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Deja Vu
I’ve done this drive before: Cobar to Wilcannia in the rain. The last time was thirty years ago with my father, after we’d just spent a couple of days on the Macquarie Marshes. The rain was so heavy we had to stop on the side of the road till the storm passed. Western New South Wales was lovely and green then.
We’d been exploring the Marshes in an inflatable rubber dingy, checking out the birdlife – we were both avid birdies – but there was so much water about the mosquitos were unbearable. So we had to camp up in dry country about five kilometres away. On the first morning the old man inflated the dinghy with a spark plug hose, and then put it on the roof of the Peugeot, which had no roof racks.
“Now you get in the thing while I drive up to the water,” said the old man.
“You’re kidding.”
“No, it’ll be all right. Your weight’ll hold it down.”
“What if it blows off with me in it?”
“Don’t be stupid: it won’t come off. I’ll drive slowly.”
“Haven’t we got a rope?”
“Won’t need to tie it down. Trust me, I’ll drive slowly.”
So off we set, the old man driving the Peugeot station wagon, me sitting in the dinghy on the roof, holding it down. But I doubt we travelled five hundred metres before he started accelerating, and I knew he’d forgotten I was there. My screams – and I hollered – were washing away in the wind-stream, he was picking up speed, and there was absolutely nothing I could do but hang on till take-off and pray for a safe landing.
It would have made a great scene for a movie:
A dusty road in the Australian bush. A fluorescent orange rubber dinghy with terrified dork-pilot sailing off the top of a speeding white car, miraculously landing his craft intact and right-side-up about a hundred metres into the scrub.
Follow white car as it carries on past the dinghy.
Cut to a close-up of the man driving along, totally oblivious to the mayhem he’s just authored, singing to himself.
Cut to dork-pilot climbing out of landed dinghy, shaken but unhurt, his gaze following the receding car.
Cut to the car pulling up beside a wide expanse of water. Man gets out looking satisfied as he surveys the scene: dead trees and lush reed beds punctuate the water which stretches to the horizon, abundant birdlife wherever you look. Perhaps he follows the path of a startled cormorant, its wingtips kissing the water as it takes off. Then he remembers his cargo and notices it’s missing.
Cut to a close-up of the man’s face (as I remember my old man’s face looking so many times when I was growing up): surprised and bewildered that such a thing could have happened to him, then concerned as he gets back in the car and turns it around.
I know the Marshes would be a different story today. I can see they’ve had a little recent rain because there’s green pick along the roadside, and the rain is still falling lightly as I drive. But I sense there’ll be big changes ahead.
Wilcannia is a quiet little town on the Darling River, a significant part of the most important river system in Australia, the Murray-Darling. Normally you can sit under the old river gums and watch the water flow by. Today there is no river, not even a chain of ponds; just a few stagnant puddles and a water tank, which I’m told some of the local kids pushed in. When the river’s up they jump off the bridge into the water, when it’s down they roll around the riverbed in empty water tanks; that’s when they’re not substance-abusing or entertaining themselves with less innocent activities like stealing cars, damaging property, or worse – not uncommon pursuits for many rural Aborigine kids with nothing better to do in twenty-first century Australia.
I set up camp on the banks of the riverbed. This is the first time I’ve plugged the campervan into 240-volt mains power and I’m interested to see how it performs. I even get the fold-up table happening and put the awning up to make a real camp of it. I feel like an old hand.
In the morning the old hand drives off and leaves the 240-volt power cable hanging from its pole in the caravan park.
© Monte Dwyer 2008
