A ROAD TRIP

By Spinifex

Armsfull of KFC, MacDonald's, iced coffee, six packs of beer, Maltesers, Minties and the Lord knows what else, Boof was ready for a road trip. He also had a fine bottle of wine which I'd suggested would really complement his quite excellent cellar.
"You never know what can happen on a road trip!" He tried to justify his gluttony. "It's a long way back to the Creek from here and we might break down and be stuck out in the desolate isolated outback and starve to death." He smugly looked around at the foothills just out of the Alice, the skeleton hills lounging low across the landscape all around.
"Gosh, you know, we do it tough up here!" he gushed.
In the rearview mirror I saw Miss Kitty, her long legs curled up beneath her on the back seat look at the back of his head with malice and sneer just ever so slightly. This, I thought, just might be an interesting next few hours. The Professor, his wire-rimmed glasses winking in the soft afternoon sun, stroked his goatee beard reflectively and chuckled quietly to himself.
We'd all been down to the Alice for the weekend and had shopped and cavorted in the big smoke. With throbbing heads, we were all glad to be on the road home.
"You wouldn't have the slightest idea of what it is to do it tough," purred Miss Kitty. "One of these days you should get out of your dreamworld and read a little bit about the early days of travel around these parts." She wasn't going to let him off the hook. "Margot Miles tells a few yarns about travel back then, and Kurt Johannsen too. If you think you're doing it tough now, on a perfect blacktop highway, engineered and properly cambered, built up against flooding wherever possible, and dustfree, travelling at high speed, then you're an even bigger idiot than I imagined."
She spat this last sentence out with some venom. Boof, miffed and deeply put out, twisted the lid off the first of his stubbies and commenced to spill quantities of it down his throat, although a lot of it went down his shirt front and chin and neck as well.
"It used to take at least three days back then, idiot." she continued. "Margot tells how the track, just ruts really, bounced along through dust and sand, with great swirls of it coating you all over. You used to bounce all over the place when you hit a tree root and were lucky not to get thrown out. No seat belts then. And the drivers hated taking women, reckoned they needed to pee all the time and were a bloody nuisance because they wore so many clothes that it took them hours to get their gear off and answer the call of nature." Her tone of voice indicated she was starting to rev up a bit.
He wound down the window and was about to hurl the now-empty stubby out onto the roadside. Miss Kitty leant forward and delicately drew a long and pointed, glowing-red finger nail down the back of his neck, leaving an angry red welt which immediately began to weep a thin trickle of blood. Ouch! I thought, even I can feel that one. My window's staying up all trip!
"If," she whispered into his ear, "if the first thing that goes out that window is your stubby, then surely the second thing that goes out your window will be you." The window wound back up at lightening speed and he ripped the top off another stubby, gurgling the contents in panic.
"Once Olive Pink, of Love Pink Flora Reserve fame, travelled with Margot back up here. They were in a truck with a particularly uncouth lout, rather like you no doubt," this vicious retort fitting perfectly naturally into her conversational flow, "and they camped by the side of the road. Olive Pink was determined not to be molested by this no-hoper and slept with revolver cocked and ready to fire. She always travelled with the gun and she was quite prepared to let this male type pig-thing have it if he'd tried anything on. Margot was terrified all night long that she'd end up with a couple of holes through her! Just like I'd be more than happy to feed you a lead sandwich. "
Her mild delivery of this concealed her intent. Boof in real fear forgot himself and wound down the window again, preparing to let three bottle tops, three stubbies and an armful of paper bags and detritus from our throw-away society go out onto the highway verges.
"Keep Australia beautiful," she murmured as the finger nail drew another red line down the back of his neck. He winced in pain and rubbed furiously at the seeping spot. "It used to take them three days at least back then to do the trip, in the nineteen thirties, and sometimes a lot more if the road was flooded."
The Professor, an amused spectator to all that went on leant forward and looked over my shoulder at the speedo. You could almost hear the microchips click and seeth in his head as he calculated. At least there wasn't smoke coming out his ears yet.
"At the speed at which we are currently travelling, we will arrive in Tennant Creek in approximately two hours time, having been travelling for fifty minutes already, covering the distance of five hundred and ten kilometres at a speed of fifty metres per second, consuming precious and unsustainable petroleum resources needlessly and placing all of our lives at risk." You're an idiot as well, I thought, but didn't have a chance to tell him so as he burst into a tirade of his own.
"The old road, which used to follow the Old Telegraph Line was a deplorable pile of dust and sand which wound around trees and rocks and threatened both vehicle and traveller at every twist and turn." He paused and pompously ploughed ahead. "It descended into a morass of mud and slime at the slightest shower of rain. That great pioneer of the Centre, Kurt Johannsen," and here he voice caught with emotion and respect, "the greatest tinkerer and innovator of mechanics and engineering and road travel and mining, the list is endless, narrates many anecdotes elucidating his ingenious solutions to breakdowns and boggings during the early days." He sighed dramatically. "If I thought you were able to read," he puffed across at Boof, "I'd recommend his book 'A Son of the Red Centre' to you."
Now thoroughly outraged, Boof wound down his window and set himself to let six empty stubbies fly. Another fiery red line appeared down the back of his neck and he yelped in distress. Miss Kitty purred in pleasure. Hell I thought, soon his neck's going to resemble Aussie Rules goalposts!
"The massive dangers posed by the impending invasion by the Japanese during the Second World War alerted the authorities to the need for a safe, direct all-weather road from the south to the Top End and so the old days of dragging a huge tray of steel to establish the road again was no longer seen as in any way practicable." He paused for breath. "That which we travel along today parallels the old route, the first Stuart Highway, which was put into place in record time by a special road unit in 1940. However, that upon which we are now rapidly nearing our destination is a vastly superior example of modern technology. The old army road, indeed until recent improvements the old Stuart Highway itself was a dreadful and dangerous thing to drive, remnants of which you may see from time to time during our mad rush back to civilisation from that great Sodom of Alice Springs."
I wondered what the good burghers of Alice Springs would have thought of the Professor's comments. My turn to have a go, I decided. I'd be nice to Boof, after all, I might score his leftover beers at the end of the trip. "After the connecting road from Mount Isa went in and joined the north road at Threeways, another record road-making venture by the way, the Yanks took over that eastern stretch of the road in about 1943. It was mainly Afro-Americans who were the drivers and they had strict orders not to break their convoy up into small parts. If they ran into the Australian convoy heading north at Threeways they'd just barge right into the Australian line of trucks (they're travelling at about fifty miles an hour remember, in direct contravention of orders) and trucks and cars and everything would be going everywhere. Those Yank drivers, big white teeth flashing in huge grins the stories go, would just roar on through."
I thought a bit. "You know, you remember when we went to Cabbage Bore and saw that huge pile of old rusted Department of Defence food tins?" He nodded, sobbing softly because Miss Kitty had clawed him again, just for fun. "Well, that used to be a food stop - lunch in fact. There were stopping places all over on the way up from Alice - they'd travel about two hundred miles a day but stop at Ti-Tree for lunch, sleep at Barrow Creek, a cup of tea at Bonney Well, lunch at Cabbage Tree, past Churchill's Head on the old highway and into Banka Banka for dinner and a sleep."
"Just like the Little Possum needs to do himself" smirked Miss Kitty as I pulled into his driveway. He stumbled out of the car, clutching huge armsful of rubbish and bottles and suchlike. The back of his neck glowed like Broadway on a dark night.
"Thanksh, thanksh," he cried, jubilant to be home and forgetting all the pain "thanksh for the wonderful trip. And Jeesh, didn't we keep the highway clean!"
Miss Kitty rolled her eyes at me but I just scrabbled through the things left on the floor. Ah, there it was! In his rush to avoid his tormentors he'd forgotten the bottle of St Henri claret! Yes indeed, thanks for the wonderful trip! See you next week I thought. Maybe Grange Hermitage next time, hmm?