One for the Road: An Outback Adventure by Horwitz Tony

Author:Horwitz, Tony [Horwitz, Tony]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Travel, Adventure, History, Humour, Biography, Adult
ISBN: 9780307763020
Goodreads: 9639920
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 1987-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

By sunset, my three companions are almost incoherent. Round upon round of beer seems to have washed away the years in a kind of drunken regression. The conversation has winnowed to wanking.

“For Chrissake’s, Darryl, stop playing with yourself.”

“I’m not playing with myself, dickhead.”

“Yeah? You’d do it with your grandmother if she gave you half a chance.”

“You’d do it with an empty bottle. Bang it like a dunny door.”

My own grip on sobriety is slipping away, as is my grip on reality, or at least my place in it. Here I am, drunk in the back of a ute with three drunk cockies racing from nowhere to nowhere in the South Australian scrub. If I bounced out the back at the next hairpin bend, what would they make of my body? A dusty, ragged hitchhiker with the smell of diesel fuel about him: no name, no known address, no occupation apparently. Does the fact that I have a name, an address, and a job make my other life real? Can I be both people at the same time?

I am not the only one in the throes of an identity crisis. At sunset, after a pub stop at a place called Bungleboo, I squeeze up front to keep warm for the last hour to Kimba. And as home approaches, the gaiety of the daylong drive begins to sour. Reg and Darryl start arguing over the best way to control weeds: spraying or driving them out by tractor. Barry worries out loud that his wife will yell at him for coming home three days later than scheduled: broke, drunk, and filthy. And Reg wonders where he’s going to get the money for the next tractor payment.

“It’s a good life, farming,” Reg says. Then he reconsiders. “Not really. Particularly not now. You can’t make a bloody quid out of it.”

“Yeah, but what’s a bloke to do?” Barry says, taking up the yoke. “Get out now, or wait to see if it picks up again, pay your bills, and get out altogether?”

It is Darryl, strangely sober now, who has the final word. “Problem is, mates, what the bloody hell else are we going to do?”

The journey home is silent for the final half hour.

At the Kimba pub we settle in for another round before calling it quits. There are a few wistful jokes about the opal fields, then a meditative quiet as we finish off our beers.

“One for the road, mate,” Darryl says, hoisting his glass to me in the smoky saloon. “Wish I were you.” The four of us clink our glasses together, toss them back, and head off into the night.

My way leads in a slow weave from the pub to a nearby camping ground, a five-star joint with trees and water and indoor toilets. The rumble of trains, wheat trains, serenades me as I roll out my swag. It is a romantic lullaby, full of yearning for distant places; the sound of freedom, a kind of locomotive counterpoint to the welcoming skid of a car hitting the gravel as it stops to pick me up.

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