Peter Milter and the Christmas Pageant go back a long way.

As a kid he played tuba in a marching band, helping to provide the soundtrack to the largest public street parade in the southern hemisphere.

And while young Peter knew he was supposed to be concentrating on the notes and bars that drove the parade along its route, he often found himself distracted by something else – the vintage “tow motors” that pulled the floats.

Looking something like a forkless forklift, these vehicles were endlessly fascinating for the young musician. You can only imagine how satisfying it is that now, decades later, Peter has found himself in charge of these charming little vehicles.

In fact, as the National Pharmacies Christmas Pageant’s chief mechanic, Peter is in charge of everything that rolls – including two original London double-decker buses.

The term “kid in a candy store” gets used a lot, but to watch Peter walk around the giant western suburbs warehouse that houses all of the pageant’s floats it seems particularly apt.

A mechanic by trade, Peter – who, appropriately enough, bears more than a passing resemblance to Santa himself – actually spent much of his career making contact lenses.

“I did my apprenticeship as a mechanic, but then spent the next 25 years as an optical mechanic working in the contact lens industry,” he says.

“I really loved the trade, and I loved making lenses, but the GFC basically closed us down.”

After taking on full-time father duties while his wife pursued her career in nursing, Peter returned to working part-time as a mechanic once the children were in school.

“I was actually doing four different jobs at the time, once of which was working one day a week as a mechanic.

“Then, through word of mouth, I heard about this job, and I got so excited – the pageant has always intrigued me.

“There’s both a history and mystery around it, a real romance going back to the John Martin’s days, all the way through to the National Pharmacies era, and of course the Magic Cave.

“But I knew that there was another history within the pageant, the history of these vehicles. We have 23 vehicles that are more than 70 years old and still run in the pageant.”

Some of the tow motors were made by Lawton Industries, an Adelaide company founded in the late 1800s, making them true pieces of South Australian motoring history.

All up there are around 60 floats in the parade each year, 40 of which are towed and around 20 which are self-motorised, the maintenance of which is basically a full-time job in itself.

And in the four years that Peter has been in charge of the vehicles not one has broken down during the pageant.

“I’ve had a pretty good run,” he laughs.

“I’ve been working through a process of updating things, especially tyres. I found tyres on one of the tow motors which came from a factory I worked in when I was 12 that burned down when I was 12!”

And while maintaining all of the vehicles might be a year-time round endeavour, the whole operation ramps up significantly on the big day.

“We start at three o’clock in the morning,” Peter says.

“We start all of the tow motors and drive them outside. Then each float is brought by hand to the door and matched to its own tow motor, driven out onto Days Rd and parked.

“This goes on from about 4.30am until 6am, by which time everything is in pageant order. When the police give us the go-ahead at dawn when it’s light enough – because we don’t have lights – we start driving into town.”

For Peter, preserving the history of the vehicles used in the pageant was important.

“I see looking after that ‘history within the history’ as part of my role," he says.

"Even when we’re removing the old Coventry motors and replacing them with Toyota motors, we’re still keeping the outside as original as we can.”

Peter admits that working with such old technology is not always easy but says he wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Every day is new,” he says.

“You don’t turn up to work, plug a car into computer and replace the broken bit. There are a lot of modern mechanics who wouldn’t know how to change the points on a 1940 Morris 840 with an SU carby.

“I tinkered with everything growing up because I just loved cars, and that’s how I learned, but that makes me a bit of rare breed these days.”

So out of all the floats, does Peter have a favourite.

“I do, and it has to be Father Christmas,” he says.

And why?

“Well, there’s a Holden one-tonne ute under there with a fifth wheel pulling a massive trailer. It’s articulated, it’s huge, and it’s all pulled by a Holden one tonner.”

The 2025 National Pharmacies Christmas Pageant will be held on 8 November. For more information click here (external site).