I’m struggling with “On the Road” at the moment. Have you ever read a classic novel and wondered what the hell it’s about? It’s a bit ironic that I’m reading this now because I’m on my first real road trip since coming to Australia. I’m not presumptuous enough to compare myself to Jack Kerouac but I kind of understand his problem.
He travelled back and forth across America and I’m sure it was tremendous. But it still comes across as a ten year olds story about his school tour.
“We went here and then we got back on the bus and then we went there”.
Road trips are an important part of Australian culture. Many young Aussies have jumped into a combi van at some stage and taken off across the country, with just a few jars of Vegemite and some locally grown weed for subsidence. It’s an epic journey, in scale at least, if not in beauty. Because if truth be told, there’s not a huge amount to see between the cities.
I took off from Melbourne as a pale autumn sun was setting in the west and pointed the car towards Sydney. Radio fades here as soon as you leave the cities and to be honest it’s not much good when you can hear it anyway. Today, for example, all the evening radio shows are talking about a video that is doing the rounds on email. It involves a rubber chicken and is the biggest news item in Melbourne since the Kennedy assassination. It’s a dull enough story anyway, but discussing a video on the radio seems pretty pointless to me. They might as well have had some jugglers or a mime artist.
Luckily, I came prepared. I bought one of those slightly dodgy radio transmitters that let you listen to your Ipod in the car. I stuck it on shuffle and pretty soon I was relaxing to the dulcet tones of man hating female country singers as I drove through the darkness on the Hume Highway.
Sal in “On the Road” didn’t have such luxury. As I sat in cruise control, he was racing across America in a 1947 Hudson that had a radio that only seemed to work when they were near Tucson, Arizona.
Night was falling on my trip and I’ve been told that this is the best time of day for spotting Kangaroos. I’ve seen a few Wallabies since I arrived here but I’ve yet to see a Roo, except on a dinner plate in steak format. It’s getting to the point where I’m starting to question their existence.
Perhaps Australia is pulling a huge confidence trick to boost their tourist industry? Wallabies are plentiful but they are only little fellas and could be mistaken for rats with short front legs. So maybe they got a few midgets to stand beside them in a photograph to convince the rest of the world that the animals are massive.
I have another theory. Most kids have a belief at some stage in their young lives that the whole world is a massive conspiracy in which everyone is a knowing participant except the child themselves. I suffer from a variation of this paranoia. I think I live inside a grotesque “Far Side” cartoon where kangaroos stand around smoking cigars until one of them spots me coming round the corner and yells at the others to hide.
After a wildlife free excursion, I reached my stop off point for the night. Albury is the first town in New South Wales and hugs the Northern bank of the great Murray River. Many Australian towns resemble wild west locations from Clint Eastwood movies, with wooden porches on the building and majestic colonial banks on each corner. Albury looks like an altogether more modern place, with flat roofed warehouse shops designed to cater for the local farming industry.
As I walked around its faceless streets, I was reminded of Sal’s comments on the American towns that he passed through. I kept waiting for him to get to the point until I realised he was only interested in the journey and not the destination. I continued reading about his exploits while enjoying a tasty brew in “Paddy’s Irish Bar”. I was edgy and anxious to reach Sydney the following day and I found myself wondering why I struggle to enjoy the moment and feel the need to get to the end as quickly as possible.
As with many things, I blame my dear old mum. The last movie I remember her going to was “The Perfect Storm”. When she came home, I asked her how it was.
“Pretty boring”, she said. “These chaps went out in a fishing boat and they hit bad weather. The boat sank and they all drowned”.
George Clooney would no doubt be horrified to have his big cinema breakthrough reduced to such a basic level, but that’s how my mum looked at the world. It was all about results and not process.
With this in mind, I was determined to enjoy the next day as much as a possible. The sun was up and I set out for a hearty breakfast before I started my journey. Unfortunately, it was Good Friday morning and it turns out that the Australians are much more traditional about observing such things than we Irish are. Albury was stubbornly observing the fast day, so I travelled for an hour as far as Wagga Wagga (so good they named it twice) before I could get my fill of bacon and eggs.
From there it was a straight road to Sydney. The sun was setting as I hit the City limits and the wild animals of Australia had taken another day off. I found my sister’s place and ignored the fact that it was Good Friday by indulging in a few beers. I retired early and took Jack Kerouac to bed with me. Sal still hadn’t found what he was looking for but he seemed to be enjoying the search.
I’m not sure I’d encourage ten year olds to read “On the Road”, what with the constant references to sex and drugs. But it strikes me that if they did, the stories they tell of their school tours would come become a lot more interesting.
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