Australia Day...

Australia day, what did this mean.. to me, a half cast of sorts. A mixture of pom and wog immigrates who moved to Australia at a fairly young age. They settled with their parents and married young. Well by today’s standards anyway.. Similarly, the first settlement was founded in 1788 by a bunch of English prudes. Though I won’t hold it against them, because what they seemed to do right was bring a bunch of convicts with them. Now I’ve heard plenty of jokes about Australia being a bunch of no good, useless fools, but on reflection this may have been what helped contribute to the Australian culture which we now boast. An easy going crew who love nothing more than the simple pleasures Dorian Gray, the crook, not the aristocrat, sort to enjoy. . Should have Dorian Gray been of middle class he certainly would have been deported. This is the type of character to which Australia was built.. I mean look at our national icon of sorts. Ned Kelly, the son of an Irish Convict. He is now held at such esteem as characters like Robin Hood. Stealing for the poor… Truthfully he probably did it to buy a couple of beers for the gang.

Anyway whatever it was, is.. We can all agree that Australia day is now about hanging out with good friends, in good weather, drinking beer and eating the tradition sausage in bread with mato sauce. With this in mind, I went about making sure I had some plans, like most would it was, in my head decided that I would spend the day in Perth at a friend’s house getting gassed on the deliciously tasting golden ale commonly known as beer. With this plan I felt comfortable, and looked forward to the day… What happened on the other hand is hard to explain, and I still feel that I don’t know what it really meant. What happened was absolutely not like the plans.. at 4:50pm Friday afternoon, sitting at work I got a call from Zac who I had messaged earlier in the day. It was quickly established that we leave right away for a trip to Carnarvon.. in a car I had never seen. On description; I swapped it for my Suzuki Sierra.. it was unlicensed but I took it over the pits.. Sounds good enough to me! By 6:30 we were on the road.. All that we had packed was a change of clothes, a swag and an extensive collection of Cd’s… 1000km, the destination..
We were on the path to find the heart of Australia. What did it really mean to us, and how far were we willing to push ourselves in the traditional road trip manner to find it? Only time could tell!

Our intention to go to Carnarvon was of the noblest cause. At first it was to share a beer with a good mate on this momentous occasion. Colby the poor guy is what you describe as a workaholic. His two week on, one week off generally turned out to be three months on and one week off. Which he didn’t mind so much, but this meant he was always away from friends on festive holidays. Something we tried our hardest to make up for when he was home.. Somewhere during the drive though the stakes were lifted to “Stealing” this kid to join our drunken entourage and erratic escapades.

What a sight we were when we first arrived. The ten hour drive turned out to be thirteen and then some more. Both Zac and I had taken some time to kip before the last stretch. At this point in the morning we tallied up the drink count.. 6 cans of warm EB rolled around loosely in the back of the van, which left 24 empties, plus two empty longnecks of some disgusting cider which we had picked up with uneducated reasoning.. “Look man, it’s like 8%!” We were in a pretty bad state and the breakfast beers really unsettled us further. It was burning on the way down, and that was literally because they had been sitting above the motor for the whole trip.. Yummy!
It was no surprise that Colby was slightly disconcerted when we announced our fine plan to him.. The first of his worries was the uni work he needed to get done, not to mention WORK, which started at 6am the next day!

I distinctively remember saying, “Don’t worry mate, we’ll have you home before dawn”. He seemed reasonably contented with this, but shortly after departing realized that this was a complete hollow, mortifying lie on my behalf. Work would have to wait!

We grabbed an esky and shot off down the road, the dusty red dirt road exploded into the air behind us. “Think we will go to Exmouth” Zac and I decided. Little did we realize that was another 500km in the northern direction, some 1500km from where we started the evening before. “We might as well meet up with Dez then” Colby announced. I had met Dez, down in Albany in 2004.. Another road trip, similar to this one.. Too much beer and a lot of driving! All the same, it was a good idea, and I felt an extraordinary understanding of the term “Comradeship”. Here we were, on Aus day driving an unbelievable distance to drink a beer with the boy’s. No other agenda!

It was increasingly gallant of Colby to agree to such a trip. I mean the two of us were extremely drunk, neither of us knew the limits of the car and we didn’t have any tools to speak of, or water for that fact. No we had a half carton of beer and a carton of bundy.. And this was rapidly being consumed. So you could imagine the surprise and bewilderment when a water hose blew 70km from the closest town! It was hardly a panic situation given that we still had plenty of coldies though.. What was the problem was finding the motivation to not just sit around drinking. This was a trap as we found out a few hours later when we tried to fix it. What would have been a simple job turned out to be painstakingly hard. Zac and I fumbled around with the hose, dropping the tools we had borrowed though the engine bay. Van’s are defiantly the hardest cars to work on, and even harder when you had a skin full. The engine bay was scorching hot, and the outside temperature wasn’t much better. And as we found out later, the temperature was 42 degree’s Celsius! Three hours later, the bus rolled on! A merry cheer and we shoot off down the highway again with the wind blowing through our hair as the car reached some speed. It was some what refreshing, as was the celebratory drinks!

From accidentally peeing in a service station and subsequently being refused service, naked car surfing while overtaking some unsuspecting tourists, chasing sheep through the barren farm land barefoot, swimming naked in the swamp-like pond at the pub, to sleeping in the finest red earth that Exmouth had to offer, just a few of the reckless alcohol induced shenanigans that apparently took place.

Sunday morning felt more like hell than anything else I have ever felt. The temperature was already scorching at first light and our mouths felt like we had done our best to eat as much dirt as we could possibly digest. My whole body ached with pain, and my foot, which I will mention was in a cast still, felt like it had been re-broken in more then ten ways!

Had we found what we were looking for, did we met it with no expectations and consume it whole heartedly?….. YES. We felt proud to be Australian, like the early Europeans that ran cattle across the great central.. The likes of Tom Cole in the 1930’s.. We knew what it was to embrace the harsher climates and enjoy the friendships we had established years ago.

Zac and I arrived home early Monday morning, feeling pretty ordinary and to our amazement we never got arrested (Though the police did tell Zac too “Get off the roids’ mate”). The final tally was 3000km and $800 in fuel and booze.

The only question left, would we do it again? To which I smile, “without a doubt”.

A few weeks latter I was speaking to an old bloke about what we had done, he seemed proud of my rambling, then reminisced and told of his own stories road tripping in the remote area’s around 1965.. “A long neck in hand” he recalled..

Previously posted on Myspace - 18 feb 2008