(An unusual travelogue by mild mannered activist, Dr John Tomlinson, who returned to Brisbane after spending three weeks with Darwin friend , the well known outback rally driver and failed cordon bleu dog cooker, Rob Wesley-Smith. )
Up at 4am , Dr Tomlinson showered , had a cup of Timor coffee , said goodbye to Wes and set off in his Toyota Troop Carrier , towing his boat,the White Knight , plastered with stickers for a variety of worthy causes and also highlighting injustices ; one vintage slogan declaring I SUPPORT(Aboriginal ) LAND RIGHTS AND I VOTE . His epistle reads-
# The trip to Adelaide River was slow, but at least I was heading in the right direction.Somewhere out of Mataranka a four carriage fuel tanker road train overtook me but moved back early to my side, forcing me to brake heavily , reminding me just how easily one can slip under the wheels of these monsters.
I saw eight Black Cockatoos before Katherine , then just south of the town another 20 flew over with their slow surging wings (obviously hallucinating due to an overdose of high-octane Timor coffee-edit.) The last ones I saw, 600km south of Darwin were also hanging off every branch of a large tree. (Beginning to sound like those loathsome vampire bats Hunter S. Thompson encountered on his way to Las Vegas ). It was about there I noticed the last of the Turkey Bush , a pink to purple flowering shrub , one to three metres in height.
Just north of Renner Springs , there was a female Bustard or Bush Turkey ( proper name is Thick Knee ) standing in the middle of the road . I stopped, blew my horn and several times before it walked off the road. Then its striking male partner walked onto the road as if to say ,” I don’t get off the road for trains , so bugger off Troopy!” Several blasts of the horn and he finally took to the air. I had not seen a pair of Bush Turkeys on the Stuart Highway since 1968.
As dark closed in , I arrived at the Three Ways and ensconced the Troopy amongsts road trains .Slept like a log until the alarm reminded me it was 5.30 and time to make coffee before proceedingly along the Barkly . It was only 450kms to Camooweal , so I decided that would make a good spot to have breakfast as I had once had an excellent steak and egg burger there on the way to the Top End. By the time I crossed the border I was salivating in expectation of that feed, refuelled and ordered a steak and egg burger with salad , no sauce. The attractive young Aboriginal girl who cooked the memorable breakfast there must have had a day off as there was a young English backpacker in her place. .
While waiting , I recalled how many years previously I had a hamburger in Camooweal before driving off into the night , pulling well off the road for a kip as there had been a number of murders on the Barkly Highway. About an hour after eating that hamburger I was violently ill, as if poisoned, and was so weakened that I had extreme difficulty climbing into the Land Rover to drive on.
My breakfast finally turned up , I bit heartily into the burger, only to find my steak burger had metamorphosed into a hamburger . Muttering an expletive under my breath, I walked out.
Through Mt Isa and on to Cloncurry , I recalled an episode where the young waitress ominously said, “ Sorry about the steak “ when she put down my plate . It was charred . Another sloppy dish produced at the same place caused me to brand the town the Pizza capital of the world. Here I am at McKinlay and the cook adds some tasty bubble and squeak to my steak and egg breakfast. Dead Wallabies ,Euros and Kangaroos were like a guard of honour at a soldier’s funeral. They attracted a lot of Whistling Kites and what were either Little Eagles or juvenile Wedge Tails. The road-kill was almost uninterrupted all the way to Roma. Australian Ravens eventually replaced hawks.
It started to rain at Ilfacombe, south of Longreach. Between there and Blackall I saw three young Emus . a few well behaved Euros and several Wallabies who seemed resolute as they dashed with fierce determination from one side of the road to the other to see if I could manage to lock up the brakes on the boat trailer. In Blackall , where I stopped because of the rain, I noticed a collection of grey nomads parked near the centre of the town and joined them.
As I finished drinking champagne , I wondered how the town council had managed to resist the nasty but ubiquitous bunch of bastards who call themselves Queensland caravan park owners who constantly pressure town councils , parks and wildlife, state politicians and other people of influence to close all the public places where poor travellers might linger for the night.Thus grey nomads, backpackers, and assorted others are forced to book into their cramped and uninteresting gulags of misery. As they wrote at the time of the English enclosures :
The law locks up the men and women
Who steal the goose from off the common
But leaves the larger villain loose
Who steals the common from the goose.
Just as I was thinking of opening a bottle of red , this old fella with a glass of white in his hand , from Benalla ,on the Victorian NSW border, wandered over and after inspecting the boat announced that if I went up to the Court House the next morning I would be able to vote in the fortchcoming federal election . I thanked him for the information, but informed him that I had written to the then Prime Minister Rudd advising him that for the first time in my life I would be voting informal.
# The trip to Adelaide River was slow, but at least I was heading in the right direction.Somewhere out of Mataranka a four carriage fuel tanker road train overtook me but moved back early to my side, forcing me to brake heavily , reminding me just how easily one can slip under the wheels of these monsters.
I saw eight Black Cockatoos before Katherine , then just south of the town another 20 flew over with their slow surging wings (obviously hallucinating due to an overdose of high-octane Timor coffee-edit.) The last ones I saw, 600km south of Darwin were also hanging off every branch of a large tree. (Beginning to sound like those loathsome vampire bats Hunter S. Thompson encountered on his way to Las Vegas ). It was about there I noticed the last of the Turkey Bush , a pink to purple flowering shrub , one to three metres in height.
Just north of Renner Springs , there was a female Bustard or Bush Turkey ( proper name is Thick Knee ) standing in the middle of the road . I stopped, blew my horn and several times before it walked off the road. Then its striking male partner walked onto the road as if to say ,” I don’t get off the road for trains , so bugger off Troopy!” Several blasts of the horn and he finally took to the air. I had not seen a pair of Bush Turkeys on the Stuart Highway since 1968.
As dark closed in , I arrived at the Three Ways and ensconced the Troopy amongsts road trains .Slept like a log until the alarm reminded me it was 5.30 and time to make coffee before proceedingly along the Barkly . It was only 450kms to Camooweal , so I decided that would make a good spot to have breakfast as I had once had an excellent steak and egg burger there on the way to the Top End. By the time I crossed the border I was salivating in expectation of that feed, refuelled and ordered a steak and egg burger with salad , no sauce. The attractive young Aboriginal girl who cooked the memorable breakfast there must have had a day off as there was a young English backpacker in her place. .
While waiting , I recalled how many years previously I had a hamburger in Camooweal before driving off into the night , pulling well off the road for a kip as there had been a number of murders on the Barkly Highway. About an hour after eating that hamburger I was violently ill, as if poisoned, and was so weakened that I had extreme difficulty climbing into the Land Rover to drive on.
My breakfast finally turned up , I bit heartily into the burger, only to find my steak burger had metamorphosed into a hamburger . Muttering an expletive under my breath, I walked out.
Through Mt Isa and on to Cloncurry , I recalled an episode where the young waitress ominously said, “ Sorry about the steak “ when she put down my plate . It was charred . Another sloppy dish produced at the same place caused me to brand the town the Pizza capital of the world. Here I am at McKinlay and the cook adds some tasty bubble and squeak to my steak and egg breakfast. Dead Wallabies ,Euros and Kangaroos were like a guard of honour at a soldier’s funeral. They attracted a lot of Whistling Kites and what were either Little Eagles or juvenile Wedge Tails. The road-kill was almost uninterrupted all the way to Roma. Australian Ravens eventually replaced hawks.
It started to rain at Ilfacombe, south of Longreach. Between there and Blackall I saw three young Emus . a few well behaved Euros and several Wallabies who seemed resolute as they dashed with fierce determination from one side of the road to the other to see if I could manage to lock up the brakes on the boat trailer. In Blackall , where I stopped because of the rain, I noticed a collection of grey nomads parked near the centre of the town and joined them.
As I finished drinking champagne , I wondered how the town council had managed to resist the nasty but ubiquitous bunch of bastards who call themselves Queensland caravan park owners who constantly pressure town councils , parks and wildlife, state politicians and other people of influence to close all the public places where poor travellers might linger for the night.Thus grey nomads, backpackers, and assorted others are forced to book into their cramped and uninteresting gulags of misery. As they wrote at the time of the English enclosures :
The law locks up the men and women
Who steal the goose from off the common
But leaves the larger villain loose
Who steals the common from the goose.
Just as I was thinking of opening a bottle of red , this old fella with a glass of white in his hand , from Benalla ,on the Victorian NSW border, wandered over and after inspecting the boat announced that if I went up to the Court House the next morning I would be able to vote in the fortchcoming federal election . I thanked him for the information, but informed him that I had written to the then Prime Minister Rudd advising him that for the first time in my life I would be voting informal.
I have always voted for the Greens or left wing candidates but this time , because of income quarantining and other aspects of the NT Intervention , I could not , in all conscience , allow my preferences to flow to a party which supported racist interference in the lives of Aboriginal people . After phoning home and discussing politics, I consider changing my voting intention,if Jenny Macklin was removed from her portfolio. At Miles I had a Dagwood steak , drove to the free camping area and, as I lay there listening to the rain , pondered the Zen question :”Is a futurology billboard a sign of the future ?”The billboard he speaks of features a faceless pollie headed VOTE FOR NOBODY .
(No hotshot political reporter is capable of turning in an election feature of this brilliant calibre. Without a doubt, his golden prose will be nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Down Under Literature and also the Sir David Attenborough Award for the Preservation of Wildlife , especially the tragically endangered species-the genuine Steak Burger).
