Intrepid author/artist Peter Burleigh starts out from Canberra , above, on his marathon outback trip of discovery in his honourable Pajero pulling a spartan camper-trailer. In the national capital he narrowly escaped a tsunami of mudslinging from the corridors of power. Then it was on to Dubbo, Bourke , Charleville and Blackall for a pit stop. The first part of the startling diary , using many anthropological expressions and making quaint observations , begins thus-
Picture this: at 5.25pm your correspondent finds a table in the empty dining room at the Barcoo Hotel in Blackall, Queensland. The table has a lace tablecloth, somewhat out of place in a one-street town filled with dirty utes. I am tapping at my little computer, attempting to ignore the clamour of races on TV, football on another TV, dinging slot machines in the Dining Room and a crowd of men saying “fuck”. It’s outback Queensland so they say it slowly and say it often.
The bar is located right beside me (there’s no difference between the Bar and the Dining Room except for the lace tablecloth) and when I came in the blokes stopped saying “fuck” for a moment, stared at me then started saying “fuck” again.
I ask the barman: “Which red wine have you got?”
“Fucked if I know,” he replies. “It’s in there.” I follow his jerked thumb into a pantry and choose a Brown Brothers Merlot, the best red they have. Clearly , they only stock wine which is offensive to wine lovers. I now have a bottle of red wine and the patrons are staring at me again – a guy on his own using a computer and drinking wine? Prob’ly a poofter - but dinner doesn’t start until 6pm.
Here is my steak. “Number eight is you, love?” “Yeah, thanks.”
I ordered salad with my steak and so my slab of meat (as big and black as a flattened-out gumboot but tender and exactly as I ordered it) is surrounded by the outback version of salad, always with chips , which hasn’t changed since I first travelled here as a student:
•A slice of canned beetroot.
•A slice of canned pineapple.
•Slices of real cucumber.
•Some raggedy fragments of lettuce.
•Slices of raw onion.
I’m sorry to say steak is about the only food of any quality you can get out here. Everything else is frozen, remanufactured, crumbed or battered. After a while you develop an aversion to meal times. No matter how much you like it, you can’t eat steak every night. Larger towns sometimes offer a store which sells almost-fresh vegetables, but villages like Blackall? Forget it. If it’s not frozen first, pre-fried and re-fried, it’s not available. I am able to find this situation amusing because I know with certainty that sooner, not later, I’ll return to my usual eating standards but the guys who say “fuck” have to live and eat here.
In Bourke, of all places, it rained all night. The rain started lightly, like a clumsy painter dripping Dulux on the roof. It wasn't long before it was roaring, a roar which turned into a lullaby. I slept like a stone and woke only when a branch fell out of the adjoining tree and crashed onto the camper. It may have been overloaded with rain-shy birds for all I know. The waterproofing stuff I sprayed on the canvas worked; it doesn’t leak.
The road was a worry . It’s narrow at the best of times, and after the rain the steep sides were slick with mud. Make a miscalculation and you’ll slide into oblivion. No way you could get yourself back up onto the road. My uneasiness about the lack of human traffic – as opposed to kangaroo and emu traffic – turned to thankfulness. Lucky for me road trains are rare in this particular area, and being pushed over the lip of a slope greased with mud more lubricious than Vaseline when you do pass one would be no picnic.
In a “lay-by” where I stop to pollute the landscape I find three huge pigs with spotted skins lying dead, neatly arranged side by side. Feral domestic pigs breed with the smaller, tougher Timor Pig. A mystery. Jonestown for porkers.
Yesterday is repeated: the road runs under the car all day, generally in good repair but occasionally frightening; for example, a Road Hazard turns out to be a 300-mm deep car eater with sharp edges. Janey and I once hit one of these in Portugal with interesting consequences for our car, so it is lucky I’m alert enough to slow down.
I’m listening to Talking Books and although I’m in the outback I’m also in His Majesty’s Ship Surprise in 1815, fighting the perfidious Bonaparte. Pat Mickey O’Brien wrote 20 of them (including Master & Commander) about a Captain and his friend Stephen, a surgeon-spy. Brilliant. The best books about the English Navy I’ve never read – or listened to. NEXT : Dust, dust, bulldust and Qantas .
The bar is located right beside me (there’s no difference between the Bar and the Dining Room except for the lace tablecloth) and when I came in the blokes stopped saying “fuck” for a moment, stared at me then started saying “fuck” again.
I ask the barman: “Which red wine have you got?”
“Fucked if I know,” he replies. “It’s in there.” I follow his jerked thumb into a pantry and choose a Brown Brothers Merlot, the best red they have. Clearly , they only stock wine which is offensive to wine lovers. I now have a bottle of red wine and the patrons are staring at me again – a guy on his own using a computer and drinking wine? Prob’ly a poofter - but dinner doesn’t start until 6pm.
Here is my steak. “Number eight is you, love?” “Yeah, thanks.”
I ordered salad with my steak and so my slab of meat (as big and black as a flattened-out gumboot but tender and exactly as I ordered it) is surrounded by the outback version of salad, always with chips , which hasn’t changed since I first travelled here as a student:
•A slice of canned beetroot.
•A slice of canned pineapple.
•Slices of real cucumber.
•Some raggedy fragments of lettuce.
•Slices of raw onion.
I’m sorry to say steak is about the only food of any quality you can get out here. Everything else is frozen, remanufactured, crumbed or battered. After a while you develop an aversion to meal times. No matter how much you like it, you can’t eat steak every night. Larger towns sometimes offer a store which sells almost-fresh vegetables, but villages like Blackall? Forget it. If it’s not frozen first, pre-fried and re-fried, it’s not available. I am able to find this situation amusing because I know with certainty that sooner, not later, I’ll return to my usual eating standards but the guys who say “fuck” have to live and eat here.
In Bourke, of all places, it rained all night. The rain started lightly, like a clumsy painter dripping Dulux on the roof. It wasn't long before it was roaring, a roar which turned into a lullaby. I slept like a stone and woke only when a branch fell out of the adjoining tree and crashed onto the camper. It may have been overloaded with rain-shy birds for all I know. The waterproofing stuff I sprayed on the canvas worked; it doesn’t leak.
The road was a worry . It’s narrow at the best of times, and after the rain the steep sides were slick with mud. Make a miscalculation and you’ll slide into oblivion. No way you could get yourself back up onto the road. My uneasiness about the lack of human traffic – as opposed to kangaroo and emu traffic – turned to thankfulness. Lucky for me road trains are rare in this particular area, and being pushed over the lip of a slope greased with mud more lubricious than Vaseline when you do pass one would be no picnic.
In a “lay-by” where I stop to pollute the landscape I find three huge pigs with spotted skins lying dead, neatly arranged side by side. Feral domestic pigs breed with the smaller, tougher Timor Pig. A mystery. Jonestown for porkers.
Yesterday is repeated: the road runs under the car all day, generally in good repair but occasionally frightening; for example, a Road Hazard turns out to be a 300-mm deep car eater with sharp edges. Janey and I once hit one of these in Portugal with interesting consequences for our car, so it is lucky I’m alert enough to slow down.
I’m listening to Talking Books and although I’m in the outback I’m also in His Majesty’s Ship Surprise in 1815, fighting the perfidious Bonaparte. Pat Mickey O’Brien wrote 20 of them (including Master & Commander) about a Captain and his friend Stephen, a surgeon-spy. Brilliant. The best books about the English Navy I’ve never read – or listened to. NEXT : Dust, dust, bulldust and Qantas .
