A Welsh man has issued a public name to assist discover two Irish males who helped him return house from Australia in 1965 by packing him up and mailing him in a crate.
Brian Robson, a 75-year-old from Cardiff, is in search of two males he solely knew as Paul and John.
Robson was a 19-year-old working for Victorian Railways when he grew to become homesick. However the airfare would have value about £700 and he solely made £40 a month, he told the Irish Times.
So he got here up with a “silly” plan, to purchase a small wood crate and have himself despatched as freight. Robson mentioned the “fairly horrific expertise” had taken 4 days, and he had been repeatedly saved the other way up.
Almost 50 years later, Robson mentioned he wished to get in contact with the boys to thank them and to purchase them a drink.
“I’m 99% certain that they had been known as Paul and John,” he advised the Irish Occasions. “Paul actually was 100% in opposition to it … however John mentioned, ‘Don’t fear about it, I’ll persuade him.’ And so, they each went forward and helped.”
Robson purchased a field “the dimensions of a mini-fridge” and packed it with pillows, a suitcase, a guide of Beatles songs and two bottles – one for water and one for urine. His mates then nailed it shut and booked Robson as cargo on a Qantas flight from Melbourne to London.
However their plan got here unstuck. The flight was full, so Robson was transferred to a PanAm flight that as a substitute took him to Los Angeles.
A newspaper report from May 1965, written by Reuters and Australian Related Press, mentioned Robson had labelled himself a “a pc”.
The then-acting minister for immigration, Leslie Bury, mentioned the Australian authorities wouldn’t take any motion in opposition to him, after one other MP, Dan Mackinnon, known as for authorized proceedings in opposition to “this apparently ineffective younger man”.
The prime minister, Robert Menzies, when requested if customized officers ought to be wanting extra carefully at outgoing crates mentioned: “They may use a geiger counter.”
Within the US, Robson was found by startled customs officers after which interrogated by the FBI.
He advised the BBC {that a} man had “appeared via a gap in a wooden knot within the chest and we caught one another eye to eye”.
“He jumped again a mile and mentioned, ‘There’s a physique in there.’”
After questioning, he was cleared and flown to London on a daily passenger flight, earlier than resuming his life within the UK.
AAP reported on the time that Robson needed to “push his well past well-wishers” who greeted him at LA airport, and had nonetheless been “stiff and limping” when he flew to London.
Robson mentioned he had written to the boys to thank them however they by no means responded.
“We bought on famously,” he advised the Irish Occasions. “They used to come back to my bedsit, or I might go to see them, nearly every day.”
However he admitted to the BBC that finally the crate escapade had been “stupidity”.
“If my children tried it, I might kill them. However it was a unique time.”
