Hi Sandway, I am not sure if the Mick Martin that I am thinking of is the same Mick Martin who Micky Tremlow mentioned on page32 of this thread. I have been doing a search on Trucknet and it seems that there was another Mick Martin who subbed for Noblett and Underwood, as I think that they were from your part of the woods maybe this could be the Mick Martin who bought your Scania. 
I am afraid that I don’t recall any of the faces that were shown on that photo which might of been taken at The National, the trees certainly look similar to the ones that are planted along the side of the road. At the back of my mind I have a feeling that in 1980 when I took that photo the concrete slabbed area outside the hotel was big enough to take two trucks in length and about six or eight trucks abreast. Behind this I think that it was dirt or cinder ash all the way back to the trees.
In fact I can only remember parking on the slabbed area a few times over the years as often than not this area was already filled up with trucks by the time that I had arrived and most of the time I ended up parking along the roadway. Another useless bit of information is that in over seven years of driving on the continent there was only once that I had my truck broken into and that was once when I had pulled onto The National just to have a meal.
I have no idea when the hotel was built but at a guess I would say maybe late sixties as that slabbed area to me along with those street lights, may of started off as being a coach parking area but I would suspect that when the middle east boom got underway and the hotel started getting filled up with Western European lorries the coach drivers decided to stop somewhere else but that’s just a thought.
If ever I was clearing in Belgrade down at the docks on The Danube and it was after midday, then I would go straight to The National. The customs would only do imports in the morning and exports in the afternoon so I would have an early finish then poodle down into the docks early the next morning.
As far as I can remember, they opened a new customs area around 1986/7 which was about two miles before The National Hotel. The new customs area was stuck in field in the middle of nowhere where the road from Hungary and Novi Sad joined the Zagreb to Belgrade Autoput.
I have just had a look on Google Earth and was surprised to see how all that area has now changed over the years.
If you go on Google Earth and put in
Customs office - Belgrade Terminal, Belgrade, Serbia
and
Hotel Nacional, Auto put br., Novi Beograd, Serbia
The area has certainly changed since we knew it Brian and it looks like you can’t access the hotel from the main road which is now a motorway. I remember an old middle east man called Barry Longden who I used to work with and he once told me that the first few trips that he did to Iran that the road which went past The National was still cobbled.
The New Belgrade Customs Compound.
Regards Steve.