Theres a lot of middle here!

Opals, kombi vans and camels.

Anyone who as traveled up through the centre of Australia will know that the scenery can be both stunning and spectacular, in pockets, if you know where to look. Typically, it’s rather bleak. People prefer to live underground mostly. Bleak, harsh and un-forgiving, almost cruel in a way that only mother-nature can be. This land is dead flat, so flat in fact that in most places you can see the curvature of the earth with nothing to interrupt the view except heat shimmer. Temperatures of around 50ºC during the day scorch the earth, man, beast and machine. Where 90% of all the wildlife either wants to kill you, bite you, sting you, or if your’ more unfortunate than some, just drive you mad! Although all of this may make you want to pack your bags in this green and pleasant land of England and move over there, I must also inform you that there aint much to do there besides mine opals and drive road trains.

Opals are supposedly a symbol of bad luck in some medieval societies, unless you are Chinese where they become a symbol for good luck surprisingly! The unfounded and unfortunate stigma of bad luck actually came from works of fiction and historic people like the Empress Josephine। The whole opal mining business is full of good and bad luck stories that I can tell you at some other time। What I really want to talk to you about is about some of the locals, the indigenous locals। Fun folk they are।

There are a lot of tails about the shenanigans of the locals round these parts, although all amusing, I found most to be a bit far fetched. Well I did until now! My favorite tale was of a family of aborigines whom are parked on the side of the road with the car filled with about 9 dogs and 6 kids and with the bonnet up they try and flag down passing motorists [they have a 6th sense to spot tourists] to give them a tow just a little up the road to the next town. As anyone who lives in Australia knows, a little up the road is about the equivalent to, from London to Leeds, about 600 km. When they finally get to this town, which aint a town, it’s a turn off in the middle of no-where, they have to be towed a further 200 km down a gravel road, full of bull-dust and corrugations, to an Aboriginal community, usually called something like Ullammekarathemalinadika pronounced amazingly somehow, in a single syllable. When they finally get there, exhausted and out of fuel, the locals get out of their 64 EJ Holden Station wagon or something of that vintage, when the tourist with his big heart asks the bloke if he can have a look at his car to fix if for him. The aboriginal fellow replies ‘No worries brudda, she aint got no engine.’ Opens the bonnet and three more kids jump out!

If any of you have seen the telly series called ‘Bush mechanics’ you will see that this story isn’t to far fetched. I recommend it. I haven’t laughed so hard in ages! But I want to tell you about my personal encounter.

Adelaide being the boring little hovel that it is, my girl and I decided to go up north to Darwin for the winter [Darwin, what a town!] We load up the VW Kombi and headed out on the only road north. The drive was quite interesting, we went to Maralinga, the old nuclear test sight hoping to see the giant glass pans [another urban myth maybe], Flinders ranges and Cooper peedy. Now I could write another chapter on C.P alone, what a bizarre town! Anyways.We were driving past C.P at about 4:00 pm as we had a big drink up at C.P the night before, and to avoid a hangover we kept drinking, as you do. The road north is almost dead straight for thousands of kilometers, there is no speed limit, there are 100 meter long road trains and variant life forms much bigger than your domestic cat to smash your car into. So drink driving may not have been my wisest idea to date. But it was my funest!

We had been driving for about 2 hours when we saw a car broken down on the side of the road with some aborigines milling about, and since we were quite pleasantly drunk and stoned we decided to stop and give them a hand. The vehicle was a 71 Holden HQ station wagon. The HQ was the biggest car Holden had ever produced, big enough to seat 6 adults reasonably comfortably. Unfortunately it wasn’t designed to hold 6 adults with 4 kids and 5 dogs. When I had a look in the car it also had 2, 100 liters drums of fuel with no lids on, for front seats! And a fair bit had been sloshed around the cab, enough to make me gag and whip my head out sharpish anyways. When I went under the bonnet for a look I just could not believe what I was seeing, the state of this engine was appalling, and hardly the sort of vehicle you’d embark upon an Australian outback odyssey in. I had to try and get it sorted anyways.

After 4 hours of drinking, mechanics, laughing and smoking weed, a broken manifold, a battery balancing on its edge and a home made earth lead. Finally I get the old girl going with a cough, puff and a wheeze, and the whole crew just jumps in and takes off without a word of thanks! My girl and I were in stitches of laughter for a good ½ hour before we set off. By now it was dark, and as anyone in outback Australia knows. Only dickheads and road-trains drive at night. Unfortunately, I was made in the former category.

We were heading up when we see this bright red light in the middle of the road and then it just disappeared, we looked at each other thinking ‘what-the-fuck-was-that?’ when it suddenly appeared again for a minute or two and then disappeared again. This happened again and again for about an hour, we didn’t have a clue what it was, then again, we were quite drunk and stoned by this point, ‘hammered’, is probably the more accurate term. We kept driving and as we got closer to the source of the light we realized what it was, it was the Aborigines with their faulty earth lead, densely over populated vehicle that was filled with open petrol drums. Oh my god! They were swaying all over the road with one flat front tyre! We couldn’t stop laughing! Again.
Finally we overtake them and we are looking in the rear view mirrors at the headlight, singular, going on, off, on, off amazed how these people would drive such a vehicle with their kids and laughed for a good 10 minutes, when we almost hit a herd of camels as we were laughing so much, and so drunk, and so stoned.

We hit the brakes in an orchestra of screeching and billows of blue smoke। That sobered us up I’ll tell you! We edge our way through the herd and drive off. It wasn’t 5 min when we realized that that car load of people were about to run into the same herd, with a flat front tyre, no headlights, 200 liters of fuel and 10 people and a pack of wild dogs!

And you know what, they would survive, butcher the camel they killed, throw it on the roof and have a party when they get where their going.

Unbelievable! What an amusing people!