The Alfred Hitchcock classic has none of the drama of a rock bouncing of a caravan and hitting the rear window of your car at ninety kilometers an hour. It’s quite an explosive experience. Such is life in the great outback of Australia.

We are now two thousand kilometers into our trip to the northern regions and boy are we having fun. Three hundred bucks in fuel every thousand kilometers, broken back window, twenty bucks for a shower, things are tough…. even Jack Daniels has deserted me. Jen hasn’t deserted me however and is confident that things will improve. Well they couldn’t get worse… unless it rains he says looking skyward.

No it’ll be good, trust me, we will head off early from Bedourie (which is just west of nowhere, and that’s according to my map not just my opinion) and aim for Mt. Isa where there will be a sale on two thousand and one model Landcruiser rear windows and Jack Daniels.

We had planned to give Mt.Isa a wide berth having stayed there a couple of times already. It’s not a bad place it’s just a little too… no forget it … the place gives me the creeps sucking all the goodness out of the earth like some giant leach that relies on minerals and money to survive, I hate the place. There I’ve said it so deport me! No, you can’t, I’m an Aussie now and I can whine about everything, for example…. “How about those Roosters eh! Couldn’t score a goal to save their lives”. I don’t have the slightest idea what that means by the way, I just heard a fellow Aussies say it. Good on ya Kirsty and “go Parra… Maaate”, did I say that right?

By the way, Parra is a football team the name is apparently short for Parramatta (similar to the Green Bay Packers in the US only no where near as successful.)

How about those Packers!!

As an afterthought we drove through Burke the other day. Above is a lovely painting of Bourke and Wills exploring Australia. Which is which evades me as I was not fortunate enough to meet either of them. I have however been through a town called Bourke but I have never seen a town called Wills. The lesson is, always try to get top billing. Equally unfortunate, the horse’s name is lost to history.

After two days of driving through the outback of New south Wales and Queensland there is little doubt in my mind that what my newly adopted country lacks in quality (read diversity if you like) it makes up for in quantity. There is so much flat mulga scrub that it literally defies description. You drive and drive and drive and nothing changes, it’s just flat, red and dry, except when it rains then it’s flat, red and boggy. I ask myself how can anybody make a living out here? Yet they do. Probably one cow or a couple of sheep per hundred acres or so, the poor critters fighting tooth and nail against the feral pigs, goats, camels and whatever, not to mention the native stock of kangaroo, wallaby, emu etc. You have to admire the owners and managers of these outback-alternate universes they really do make something out of nothing.

Now to a more serious matter, I am not happy about the way you earlier migrant interlopers have been treating our wildlife. The wholesale slaughter of Kangaroos and Emus has to stop right now!

Already these noble creatures are on the menu in restaurants all over Australia (particularly South Australia, the culinary vandal state) and it’s just not right. Today Jen counted over a hundred Kangaroo carcasses and that wasn’t all day it was in ten kilometers! I kid you not there are millions of these little skippies out here lining up to get squashed by the next eighteen wheeled assassin that happens by. I know what you’re thinking, if there are so many why worry about eating them, well, if you hadn’t noticed they are on the coat of arms and they do adorn every letter from the big house in Canberra. They are our representatives in the animal kingdom. Do we want to end up like the USA where the eagle has been hunted almost to extinction? Or England where there is not a Lion to be seen? Or New Zealand where they have to settle for a Kiwi because there is just no better alternative.

Just think about getting rid of your cat or dog and getting a nice joey or emu chick that’s all I’m saying. Think of the benefits as they grow bigger and bigger over the years… what joy they will bring to the family, what a great conversation piece at the next dinner party.

By the way we are in the boring part of Australia. That’s not to say this blog site will get any better…I’m just saying that’s all.

National Treasures out for a stroll Hungerford

Click to enlarge.

I really have to get used to this. In The USA everywhere had wifi, everywhere had fast food in fact everywhere had, well, everything and that’s because, let’s face it America defined the concept of availability and the resulting mass consumption.

Out here in my newly adopted outback there is nothing, absolutely nothing, in fact there is so much nothing that it becomes something. If ever there was a case of less is more then this must be it. The sky is clearer and cleaner the quiet is overwhelming (even for us half deaf folk) and the essence of space is omnipresent.

This truly is the back of beyond and we are just out of Bourke, a good days drive from Sydney in Hungerford on the Queensland border. We are in fact parked in a national park at a place called “The Granites” which is in an area of “mulga scrub” in an area so flat that rain water does not drain away.. There are several thousand acres radiating out from our current location however we are the only people for miles. Access is by dirt road only which is closed if it rains, so if it rains it could be a long time between blog posts. Not to worry we have plenty of nothing, which I guess is something at least.

One of our number suggested that this was the place that the moon landing was filmed but we all know that that occurred on a back lot in Hollywood.

Things have been a bit rushed to date, however below are a couple of pictures which will no doubt fill you with awe and envy he said with tongue firmly pressed to inner cheek.

By the way you can add to the list of “man made things that can be seen from space” our camp fire…. It’s still cold out here!

The bottomless waterhole at Byrock

Byrock Water Supply en-route to Hungerford

Sunset out of Hungerford

Man on the moon.

“The Camp Fire” as seen from space.

Leave Monday the 13th July head North by Northwest. Stay well clear of Cary Grant, Martin Landau, Eva Marie Saint and in particular James Mason!

The end.

Are you sure this is where we left the Caravan

Highlights should include but not be restricted to: Hungerford, Mataranka Springs, Darwin, Kakadu, Litchfield, Mitchell Plateau, Gieke Gorge, Tunnel Creek, Wolf Creek Crater, Bungle Bungles, Kununurra, The Old Ghan Railway Track, etc.

By the way we have left already.

Let it be known that on the Ninth of July 2015 after 57 years of living in Australia, apparently under false pretenses, I became a citizen of the land down under and I now claim dual nationality English and Australian. I know, I know….. it’s been a long time coming but I have been busy going to school, working, paying taxes, getting married, having children, paying more taxes, having a short holiday, then more work, more taxes… you get the picture. Truth is I have always considered myself as  Australian as the next person being as how my parents were invited here by the Australian government back in 1958.

Notes on becoming an Australian:

Before being considered as a candidate I had to demonstrate that

a. I was here

b. I was allowed to be here based on historical fact and

c. and this is the big one, I had to promise that I was not now or have ever been a terrorist.

Fortunately I was able to do all three things. I must say it’s a good thing we have that crucial third test or all sorts of lying terrorist types would be able to infiltrate this great country.

Six months later it was off to the ceremony….

I had to register to vote, something I have been doing for the last forty five years. This leads me to wondering if perhaps the results of several “close call” elections would have been different if I had not been voting. I remember the milk monitor vote at Windsor Primary been a close run and hotly contested election back in the summer of sixty two.

People much younger than me and who had been here much less time than me spent a fair amount of time telling me how privileged I was to be accepted by them to their great country. I appreciate the sentiment, however I would have preferred that an Aboriginal welcomed me being as how us English have been welcoming ourselves and helping ourselves  to this country for over two hundred years (and several others for much longer). I’m not ungrateful just confused as to why there were no “traditional owners” at the festivities. I suspect they don’t want me, moreover they may not even want you, have you checked?

The band played Waltzing Matilda no less than three times and every one sung along (if only to themselves). The National anthem got a single look in and only the choir knew the words to the second verse. Do you know them, be honest now!

I got a tax refund! This was in the form of a specially minted one dollar citizenship coin. Unfortunately it is dated 2014. Oh well I will still treasure it.

Anyway having been told that “I am, your are, we are Aastraliunz” by the well tuned, and heavily supported by the band, choir of greying non-waltzing matildas and two fellas, I was granted a certificate of citizenship of which I am mighty proud.  I will no doubt spend some time deciding what place of honour to keep aforementioned certificate.

After the ceremony my new best mate Kim (Mayor of Hawkesbury City Council) treated me to a meat pie and lamington, (traditional Ozzie food) washed down with a cold glass of Coke. Vegemite was conspicuous by it’s absence probably being deemed to radical for us new comers …maybe at the first anniversary, come on Kim Maaaaate.  Give me Kangaroo fillet and a Coopers Pale Ale any day. Note to self.. when next down the ruberty throwing back schooies with me new mate Kimbo, we’ll have to have a yarn about putting Vegemite sangers and maybe paverlova on the me and you. (translation: When next at the local hotel drinking fine Australian Ale with my new found acquaintance Kim we should discuss the plausibility of including Vegemite sandwiches and perhaps Pavlova on the menu.)

Genuine Meat Pie

Genuine Lamington

To celebrate  the head rabbit and myself along with some fellow citizens will be off for a tour of the great north west of Oz in part so I can survey my new home.

Oh.. By the way, I can now get a cheaper passport not that it was in any way a motivating factor.