowered down the holes to be detonated and explode rock away from the face of the quarry. Massive steam-shovels scooped up rock and loaded it into rock-buggys that carted it to the crushers to make gravel for concrete. It was a Sunday, so the quarry was strangely silent. We were after a gelignite box and any other useful things we could scrounge. We were the entire BG-X construction company. Having found a box, we decided to have a Board meeting there in the quarry to plan the design of the BG-X. I turned the box upside down for a table and sat prominently on a rock. Georgie and Tinker sat waiting for the meeting to come to order.

We did not have any writing instruments but I figured that I could remember any design proposals. Georgie was a bit slow in that departmennt and Tinker was of no use at all. There was plenty of four-be-two laying around for the main shaft, the back axle holder and the front cross-bar. There were also many not too rusty nails laying about the village.We knew of an old cane baby’s pram lying in the scrub. This would give us the four wheels and two axles. We would only have to nail the shaft and the back cross piece to the box in a T shape. The two axles and wheels could be attached by bent nails. A brace and bit could be used to drill a hole in the front cross-bar axle holder which could be held in place with a bolt and nut through another hole in the shaft. The BG-X was starting to capture our imagination. This was not going to be just a billy-cart but the BG-X o-magnifique.

We decided that any kids could make a cart to rattle down hills. Our BG-X was going to be a multi-everything. A trend setter for carts of all nations. It would be adapted to and modified for – gravel roads, grassy hills, snow, ice and even to travel the lagoons and shallow rapids in the river. An aqua, terra, negative temperature sub-zero vehicle. Georgie proposed that it might even fly, but I admonished him for being too ambitious.

It was at this meeting that ideas could be mulled over for ratification. That was a word I tossed in to show Georgie and Tinker who was the real executive decision-maker here. Georgie was in need of a bit of creative ideas prompting and Tinker just stared at us in bored disbelief. I was enjoying being in charge of the meeting and pointed with a stick at imaginary draughtman’s plans on the flat face of a large rock. White lines on a blue background like I had seen around the site.

We decided that the BG-X would have half-moon shaped mudguards that could stop the flying mud and gravel on the road and when needed for snow and ice, they would flip over and under the wheels to become skidders. Thus the mudguard was not just for decoration, but doubled as a very important innovative functional adaption when required. The BG-X Mudski. I explained to Tinker that this was a new word that we had created not to be confused with Ruski or Trotski.

A normal cart would have a stick underneath to pull on to act as a brake. We would have sticks nailed to either side that when pulled on individually, they would change the vehicle’s direction on snow or ice. When both pulled at the same time, they would still act as a brake on the road. Georgie reckoned we would need an octopus for the driver, but I ignored his negative input.

We planned to nail some short extra pieces of four-be-two to the main shaft to act as a keel in the snow and water. The extra timber would make it float better. We argued about whether heavier things went quicker downhill than lighter lighter things. This ended in an argument as to whether downhill skiers should be fat or thin.

Georgie had seen a cart with big wheels on the back and small ones on the front. The four that we would have when we stripped the pram, would all be the same size and I suggested that it would be best if all wheels turned at the same speed. I wasn’t real confident with this opinion, but sometimes you have to go with what you’ve got. Besides it was not going to be a factor when the BG-X was off-road and, it would be less likely to nose-dive into the snow.

Having our meeting here in the silence of the normally shattering clattering rock quarry, seemed an ideal setting for creative thoughts. Only an occasional bored quaark from a black jay disturbed the air. It was like being at a picture-show when the projector broke down and left just one frozen image on the screen. I thought life should be like that more often, where you could just stop everything happening for a while and have a think about it. So far we just had one gelignite box destined to become the BG-X. We needed more ideas, so I called on the meeting to get themselves into gear and think.

Tinker had the wrong idea about starting from scratch and Georgie was hungry and moaned that he couldn’t think on an empty stomach. It was beholdin on me to get our thoughts back to the job at hand.

We were going to have to make the BG-x watertight to stop it sinking with the extra weight. Georgie said that if we made it water proof, it would keep the rain and the snow in. He pondered for a while and then proffered that it should have a roof. Not just an ordinary flat roof, but a curved one that could also act as a roll-bar. All that we would have would be sheets of corrugated roofing iron that we would have to bend into shape around a tree.

The inside of the cart couldbe painted with melted tar to seal it. We could also paint the roof to stop up the nail holes and any rusty bits. Having a roof would catch the wind and make it lighter and go faster. The problem seemed to be that if it went too fast downhill it might not touch the ground. We devised a system of two fans one above the other facing in opposite directions and joined by a belt. When going really fast the air could rush through the top fan and be sucked out again by the bottom one because it was facing the other way. If we got it right, the inside of the box would have still air even though the BG-X was whizzing downhill. This would also make it warmer and more comfortable. With this in mind, a later model could be bigger and we might even have girls on board.

The fans could also have mirrors stuck to their blades so that on a sunny day, people would see them as flashing lights.

Because our invention was to travel on various surfaces and water didn’t slope downwards, we needed some way of helping it along. A propellor was out of the question because we didn’t have an engine. We had seen pictures of paddle steamers so we decided on two paddle wheels that could be made to go round by pushing from iunside the box on a bent piece of pipe with round blocks of wood on each end. We could nail slats from apple cases around the block to act as paddles. On the end of each blade we could have pieces of car tyre rubber so that it would work on snow, ice and land as well as in water.

So far our proposed BG-X had all the necessary parts. Anything that we added now would make it really posh and super-special.

We decided it would need two up-turned curved snow scoops on the frontsides. As we whizzed downhill, the scoops would scrape up the snow turning them into big round circular balls just like an ice-cream scoop. By stopping turning the paddle-wheel bar or dragging on the brakes, the cart would stop and the two snow-balls would continue downhill getting bigger and bigger and bigger and woe betide anyone or anything that got in their way. Brilliant!

Because we were going to be going so fast, Georgie suggested a hook be screwed into the back of the box. The end of a kite string could be tied here and kite launched as we went along.