Chasing Amy-Lou

My blogs have been very few and far between of late; mainly due to the fact that I haven’t really done or experienced anything of note. My time in Orange has basically been spent as follows: Gym, Work, Sleep, Repeat. Boring huh? It appears that my ability to settle into a place and go about my day to day life as if I were permanently residing in Orange has hindered my writing. However, a few weeks ago I managed to tick another thing off my Australia Bucket List; The Road trip. Be it in a wholly unconventional way and not entirely in the way I had imagined when dreaming about driving across three states, it was, nevertheless a road trip.

Here’s the deal: my friend Ryan, sensible, reliable, predictable Ryan (ahem), had what we here in Orange like to call a ‘Brain Snap’. One afternoon he decided it would be a good idea to buy a new Ute. Nothing wrong with that, I hear you say, alas, said Ute just so happened to be in Adelaide, a good 800+km away. Good one Ryan.

Now as if by some kind of fluke, it turned out that I had a rare Sunday off work, the exact Sunday that Ryan had decided to make the gruelling journey to Adelaide. What a great idea then to volunteer myself up as co-driver/passenger extraordinaire and accompany my friend on the long, arduous adventure.

Initially, I was full-on, pumped up for this road trip. I was getting to drive across real Australian outback, something I’d wanted to do while in the country, and I was also getting to cross states and visit a new city. I envisioned a top-down, sunny, sing-a-long, where every new road and every town drove through produced an excited catharsis of wonder and emotion. This kinda didn’t happen. A few days previous I had developed some kind of flu virus which resulted in me feeling horrific; think aches and pains, sore throat, the works. Add a severely hungover and tired Ryan into the equation and the beginning of our epic journey was slightly lack lustre.

Forcing me to drive the first leg so he could kick back, relax and ultimately sleep his hangover off, I took to the wheel, dosed up on Nurofen, throat sweets and gallons of water. The fact I had no idea where we were going was not a deterrent to my alcohol-sick friend. He just pointed me in the general direction of a town called Parkes and a place called Wellington and hoped for the best. Equipped with a newly devised playlist we were finally on our way, at 10:30am Sunday 22nd March, three and a half hours after we were originally supposed to leave…yay!

Now, to say the drive was arduous would be a bit of an exaggeration. Long, yes; tiring, yes but arduous, not really. We predicted it would take approximately 12 hours to drive the full 1,159km. Yep, that’s right, 1,159km. The longest I’d ever driven in a car, just 250km shy of the length of the UK. By breaking it up into shifts, we’d only really be driving 3/4 hours each at any one time; not too testing.

The first few hours passed pretty quickly. We stopped for a toilet break, grabbed some lunch and generally just powered through. We chatted and chewed the fat. We listened to my epic playlist, bickering over song choices and discussing musical tastes and differences. And we surveyed the scenery. Now, coming from the land of green and plenty, where rolling hills and countryside can satisfy any avid driver or passenger, where beautiful picturesque views can be marveled at over relatively short journeys, I was expecting some interesting sights from a country with such a large land mass. Of course, I’d heard about the outback and how dry it was, how there were miles and miles between towns, how someone’s nearest neighbour could be a few hundred kilometers down the road, but surely it couldn’t be as deserted and arid as all this? Nope, it definitely was. The middle of Australia is filled with nothing. Nothing but roads and dirt.

And so we drove. And drove. And drove. Passing nothing but dead paddy fields and the occasional winery (unfortunately not stopping to sample any of the delights). Once every hundred or so kilometers we’d spot some Emus in a field, just going about their business. We spied sheep, and cows; the occasional farm house, but as far as signs of actual human life went, that was limited. Driving through deserted towns (if you can actually call them that), I witnessed places that literally had one or two houses that looked too run down to be inhabited. Some of these towns were lucky to even have a general store. I couldn’t for one minute imagine ever living in such a place.

Trucking on, we reached a place called Mildura at around 8pm Sunday evening. Deciding to break the journey up we found a Motel in which to stay for the night before we would head off and complete the final four or five hours the next morning. Mildura looked like a pretty big town but unfortunately I wouldn’t get the chance to experience much of it. That was probably the only downfall of this particular road trip: not being able to truly take in the different places we were visiting. We would only have an evening in Adelaide in which to explore; from what I’ve heard though, an evening is probably enough, any more and you’d be crying to leave. Someone said to me once we’d arrived back in Orange that if you were to visit every place in the world and had to leave one city out on the merit that you were missing absolutely nothing, then Adelaide would be it.

Checking into the Motel we dumped our bags and headed out into the 37 degree humidity and heat, a complete contrast to what we’d left behind in Orange. We found a nice little place to have dinner and then, exhausted from the day’s drive, decided to call it a night. What a fully thrilling end to our brief time in Mildura…

The following day consisted of another four hour drive, this time to Murray Bridge where we were due to collect the Ute. A hectic dash ensued as we tried to get all the paper work for Ryan’s car printed, signed and sorted before the final exchange that afternoon. Murray Bridge was small. And that is more or less all I have to say about Murray Bridge. Really, there is nothing else there that I could possibly comment on. Nothing at all. Oh, the shopping centre was relatively decent. That’s it though.

After securing all the contracts for the new Ute, and saying a tearful goodbye to his old one (I was the emotional one, not Ryan: so long old Ute that I drove about five times) we embarked on the last leg of our epic journey to our final destination – Adelaide! Still feeling a little run down and bearing in mind that we had to be up early in order to drive the full 12 hours back to Orange the next day, we opted to keep the evening relatively quiet and low key (only five or so drinks then, ey?).

Had we been more prepared on this journey of ours, we would’ve discovered that Adelaide has its very own Fringe Festival (not too unlike Edinburgh) and it just so happened to fall on the week were in the city. How coincidental. Unfortunately, coming with little money, little time and no pre-booked tickets for any of the shows, we were unable to reap the real benefits of what the Fringe had to offer. Instead, we opted to walk around one of the venue areas, have some food, a few drinks and soak up a tiny bit of the atmosphere before having the second early night in a row (rock and effing roll).

As for the rest of Adelaide, well, we didn’t get to see the Oval (shame), we only got to walk around the East End of the city which consisted of a shopping precinct/area and a street full of bars and restaurants and we basically drove in and out on the same road.

Not letting that get in the way of a good story, I have to say that although a little rushed and not at all in the way I’d envisioned, our road trip had been fun and at least, in some kind of round-about way, I was able to tick another thing off my ‘Australia Bucket List’. All that remained now was to drive the long road home.

The journey back to Orange was much the same as the one to Adelaide but with less pit stops and more sleeping. It was warm, it was long and there wasn’t much to entertain us in the way of scenery. Not once did I see a wild Kangaroo, something I’d been longing to see since I arrived in Australia six months ago. We did see plenty of dead ones though, so I suppose that counts for something.

A few things I experienced that I probably wouldn’t have in any other country are as follows: a sandstorm whirlwind thing that apparently signifies drought; no shit, the land was as dry as a burnt piece of toast; border control between Victoria and South Australia where bulldog-faced female security confiscated my banana, even though I said I’d eat it there and then. Preventing the infestation of fruit flies is serious business over here. Towns that have a population of no more than about ten people, run down shacks passing for houses and one road that links it to the next town, approximately 150km away.

As far as road trips go, I pretty much had a decent one thanks to the company and the in-car entertainment, and as we arrived back in Orange just as the sun was going down, I felt grateful to have had this opportunity at all. Where else could I have driven for 12 hours and not even seen a coastline, not even covered a quarter of the country and not even seen any major landmarks? That my friends, is Australia, and that is what makes this country quite remarkable.