Country Buggy Oval

On the way home from interviewing Donna Pell, I detoured past Dion’s place. It was pushing 40 degrees. Proper coastal humidity. The kind that makes your shirt stick to your back before you’ve even stepped out of the car. Dion had already warned me he’d only had three hours sleep after night shift. He said he had about an hour in him to do the interview.

The climb up to his homestead overlooking Coffs Harbour is steep and loose in sections. By the time I got to the top I was cooked. Tired from the interview. Tired from the heat. Just generally running low.

Sitting there in the yard was the Country Buggy Oval.

I’d known that car a long time. It was the first VW Oval Beetle I ever saw, over 25 years ago when I visited mechanic Perry Penfold. Back then there was absolutely no chance he was parting with it. It felt legendary to me at the time.

Dion ended up with it in 2012 and did what most of us were doing back then, slammed and narrowed. That’s how I’d known it for years.

Now it’s the opposite.

He’s transformed it using Country Buggy parts, lifting it into something that makes far more sense for where he lives. His property is rugged, steep and unforgiving. We jumped in and he drove me all over the hillside. Ruts, rocks, uneven tracks, it just kept going. No drama. It actually looked right out there, high on its suspension, sunburnt paint and all. Like something VW should’ve made for Australia.

What I like most is how he built it. Not from a shopping cart. Not chasing a trend. Just using parts from the shed floor in true hot rod fashion, making it work with what was around him.

It’s funny how perspective shifts. The first time I saw his car, it was all about stance. Today, watching it climb its own backyard, it just felt at home.