“Road Trip”: Australian for “Bloody Big Country”

ESPER­ANCE, West­ern Aus­tralia — Since my last post, I’ve moved on from Perth. What to say about Perth? I’ll let a great writer take up the intro:

“Now it is a strange thing, but things that are good to have and days that are good to spend are soon told about, and not much to lis­ten to; while things that are uncom­fort­able, pal­pi­tat­ing, and even grue­some, may make a good tale, and take a deal of telling anyway.”

—J. R. R. Tolkien. “The Hobbit.”

Unfor­tu­nately — from a sto­ry­telling point of view — there was noth­ing uncom­fort­able, pal­pi­tat­ing or even vaguely grue­some about my stay in Perth, other than the out­ra­geous prices on every­thing. It’s a lovely city, lapped by the gen­tle waves of the Indian Ocean, with spec­tac­u­lar beaches, a decent local music scene and a food envi­ron­ment that, really, is a bit lack­ing in imag­i­na­tion. Thai and Nepalese are about as outré as it gets.

But it’s really the peo­ple that I met that made Perth mem­o­rable. Sharon, my Couch­surf­ing host for about nine days, was a total gem. John, the organic gar­dener and char­ac­ter extra­or­di­naire, was great. And the var­i­ous other itin­er­ants I met along the way — all under 30 and labor­ing under what seems to me a pretty exploitive work-​​holiday visa régime — for the most part delighted me. And a big shout-​​out to the rodeo crew who made New Year’s a blast.

At Play in the Fields of the Lord
One of the most inter­est­ing peri­ods was the time I spent in John’s gar­den. I camped out there with about 10 other lodgers and couch surfers for three days, and it bears describ­ing some of the occu­pants. I never learned the full names of most of the peo­ple. One hip­pie trav­eler once told me, “Names are just a label to put some­thing in a box.” Maybe so, but they’re also handy for telling peo­ple apart. I’ll do my best with these brief sketches.

Like me, most of them are couch surfers, which is to say, cheap trav­el­ers who mean well. But John didn’t seem to mind as long as we all pitched and han­dle some of the chores. My job was sand­ing the rust off some cheap metal cab­i­nets that would soon be painted white. It was like being in the army.

Most of the lodgers are French and fur­ther along the hip­pie scale than is war­ranted these days, com­plete with affected dread­locks. Brice is the de facto leader of the Paris Com­mune, as I’ve taken to call­ing it. He’s lived here the longest (5 months) and he has John’s con­fi­dence … mainly because he treats John like a guru, and he is a will­ing acolyte. Tall and thin as the sun­flow­ers they grow in the front of the gar­den as a show­case for any passers-​​by, he has blonde dread­locks and a scruffy beard. He’s a bit like a Shaggy from Scooby Doo, if the dog spoke French.

Emme­line is next. Blonde and fair skinned, her blue eyes sparkle under eye­brows that are as blonde as her hair, giv­ing her a per­pet­u­ally, slightly sur­prised look. She is nice, but dis­tant. She doesn’t drink or smoke. She is a for­mer jour­nal­ist now work­ing in a bak­ery, work­ing on a film about John and his garden.

Sean and Andrea are British while Marie and Roman are French. Sean also has the req­ui­site dreads and Andrea is a cur­va­ceous, jolly Eng­lish woman. Sean seems con­tin­u­ally amused by only a joke he knows.

Roman wears his hair in a sin­gle long dread that he wears in a top-​​knot. Marie is a slight wisp of a woman who fire dances and works as a florist.

All of the French smoke as if the gov­ern­ment will soon con­fis­cate all tobacco prod­ucts. But, of course, none of them can afford the high-​​priced Aus­tralian cigs, so they roll their own. They do this with the rit­ual care and famil­iar­ity that I do with a cup of cof­fee in the morn­ing. It no doubts gives them com­fort. It may be the only thing that is con­stant in their peri­patetic lives.

Roman is the most pre­cise. He places the fil­ter between his lips as his sifts and then packs the tobacco into the paper, barely drop­ping a leaf. He places the fil­ter on one end, and holds down the rest of the leaf with his left index fin­ger. A quick flick of the fin­gers and a lick of the tongue and the cig­a­rette is tight as a drum, ready for igni­tion. They all do it this way, more or less. Sean is a lit­tle less pre­cise in his rolling. How­ever, it’s all fore­play for the weed they will break out later in the evening.

I real­ize I haven’t described John. How does one do that? A Gan­dal­fian fig­ure, his long beard and hair, com­bined with bushy brows and beetling blue eyes makes him a strik­ing fig­ure as he strides the gar­den, shirt­less, his bony limbs tak­ing him to and fro. I imag­ine him a bit like John the Bap­tist. It is easy to see him as a holy man, preach­ing the gospel of ecol­ogy, sus­tain­abil­ity with a healthy mix of para­noia thrown in. He believes he is marked for death by cor­po­ra­tions, but I doubt they much care what he says and does.

All in all, they’re not a bad bunch. They’re gen­er­ally a bit filthy, but they live their own lives and don’t hurt anyone.

How­ever, per­haps their showy rejec­tion of con­ven­tions has some valid­ity. After three weeks, I found being back in the so-​​called devel­oped world, with its rules and reg­u­la­tions and safety nets, a bit con­fin­ing. The lit­tle incur­sions on our per­sonal sov­er­eignty, all in the name of safety and a well-​​ordered soci­ety, can be a bit much. Con­stant reminders and reg­u­la­tions to not even think about speed­ing, or oper­at­ing a boat with­out a life vest, or cross­ing against the lights, or liv­ing on your own land in a car­a­van while you build a house there are, I sup­pose, there because of good inten­tions, but too often they become irk­some. I’m not going to call it tyranny or any­thing so dra­matic as that, but I can see some of the points of small-​​government con­ser­v­a­tives after a time in a coun­try like Aus­tralia. Some of these reg­u­la­tions and rules are sim­ply silly and assume one has the matu­rity of a child.

On the Road Again
Thus, the lure of the open road. On Jan 14, I embarked on an epic, continent-​​spanning road-​​trip from Perth, the most iso­lated big city in the world, to Syd­ney, on Australia’s East Coast. Accom­pa­ny­ing me is a Ger­man woman, Julia, who I met, again, on Couch­surf­ing. She has so far proven an ideal trav­el­ing buddy: cool, calm and easy-​​going. She loves nature, and would like to avoid cities. This sets up an inter­est­ing ten­sion between us, as I’m a city boy and like noth­ing bet­ter than spend­ing a day in a café with a ready sup­ply of cof­fee and a fast wi-​​fi con­nec­tion. We’re mak­ing our com­pro­mises. Given we have a month to live together out of a camper van, we’d bet­ter be able to get along!

About the van. It’s a great white beast of a vehi­cle, tall as a one-​​story house and light. Bump­ing along South­west Australia’s two-​​lane black­top roads — which they quaintly call “high­ways” here — coastal gusts bat­ter the van from one side of the road to another. I often have to fight to keep the vehi­cle from being pushed into oncom­ing traf­fic or off the road, so strong are the winds. The van han­dles with all the grace of a steamer trunk strapped to a cou­ple of pair of roller skates.

For the first few days, we had a cou­ple of Ital­ian guys trav­el­ing with us as far as Esper­ance, which made the van a cramped place. Marco and Nasco were like pup­pies, snap­ping at each other in sharp Ital­ian and prov­ing them­selves com­pletely help­less when it came to cook­ing or clean­ing up. They were obsessed with rolling their smokes, and when­ever we stopped some­where, they would have the doors open before the wheels had even stopped rolling, slap­ping around for their tobacco and papers and gen­er­ally wait­ing for me and Julia to make a decision.

All this makes for inter­est­ing camp­ing expe­ri­ences. Most of the time we pull up in free sites, which are mainly spots to park and maybe pitch a tent. The first morn­ing we did so, how­ever, we were almost pum­meled by a sud­den storm. I was in my tent, fit­fully snooz­ing, when I was fully awak­ened at about 5:30 a.m. by the incom­ing rolls of thun­der. Real­iz­ing there’s no snooze alarm on atmos­pheric wakeup calls, I roused myself and quickly stowed my tent and gear in the van, wak­ing the oth­ers and get­ting them inside and our gear safe and dry before the rains came.

And what rain! Sheets of it, almost solid in their feroc­ity. And in fact, as the storm grew in inten­sity, the pine trees around us began to bend to the will of the gale, and branches began falling around us. Quickly real­iz­ing we were in a copse of eas­ily shat­tered light­ning rods, I fired up the van, and high­tailed it out of the camp.

And not a moment too soon. A large branch had fallen across the road to our left. The road seemed open to the right, but that was a false hope. Down the lane, an entire tree lay shat­tered, block­ing both lanes. On either side, numer­ous bro­ken corpses of pines and gum trees were tes­ta­ment to the storm’s fury. Off in the dis­tance, to the west, light­ning arced down against the angry, bruised sky again and again, burst­ing trees apart and send­ing power-​​lines down all over. Emer­gency vehi­cles were by far the most com­mon cars we saw on the road in the early morning.

Later, how­ever, every­thing cleared up like it had never hap­pened. The skies cleared, the sun came out and the tem­per­a­ture soared. it was again a bril­liant sum­mer day in West­ern Australia.

Dri­ving south­west through this part of Aus­tralia is sim­ply breath­tak­ing. Washed clean by fre­quent sum­mer show­ers — that we saw can quickly turn into vio­lent squalls — the air seems more trans­par­ent than in other places, and the land itself fresher and newer, although it is very ancient. The ambers and yel­lows and golds of the evening sun flow over the fer­tile hills like honey over fresh loaves of bread. It is per­fect wine coun­try, as the plethora of winer­ies in Mar­garet River shows. We were unable to stop at any, how­ever, because I was out­voted 3 – 1 on most occasions.

By the sec­ond day, how­ever, Julia and I had had enough of Marco and Nasco, and we informed them that we would take them only as far as Albany.

“Lis­ten guys,” I said over lunch at a café on Wednes­day. “I get the impres­sion this isn’t the road trip you signed on for, that you wanted to go directly to Esperance.”

Nods.

“Plus, we’re not gelling as a group. You’re not tak­ing part in what we want to do, and you’re bored. So we’re going to take you as far as Albany where you can get a bus to Esperance.”

Blank looks, some bab­ble of Ital­ian. And then, comprehension.

“Ah, ok!” Nasco said. “We would like to go to Albany.”

And that was that. We dropped the boys at a youth hos­tel in the charm­ing town of Albany and wished them good luck.

We have since made our own way to Esper­ance and will be leav­ing the lush forests and pre­serves of West­ern Aus­tralia. Already the ancient and brood­ing forests that press against the thin line of black­top as it winds along the coast are giv­ing way to scrub and spindly gum trees. There are few wind­breaks to stop the coastal zephyrs catch­ing the top of the van like a sail and blow­ing us all over. The dust hangs in the air longer and the way ahead is con­sid­er­ably drier and less pop­u­lated. Ahead of us lies the Nullar­bor (which means “no trees”), a four-​​day drive through some tough con­di­tions. When we come out on other side, we’ll be in South Aus­tralia and enter­ing the wine coun­try of Ade­laide.

Posted from Esper­ance, West­ern Aus­tralia, Australia.