ADIOS DARWIN
A SHIFT FROM DARWIN TO THE GOLD COAST (15.12.2008)
The less said, the better – about packing a five-bedroom house full of furniture into a twenty foot shipping container, during the Top End’s prime, roaring Build-up!
Suffice it to say that Satan has few surprises left for me when I eventually reach Hades. But for my dear old Dad, I’d be sipping tequila with The Horned Beast as we speak, for it surely would have killed me without his help (and bourbon is too nice a drink to have down there).
So after five solid days of hard yakka, it was midday and we were in the driveway, about to reverse and for me to say goodbye to nine years of good friends and great times. As I set up the cabin of the Cruiser – CD’s in place, phone, camera, wallet etc within easy reach….
Dad says ‘For f*ck sake, just get moving! Circulate some air – it’s a-friggin-million degrees in here! Jesus.’
The old ’84 Cruiser has no aircon – just one of her many endearing qualities which my usually placid and reserved father was yet to fully appreciate.
I fired the old girl up and off we went. Surprisingly, I was glad to finally get going, and never looked back. I was all but wrecked from the previous five days of packing.
First stop the Caltex garage a few kilometres out of town – to fill her up and check the tyres. Since I used all my rope in the container, I had none left to tie the second spare tyre to the roof-rack. Instead, it was jammed into the back, with all my other gear. So Dad checks all the tyres – (I had a torn pec-muscle from an earlier tune-up incident) – but he couldn’t get to the spare in the back, and the spare underneath the car was upside-down, with the asphalt ninety eight degrees and too hot to lie on for too long.
‘She’ll be right Dad – don’t worry about it’.
So we filled her up, grabbed a couple of ice-cold Gatorades and headed south.
We reached Knott’s Crossing Resort in Katherine in the afternoon. Though the water was luke-warm, I struggle to recall a more rewarding surge than went through me as I plunged into the resort pool that day! Finally a chance to relax and unwind – the weightless feeling of floating around, a gift to weary limbs. We drank cold beer and dined at the restaurant that night – Dad had the Barra and I went the seafood/Balmain Bug creamy pasta. They were both superb – (as you’d expect of seafood three hundred kilometres from the nearest coastline!).
If you’ve ever used an electric turbo hair-dryer on full blast, you’ll have some idea of the buffeting sensation of tearing down the Stuart Highway, mid-December, windows at full scoop, doing a hundred and twenty clicks! The roaring crosswind howling in your ears and circulating the cabin like a fan-forced oven.
We had Tennant in our sights when I heard an unnerving ‘PSSSHHHH!!!’
‘What the f@ck was that?!’
‘Kill the music. Have we got a flat?’
Then the wheel starts shuddering “Yep”.
‘Find a flat spot to pull up’.
So I pull over and it’s the front passenger’s shot to sh!t, a hundred and fifty K’s from TC.
I drag out the hydraulic jack from under the seat, tearing my finger in the process, only to find that it won’t fit safely under the car. So I dragged out two cold beers ‘Well, we may as well have these while we fix it”.
Into the back and out with the Hi-Lift jack and I crank her up. Dad changes the tyre with the one from the back of the car (which had been sitting on my garage floor for some five years after a previous repair job). It’s got about 2 pounds in it and sits flat under the weight of the truck.
‘You got a pump?’
‘Indeed I do! Henry gave me this little compressor for my birthday a few years ago – I’ve never tried it’.
I dragged him out from the plastic wrapper and plugged him onto the cigarette lighter.
Nothing.
Wriggled him all around. Nothing.
‘Don’t worry – I’ve got this old manual foot pump as well’
So we hooked that up and it pumps down a beaut, but takes two minutes to suck back up to the top for another pump. While the Oldman persists with this thing, I hop into the cabin and stuff around with my old ciggie lighter – then the compressor kicks into gear. Woohoo! So we hook him back up again.
After half an hour, it pumps up to a reasonable looking pressure. Off we go. About ten kilometres to Renner Springs. I take it very slowly.
I pull into the garage – they have no tyre guy, or tyres, for that matter.
‘It’s best ya’s try for Tennant Creek’ (145K’s away!) – this is the educated advice from the local proprietor.
We pump up all tyres to the correct pressure and chance our arm. Eighty to ninety Kph, through beautiful but desolate country, in the setting sun. It looked like a picture in the fading desert light, but no one has ever painted one so beautiful.
We rolled into Three Ways to get some ice for the beer – I said ‘Check the front end ‘cause there’s something drastically wrong here’
A quick look in the dark and she appeared all okay – so we headed off for TC. I held grave reservations about our chances of making the 24ks in the dark, with the steering wheel shuddering violently every metre. 78kph was max speed and seemed to hit a harmonious rhythm with the shuddering.
Silence all the way, driving on a razor’s edge, then with great relief, lights come into view and we rolled into the motel driveway. I booked in at the office and Dad says “Feel this”.
I touched ‘the spare’ and it was scorching hot and had a rounded profile, like a bike tyre, not flat like a car’s is meant to be. I’m surprised we made it to the room on that thing!
We had a swim and a couple of beers – no tea that night, though I ended up finding a tin of tuna in the esky (remnants from my fridge), which I ate with a hotel teaspoon, sitting on my bed. Chunky tuna in brine that is, not one of your ever-popular, modern hom0sexual varieties, complete with all manner of spicy enhancements!
I also brought half a dozen bottles of Red along, in a green Woolies specially partitioned alco-bag, jammed in the back, with the spare tyre – but realised I’d forgotten to bring a cork-screw. Being a man of ingenuity, I thought I might screw in a wood screw that I could extract from my rented room, then grab it with a pair of pliers to extract the cork! However, when I grabbed a bottle to take into the room, I discovered that the heat in the car, had been so intense, that the cork had popped through the top plastic advertising and was three-quarters out already! I just grabbed it with my fingers and plucked it out the rest of the way.
Next morning, with two new Desert Duellers and 460 bucks later, we were once again full of confidence and off again, headed for the border.
(Apparently tyres have a shelf life of about five years, before they start to deteriorate, regardless. Who knew?)
A couple of beers at the Camooweal Hotel, a night at an Isa motel, a few at Hoges’ Walkabout Creek Pub, one at Kynuna’s Blue Heeler and a night spent in Winton after schooies and a punt at the North Gregory. We now found ourselves booking into a fine little motel at Tambo, early in the arvo.
After a swim and a shower, we walked to the pub, where we troubled a very bored (and average looking) pommy back-packer impersonating a barmaid.
We ordered schooners and she gave us middies, I asked her to empty the public phone (as it was inoperable and we were out of mobile range), she grunted several syllables but was largely uninterested in rendering assistance. She stood at the opposite side of the horseshoe bar, watching telly and generally ignoring the patrons (us).
‘Excuse me – do you have any souvenir stubbie holders or T-shirts?’ (I owed a birthday present).
“Nah”
Ten minutes later…
“Two schooners please – oh and do you have a bag of chips or something in the pub at all?’
‘We’ve got one bag of pistachio nuts left, or a Cherry Ripe?’
There’s one dusty old bag of stale looking pistachio nuts hanging there – I’m guessing since 1978, before anyone knew what the f#ck pistachio nuts were! And they’ve remained there since, because no one could read the contents description through the f@cking accumulated dust on the baggage.
‘Nah – don’t worry about it thanks’
Back she headed, for the Bold and Beautiful – we drained our glasses and headed for the door and the next pub up the road, which was welcoming and friendly, with that familiar yet unique bush-pub atmosphere. I ordered a bourbon with my schooner and the barmaid gave me a rum – but that’s okay – everyone in Western Queensland drinks Bundy, and she was a nice chick. On my next shout she even asked me if I wanted another rum? – “Love one Sweetheart, tah”
Hunger got the better of us, so we eventually adjourned back to the motel where the old lady ran a small in-house restaurant, unlicensed and a little pokey, but I had the best 1kg – yes, that’s right – 1kg of rump-steak that a hungry traveller ever wrapped his lips around! This was cattle-country and she had the best in town – and I ate about half-a-cow’s worth of it – in home-made gravy!
We were running on one meal a day because it was too blo0dy hot to eat while on the move. And that steak was so soft, tender, flavoursome and totally unfinishable – even for an experienced knife-and-fork man such as myself, that it will go down in memory as the best of all time! It came with vegies and salad and I recommend everyone visit Tambo at least once in their lives – I love that little town.
Surprisingly, it was about this stage that I began to feel reluctant to end our journey. I suspect it was because that would declare an end to my nine year Top End adventure. The start of a new chapter but underlining the pain of parting with the friends I had now really left behind. Perhaps I’m still in denial, but I believe I will keep in touch with those guys and gals, and see them again in the near future. However, the desire to reach the final destination had very much waned for me by this stage. I love the unforseen challenges and I love the mateship – but in the end, I love my family most and realise that this is probably where I should really be, so I don’t regret my decision to move on down among them.
The next night, we planned to stay at Miles but discovered all motels in town were booked out to workers on some gas pipeline – the same went for Chinchilla, before finally grabbing a vacant room at Dalby for our final night on the road.
It belted down raining that night and all was cool.
We lobbed at my brother’s place at Coombabah the following afternoon – finally dived into a cool pool, and played with the kids. It was great to be surrounded by family once more. (I hadn’t realised that this had been the longest my parents had spent apart in their 46 year marriage – I thanked them both, though not enough).
I ended up renting a four bedroom house at Upper Coomera on about the 15 December, then drove to Sydney for Chrissy with the Olds, then back again with a load of my sister’s gear to Queensland before New Years.
And here I am on January 16, sleeping on a mattress on my floor, no gear in the house. My trusty container, which took so much effort to pack, sits patiently in a transport yard at Darwin – awaiting the floods, which cover much of the NT and western QLD, to subside. The transport master advises me that it’ll be another two or three weeks at best, before it leaves.
Upon his inquiry, I told my mate in Sydney about the current status – he replied via SMS – “That’s a disaster”.
I said in my experienced and relaxed Territory tone “Nah – that’s Darwin”.