Okay, alright, it’s starting to look like a Road Runner cartoon now. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not at all sick of driving these distances or shaking enthusiastic hallucinations from the side mirrors to the back of my cerebrum; Wile-e-Coyote follows us on an ACME assembled V2 rocket.
Buzzards circle patiently through the warm air – their peripheral view of the circle of horizon cut in 2 by a slowly spinning bitumen strip resembling a screw eerily loosening from the inside of a coffin but never falling out, broken only by a glimpse of potential food action.
Speaking of peripherals – it does seem ridiculously easy to look through CD pouches, dig out muesli bars, search songs on an over-complicated music system, check the fuel-temp-oil gauges, operate cameras and search for and plug in much needed chargers for electronic equipment while maintaining a flawless driving line on the road at speed. That is, until certain sections of the highway become liver-poundingly rough. We must alert the local council to urgently attend to these pot-holes 300 clicks from somewhere…
“Where did you say that bad section of road was?”
“It was just after… no, just before the… wait, there was umm… yeah, it was flat for ages right between these 2 slow inclines. You know, where the 3 dead roos are right near each other… there were some little clouds on the left…”
“We’ll get right on it, sir.”
McKinlay – small roadhouse on the western end of the crucifix of streets that shape the town: the highway goes across and a few houses down the upright. On the eastern arm, the last structure on the way out of town, is the 1980’s Paul Hogan watering hole ‘Crocodile Dundee’ pub.
WALKABOUT CREEK HOTEL, MCKINLAY QLD
SELF PORTRAIT WITH BAD HAIR
‘CROCODILE’ WHATARANGI
WHAT ELSE ?
We walked through the place to soak up the box-office history. But did the opposite of what you must, surely, be obliged to do and didn’t have a celebratory ale for the road. The logic-driven reason; because we were on a Caloundra Cup deadline. As it turned out, it saved us from permanent bladder damage from the kidney-pulverising Landsborough hwy to Winton and Longreach (the birthplace of QANTAS).
On this piece of flat earth the only thing that wasn’t flat was the road. No car suspension system invented could cope with the pok-marked tar masquerading as a road. Even early 70’s Valiants and Fords that glide over speed humps smoothly would be reduced to a paper-machet gumball.
The best shower in the universe after days of wind and bugs smashing against your teeth exists at the Lyceum Hotel in Longreach.
It would have been enough to acknowledge the keen parking of the XXXX B-double round the corner on convenient government land – but no – it was Ben’s birthday, and no better place to celebrate than the Lyceum Hotel. Also, everywhere else was shut.
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