Today in 1932, the start of a cross-country trip you don’t see too often: a nine year old set off through Australia by himself for more than 600 miles.
His name was Lennie Gwyther, and he grew up on a farm in Leongatha, Victoria, in southeastern Australia.
Farm kids can be pretty self-sufficient, and that definitely describes Lennie.
From an early age, he would ride his horse Ginger Mick four miles to and from school every day; sometimes the two of them would swim through a stream along the way.
In 1932, Papa Gwyther fell off his tractor and broke his leg in a fall, so nine year old Lennie essentially ran the farm for the year, seeing the crops through from planting to harvesting.
Lennie’s very impressed dad asked what kind of reward he wanted for all the hard work.
The youngster’s ready answer: I want to see the opening of the landmark Sydney Harbour Bridge.
He’d been fascinated with the span ever since he learned about it in school.
Lennie’s parents said sure, and they started helping him prepare for the trip.
It was around 1000 km in all, so they had to get both Lennie and Ginger Mick the horse ready for long daily walks.
They also plotted out a course where Lennie could stay with family friends and relatives along the way.
Plus, they had backup plans upon backup plans in case anything went wrong.
But the trip went pretty well, aside from some rain and mud, and a few overly curious members of the public who tried to pull hairs from the horse.
Lennie and Ginger Mick started drawing big crowds as word spread about their trip.
The young man made radio appearances, he dropped by Australian Parliament for tea with the prime minister, he entered Ginger Mick in a horse show. (He finished second.)
And, of course, he did get to take part in the bridge opening in Sydney.
After that he was supposed to take a ship back home.
But Lennie had done so well on his solo trip, and he was having so much fun being a celebrity in Sydney, that he convinced his dad to let him trek all the way back too.
Lennie returned to Leongatha about four months after he’d first set out.
There were like 800 people to welcome the now 10 year old home.
And today you can find a statue of Lennie and Ginger Mick in Leongatha, though that statue does not travel back and forth to Sydney.
An artist in Berlin decided to do a trick of sorts on Google Maps.
He says he loaded 99 smartphones onto a red wagon, all of them using the navigation app.
And that made it look like this small street near Google’s offices had a massive traffic jam.
What would Ginger Mick have thought of all this?!?
The nine-year-old who rode a pony 1000km to Sydney (Sydney Morning Herald)
Man Uses 99 Phones and a Handcart to Create a “Virtual Traffic Jam” on Google Maps (Interesting Engineering)