My commute is, if I’m lucky, about 30 minutes or so long enough for a ride to be either peacefully silent or for a stranger to tell you their entire origin story before you’ve even mentally arrived at the traffic lights.
This one was the second kind.
I’m calling this series 30-Minute Friends because that’s what it feels like. You meet. You chat. You get a weirdly intimate snapshot of someone’s life. Then the door opens, you step out, and it’s over like it never happened.
Quick note, because it matters. I’m a woman alone in a car with someone I don’t know. In the moment, I keep it calm. I keep it neutral. I’m sharing what was said because it’s an honest record of the conversation, not because I agree with every opinion or joke that landed in the space.
Anyway. Episode one.
He was 74, recently retired, born in Zimbabwe back when it was Rhodesia, with family ties to South Africa. His wife is Australian. He plays guitar. He’s chatty in that old-school way where you can tell he genuinely likes people.
Canal boats and the UK holiday he can already see in his head
We started with a daydream. He’d been thinking about the UK canals, the kind you rent a narrowboat for, and just… drift.
Driver: “That’s how big those canals are. They go all over the country.”
I asked if he had a particular place in mind, and he shrugged it off like the point wasn’t the destination. It was the pace.
Driver: “Just… a short trip up and down. Pull up at some village and get a counter meal and a beer… then move on to the next one.”
Honestly, that’s probably the calmest holiday plan I’ve heard in a while.
“I’m an immigrant. I’ve been here 40 years.”
Somewhere between canals and traffic, the conversation shifted into the stuff Perth conversations always end up circling: where you’re from, how you landed here, what “home” means once you’ve lived in more than one place.
Driver: “I love it here. I consider it home now… I’m an immigrant. I’ll be here 40 years.”
He’d gone back to Africa three times. He’s done with it.
Driver: “Every time I go back, I’m disappointed. Crime rates through the roof, poverty. It’s not like I remember it.”
Me: “So it’s better in your memory.”
Driver: “That’s exactly right.”
He mentioned British grandparents and how that’s part of why so much of his family ended up in England.
Driver: “Because you’ve got grandparents, you can come and live.”
Then he tossed out a detail that sounded almost funny until you sit with it.
Driver: “I’ve got a British passport I’ve never used.”
He told me it was a big deal to get, but he didn’t need it. He got into Australia on his South African passport, became a citizen after three years, and kept the British one for one reason only.
Driver: “I just kept it out of nostalgia.”
That’s such a specific kind of immigrant artefact. Not practical. Just proof that your history has layers.
Why Perth has so many South Africans (and why it makes sense once you say it out loud)
I mentioned that I’d met a lot of South Africans here, and he immediately had an answer ready.
Driver: “That was the reason… it’s pretty close to Africa… and there’s a couple of advantages… they share cricket and rugby.”
He talked about how South Africa and Zimbabwe (and Australia, honestly) have a lot of overlap in the cultural basics: outdoors, barbecues, fishing, camping. The “we’d rather be outside” spirit.
Driver: “We’re very much a barbecue country… we like the idea of being outdoors and fishing and camping. Lots of shared culture.”
It was one of those moments where Perth suddenly made more sense as a place. People follow familiarity, even if they don’t call it that.
British names, African soil
He said his family is from South Africa, but he was born in Zimbabwe, “the next country up above South Africa.” Then he described his childhood in a way that was funny and bleak at the same time.
Driver: “We were very British… my surname’s [removed]… I went to school with a lot of McDonald’s and Mackenzie’s and Jones’s and Smith’s.”
Driver: “There weren’t many African names at my school.”
If you want the short version of colonial history, it’s sitting right there in a classroom roll call.
The Queen’s anthem in a cinema… in Africa
The monarchy came up, as it tends to with people raised in Commonwealth worlds. Then he said something I’ll be thinking about for a while.
Driver: “When I was growing up, we’d go to the movies. Before the ad started, they used to play the Queen’s anthem… and every person stood up. That’s in the middle of Africa.”
A whole cinema standing up before the previews. The kind of ritual that bakes respect into you, whether you question it or not.
He said people are shocked when he tells them that.
Driver: “We always believed that she was our queen.”
We talked briefly about how the monarchy’s image has shifted, how scandal and tabloid obsession have flattened the mystique. He mentioned the constant headlines and the confusion around what’s true.
Driver: “You don’t know what to believe… one minute the King’s really sick and then suddenly you see him out shaking hands and he seems fine.”
He meant Charles. The whiplash of modern coverage, where everything is “breaking” and nothing has time to settle.
I said something I genuinely believe: we know too much about everyone now. Or at least, we know too many fragments, delivered loudly.
The Crown, and the actress question
We touched on The Crown, too, and he got stuck on the actor changes.
Driver: “What was her name… the young Queen… I was quite disappointed… why did they have different actors?”
Me: “Claire Foy.”
Driver: “Yeah, she was really good.”
He loved how intimate the series felt, while also feeling like that intimacy chips away at the old aura.
Driver: “It takes away from this intrigue… and respectability.”
“So what is Britain?” (The definition, and then the real-life version)
Then he asked a question that has started fights at pubs and on the internet since the dawn of time.
Driver: “We’ve got England, we’ve got Scotland, we’ve got Ireland and Wales. What is Britain?”
So I gave him the clean version: Great Britain is the island with England, Scotland, and Wales. The United Kingdom is Great Britain plus Northern Ireland. Ireland is its own country. “Britain” gets used loosely as shorthand for the UK so often that the meaning blurs.
Then I added the part that matters in everyday conversation.
In my experience, the people who actually live there usually go by their country. English people say they’re English. Welsh are Welsh. Scottish are Scottish. Irish are Irish. “British” gets used by outsiders more than it gets used inside the UK, and it lands differently depending on who you’re talking to.
Driver: “If I was a Scot, I’d call myself a Scot.”
Rhodesia, race, and the DNA result that rewrote the family story
From there, the conversation deepened without anyone announcing it.
He talked about identity in Rhodesia and why people labelled themselves the way they did.
Driver: “In Rhodesia… we were right in the centre of Africa. We would never call ourselves Africans… because we come from a racist country.”
He said the white population in South Africa called themselves South Africans. In Rhodesia, he said, people didn’t call themselves African.
Driver: “We’re white Rhodesians. That’s how we used to describe ourselves.”
Then he told me he’s mixed race, and he only found out specific details through DNA testing.
Driver: “I’ve got Indian mix, and I only found that out through my DNA.”
He’d always suspected something in the family, based on old photos.
Driver: “My mother… pale olive complexion… her brother was very dark… my grandfather… he looks very Indian.”
But nobody talked about it.
Driver: “We lived in a racist country where nobody wanted to be… mixed blood.”
He said if he’d grown up in Australia, he wouldn’t have been indoctrinated the same way.
Driver: “Indoctrinated to white society. You can’t help it.”
His mother, he said, used to dodge the conversation with made-up stories.
Driver: “Tell them you’re Jewish. Tell them you’re Italian.”
Then his daughter pushed him to do the test, partly because she wanted to know before having kids.
Driver: “I didn’t want to know… she made me do a DNA… came back 33 Indian, 50 Anglo-Saxon… a bit of Viking… a bit of Spanish…”
He said it explained why he had darker skin, and that his mother took the truth “to her grave.”
Then came a line that landed awkwardly in the car. He told me his daughter couldn’t wait to tell her husband.
Driver: “He hates Indians. Now he’s going to have two half-Indian sons.”
That’s one of those comments that just sits there. It’s funny in the way life can be: blunt, uncomfortable, a bit too real.
He said his grandsons look different, too. One is fair. The other is his double.
Driver: “I showed him a photograph of me when I was about six… I said, who’s this? He said, that’s me. I said, no, that’s Poppy.”
DNA also solves crimes now, which is both cool and horrifying
At that point, I asked about something else I’ve been hearing more and more: crimes being solved because relatives uploaded their DNA.
Me: “Have you heard about certain crimes being uncovered because of the DNA testing that people are doing now?”
He had.
Driver: “To find DNA on a body, they go through the register… it could be your DNA… and you find out your brother happened to be in that.”
It’s genuinely phenomenal. It’s also a bit terrifying. Imagine doing a cute ancestry kit because you’re bored, then accidentally helping solve a murder. Family group chat would never recover.
Trunk calls, WhatsApp, and the future arriving too fast
From DNA, we drifted into technology in general, and he was in full “I can’t believe we live like this” mode.
He talked about WhatsApp and calling family overseas.
Driver: “Family in Liverpool… it’s like they’re just here… we talk for about an hour… cost of that? Costs nothing.”
Then he explained the old way of making overseas calls in the 80s, and this part was so specific it felt like a museum exhibit.
Driver: “You dial zero… talk to an operator… place a trunk call… they’d call you back… then connect… they’d ring the other person and say, are you happy to take the call… two or three minutes… about thirty dollars.”
Now he just talks to his phone like it’s a butler.
Driver: “Hey Siri… oh she’s listening. Cancel… call [relative]… next thing I’m talking to my nephew.”
The speed of it still seems to delight him, which, honestly, is kind of sweet.
The comedy house, the music nights, and the Monty Python shopping spree
Then we landed on the part that made me want to be invited, purely as a spectator.
He and his wife, he said, have always been entertainers. She works in real estate. He’s a musician. He plays guitar on weekends.
Driver: “We’ve both been entertainers all our lives.”
Their house hosts events.
Driver: “Every month we have a comedy night… amateurs… five or eight minute act.”
Driver: “In November we have a music night… ukulele or a banjo or a recorder… whatever.”
About 50 guests show up.
Driver: “We get about 50 people that come along.”
He even got momentarily lost in his own story, realised, and said:
Driver: “Anyway, where am I going with this.”
Me: “Buying things.”
And then he explained: they’ve got a comedy night coming up in late February, and they’re doing a Monty Python French Taunter sketch.
Driver: “We’ve decided to do… the French taunter… looking for the Holy Grail… we’ve worked that out…”
So he ordered props. All of them.
Driver: “Backdrop of a castle… t-shirts that look like chain mail… swords… a crown… this massive thing… horse heads… all of this for 76 bucks to be delivered to my home.”
Five days. From China.
Driver: “Isn’t that incredible?”
He sounded genuinely amazed, like the internet is still magic to him even after all these years.
Perth shipping, Temu, and the Great Shoe Debate
Then he compared online shipping to local shopping, and honestly, every Perth resident has made this complaint at least once.
Driver: “If you go to a shop in Perth and you order something… it takes twice as long… then if you order it on Temu, three days later you get a box at your front door.”
We got onto shoes. He refused to buy them without trying them on.
Driver: “I wouldn’t buy a pair of shoes without trying them on.”
His wife buys them online anyway and apparently nails it about 90% of the time.
Then came the wardrobe situation.
Driver: “We got a large walk-in robe… and all my clothes are in the spare bedroom.”
He said he’s proud of her because everything she buys is “on sale” (according to her).
Driver: “These were normally eight hundred dollars and I only got them for five… so I’ve saved 300 bucks.”
Then he hit me with the Perthest, most dad-coded line of the entire ride:
Driver: “I could go to bloody Kmart and buy a thousand shoes for what you paid for one pair.”
Why he drives, and the jokes I didn’t want to laugh at
Eventually, we got to the “why do you do this job” part.
He retired mid-2024, stayed home for just over a year, and hated it.
Driver: “To be honest, I was going nuts.”
Driving gives him a reason to get out, plus the parts that matter to him.
Driver: “I love chatting… I love hearing what other people do.”
Driver: “An air-conditioned car… I’m not doing any heavy lifting or in the heat… and I go home with a bit of pocket money.”
Then he slid into the “wife banter” routine. Some of it was classic old-guy comedy, designed for a cheap laugh from strangers.
Driver: She says, “People must think I’m the biggest bitch in the world.”
He explained he’s basically painted a deliberately bad picture of his wife as a running gag, and he knows it’s unfair. She knows it’s a bit. He’s doing it for the laugh.
I gave him my safest possible “oh nooo” in a playful tone that still made my disapproval clear. You pick your battles in a moving car.
Then he went again.
Driver: “This is my second wife… I’m so happy with her. I hope my third wife is good.”
That got an “oooof” from me. Same deal: jokey enough to keep the atmosphere light, clear enough that I wasn’t cheering it on.
He said his wife is sick of the repeated jokes. Yeah, I don’t blame her.
Still, he ended that whole section on something I fully agree with.
Driver: “That’s what it’s all about. Humour… it keeps you going.”
The last part: choosing your destination, and why drivers don’t see yours anymore
At the end, he told me he was heading down south to visit his brother in a nursing home, then he’d work around that area after.
Driver: “If I keep going, I’ll end up with lots of trips all around town… so I’ll turn it off… visit him… then do work around that area.”
He also explained why drivers don’t get destinations upfront anymore.
Driver: “In the early days, it would come up and tell you where the destination was… drivers would cancel… so now I don’t really have a clue until I pick you up.”
He said he’s never cancelled a trip.
Driver: “I’ve never cancelled a trip yet.”
Then the car stopped, I thanked him, and the conversation evaporated. Like they always do. You walk away holding this tiny pocket-sized universe somebody handed you for half an hour.
TL;DR
- 30-Minute Friends is an Unruly Folk series built from unscripted ride conversations on my commute
- Episode one: a 74-year-old retired musician who drives to stay busy, chat to people, and keep some freedom
- We talked UK canal-boat holidays, immigration, British passports kept for nostalgia, why Perth has so many South Africans, the Queen’s anthem in a cinema in Africa, Charles and tabloid whiplash, The Crown, Britain vs UK confusion, Rhodesia and identity, DNA surprises, crimes solved through DNA databases, WhatsApp miracles, old-school trunk calls, comedy nights at home, a Monty Python sketch fueled by $76 of props, Perth shipping gripes, and the Great Shoe Debate
- Shared as a record of the conversation, not a stamp of approval on every opinion or joke
Stay unruly.
