Nothing comes free, or even cheap. Even the information pack, which, for some reason, is a compulsory purchase, costsextra. And you return the bedding at the other end of your journey but what you pay for it isn’t a deposit, it’s rent, non-refundable . You get bugger all back.
–And you’re going all the way to Perth?
–Yeh.
–That’s a bladdy long way, boys.
If he thinks he can tempt me with an ‘I Crossed the Nullarbor’ T-shirt for thirty friggin’ dollars he’s sorely mistaken. I pay, wince, go outside to find a bench to smoke on whilst the van is tinkered and dithered with. They’re making an inventory of scratches and nicks and other tiny damages, I think, something like that. Uninteresting, anyway. Much more diverting is the ‘Safe Driving Information for Australian Roads’ leaflet, which is a tad terrifying; it recommends the ‘Outback Safety Kit’, at one hundred dollars rental, again non-refundable . A satellite phone at seventeen bucks a day. Truly terrifying. The stuff about animals and dust-storms and the like is quite exciting; it’s the expense that scares me. And should a ’roo dart out of the bush, whack into the side of the van, wreck the door? The insurance doesn’t cover that. You’d have to pay for a new door, a new panel, maybe even an entire new body for the van. So what’s the point of this insurance? Why doesn’t it cover the most obvious and, I’m sure, frequent form of damage?
Nothing for nothing in Oz. But fuck it anyway; I’m off. Across the vast red continent.
–She’s all yours, boys. Enjoy yaselves and be safe.
Tony and I get in. Little house on wheels. Tony circles the car-park a few times to get the feel of the vehicle and then we’re off.
–D’you know how many miles are ahead of us?
Shudder to think. That desert. Watched Wolf Creek a fewmonths ago and now wish I hadn’t. Maybe we should try and get hold of a gun or something.
It’s a bright blue day. First stop is Currumbin. I remember lorikeets.
THEN
The boy stands in a storm of feathers, a typhoon of noise and thrashing colour, red and green and yellow and blue so bright, eye-rippingly bright, and the frantic cacophony the birds make in their flocks thousands-strong cyclones around him, perched on his head they are and on his shoulders and arms and on the plate of fruit he holds outstretched getting heavier with the massed weight of the birds. There is nothing he knows here, no Liverpool no Brisbane not even any Australia, no long jaunt no family not even any him, lost he is in this mad hurricane of feathers and beaks and chattering. Only pulsing in the many rapidly flapping wings like light is his contentment in which everything, origin and present and future, falls away except for the exactitude and clarity of his need to be nowhere else but here.
NOW
Ey, look; it was founded by a feller called Griffiths. Wonder if he was any relation.
Alex Griffiths, the noticeboard tells us, ‘in 1947… began feeding the local lorikeets to protect his colourful gardens. Before long, visitors to Currumbin found out about the birds flocking to the area to feed twice a day and one ofQueensland’s oldest tourist attractions was born.’
Nice feller. There’s a painting of him reproduced in the booklet I buy at the ticket office and he looks like a nice feller; swept-back silver hair, blue shirt, kind of a noble set to his face. I don’t recognise the park itself, so changed is it; then, it was more or less just a small field, but now it’s a small zoo, with walkways through large flowering plants and a small train chugging around with children on it and echidnas and Tasmanian devils and dingoes and wombats in enclosures. The koalas are entrancing; they sit low in trees and eat eucalyptus leaves and when I watch them they do a kind of double-take as if in surprise to find me staring at them. There’s an odd intelligence to them, a peculiar awareness and alertness; I’ve heard that eucalyptus, when eaten
–And you’re going all the way to Perth?
–Yeh.
–That’s a bladdy long way, boys.
If he thinks he can tempt me with an ‘I Crossed the Nullarbor’ T-shirt for thirty friggin’ dollars he’s sorely mistaken. I pay, wince, go outside to find a bench to smoke on whilst the van is tinkered and dithered with. They’re making an inventory of scratches and nicks and other tiny damages, I think, something like that. Uninteresting, anyway. Much more diverting is the ‘Safe Driving Information for Australian Roads’ leaflet, which is a tad terrifying; it recommends the ‘Outback Safety Kit’, at one hundred dollars rental, again non-refundable . A satellite phone at seventeen bucks a day. Truly terrifying. The stuff about animals and dust-storms and the like is quite exciting; it’s the expense that scares me. And should a ’roo dart out of the bush, whack into the side of the van, wreck the door? The insurance doesn’t cover that. You’d have to pay for a new door, a new panel, maybe even an entire new body for the van. So what’s the point of this insurance? Why doesn’t it cover the most obvious and, I’m sure, frequent form of damage?
Nothing for nothing in Oz. But fuck it anyway; I’m off. Across the vast red continent.
–She’s all yours, boys. Enjoy yaselves and be safe.
Tony and I get in. Little house on wheels. Tony circles the car-park a few times to get the feel of the vehicle and then we’re off.
–D’you know how many miles are ahead of us?
Shudder to think. That desert. Watched Wolf Creek a fewmonths ago and now wish I hadn’t. Maybe we should try and get hold of a gun or something.
It’s a bright blue day. First stop is Currumbin. I remember lorikeets.
THEN
The boy stands in a storm of feathers, a typhoon of noise and thrashing colour, red and green and yellow and blue so bright, eye-rippingly bright, and the frantic cacophony the birds make in their flocks thousands-strong cyclones around him, perched on his head they are and on his shoulders and arms and on the plate of fruit he holds outstretched getting heavier with the massed weight of the birds. There is nothing he knows here, no Liverpool no Brisbane not even any Australia, no long jaunt no family not even any him, lost he is in this mad hurricane of feathers and beaks and chattering. Only pulsing in the many rapidly flapping wings like light is his contentment in which everything, origin and present and future, falls away except for the exactitude and clarity of his need to be nowhere else but here.
NOW
Ey, look; it was founded by a feller called Griffiths. Wonder if he was any relation.
Alex Griffiths, the noticeboard tells us, ‘in 1947… began feeding the local lorikeets to protect his colourful gardens. Before long, visitors to Currumbin found out about the birds flocking to the area to feed twice a day and one ofQueensland’s oldest tourist attractions was born.’
Nice feller. There’s a painting of him reproduced in the booklet I buy at the ticket office and he looks like a nice feller; swept-back silver hair, blue shirt, kind of a noble set to his face. I don’t recognise the park itself, so changed is it; then, it was more or less just a small field, but now it’s a small zoo, with walkways through large flowering plants and a small train chugging around with children on it and echidnas and Tasmanian devils and dingoes and wombats in enclosures. The koalas are entrancing; they sit low in trees and eat eucalyptus leaves and when I watch them they do a kind of double-take as if in surprise to find me staring at them. There’s an odd intelligence to them, a peculiar awareness and alertness; I’ve heard that eucalyptus, when eaten
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