Inventive author/artist/rally driver, Peter Burleigh, develops miracle cure for scourge of outback Australia - BODY ODOUR - on historic Blackall-Barcaldine-Longreach stretch , during which sniffy, thankful locals roll out carpets for him , such is his fame , there being so many desperate farmers seeking advice from a couth city dude on how to snare a wife .
**It’s Sunday morning and Longreach is closed. The town is neat, clean and quieter than an empty church – and they’re pretty empty these days. Only the pubs are open and they’re buzzing when I pass by at 10.30am. My mobile phone refuses to work because it’s connected through Vodaphone, which seems only to offer connection on a single street corner somewhere in Western Sydney, and so I decide to compromise my hatred for Telstra and buy one of their SIM cards. My sworn oath never to use Telstra will remain intact at least until tomorrow when the shops open.
There are four coin-operated phones in Longreach and only one of them works. How do I know this? Because I go to the other three and see my gold coins swallowed before I find the right one. Telstra knows I have weakened and is exacting its tithe even before I sign up with them. I’m meeting Boonie from Brisbane at 6pm at the railway station but as usual I’ve had the pedal to the metal and so have arrived in town eight hours early. So what do I do? A steak sandwich at the pub, plug in the computer and bash away at the diary again. Really pleasant on this sunny, warm day.
There are four coin-operated phones in Longreach and only one of them works. How do I know this? Because I go to the other three and see my gold coins swallowed before I find the right one. Telstra knows I have weakened and is exacting its tithe even before I sign up with them. I’m meeting Boonie from Brisbane at 6pm at the railway station but as usual I’ve had the pedal to the metal and so have arrived in town eight hours early. So what do I do? A steak sandwich at the pub, plug in the computer and bash away at the diary again. Really pleasant on this sunny, warm day.
Today I have two observations to make, both profound. The first, water. The locals won’t talk about their tapwater . If you comment on its unfriendly odour, they change the subject. In Western Queensland towns the super-chlorinated water comes from brackish, muddy, cattle-waded, dead-kangaroo-polluted creeks or is pumped from artesian bores. It has the powerful smell and flavour of sulphur (the satan-worshippers’ favourite) which lingers on the palate long after you spit it out. The smell is so strong in the shower this morning that I expect the water to be yellow.
To spend several dollars on a bottle of drinking water transported several million kilometres from the coast is a good investment, yet I wasn’t expecting the stinking shower. A notice in the Caravan Park’s office says that artesian water loses its smell when it cools down, and that Blackall water is sold around the world as absolutely pure for drinking. This appears to be an exaggeration of breathtaking ingenuousness. If you come across a bottle of Blackall when you’re dying of thirst in the Kalahari Desert, don’t drink it, you’ll regret it. I’ll bet the Blackall locals clean their teeth with beer instead.
My second observation is cultural, and concerns the selection of carpets in bars, pubs and clubs in the bush. There are rules which govern the design of such carpets:
* The colours must not harmonise - the more sickeningly colour-saturated the better.
* The pattern in the carpet must have a disturbing affect on patrons' minds and have no relationship to anything recognisable or natural.
* The carpet must at the same time preserve every stain, spot of gum, meat pie, squashed chip, sauce drooling, orange juice and drop of cooking fat which falls on it.
* If possible, the carpet should induce fits in epileptics, a "stoned" effect amongst young people, and uncontrollable thirst in all others.
* The pattern in the carpet must have a disturbing affect on patrons' minds and have no relationship to anything recognisable or natural.
* The carpet must at the same time preserve every stain, spot of gum, meat pie, squashed chip, sauce drooling, orange juice and drop of cooking fat which falls on it.
* If possible, the carpet should induce fits in epileptics, a "stoned" effect amongst young people, and uncontrollable thirst in all others.
The carpet lying under me in Longreach conforms to all these rules and invents a few of its own. It’s a masterpiece. I would write more but I can’t look at it any longer. Oh yes – QANTAS. Love it or hate it, it all started here in Longreach.
