After All These Years

30 October 2009

Forgive the lack of speedy updates, the free wifi offered by McDonald's in Australia is simply not of the standard of free wifi in the rest of the world between, say, Calais and Singapore. Mostly it's crap.

We did finally escape Moree and all it's charms, albeit at 5pm and not the promised 11am. Spent the day vagranting around in McDonald's (see above re:crap wifi) and in the park outside the tourist office. The good women of the Moree tourist office were very excited to give us many brochures concerning the pleasures to be found in Moree Shire (see above:re hot springs). Highlight of this soul-deadening wait must have been the crazy-bearded homeless guy who, sipping a 2 litre of store-brand cola, eyed us for a while before approaching to ask if we were Dutch. Told no, he said “Oh well, take one of my brochures anyway.” And walked away. The brochure was the result of what I'm fairly certain is some sort of schizophrenia, referencing Jesus, Mary, and several nutjob friends of our crazy, and advised eating only raw foods to avoid the end of the world. I was struck by how laid back this guy was—being a city girl I fully expected an hour-long harangue about how I'm going straight to H-E-double-toothpicks. I was kind of disappointed to not be Dutch for once. Clearly everyone here is just cooler than we are, even the insane. David was occupied being enthralled by the rocket shaped climbing frame.

A bit late, we started out for Coonamble, where our London friend Ben awaited us. Stupid mobile decided to not work, so we took ourselves to the local campground and used the nice lady's phone. Ben's fabulous mum Betty had made a lasagna for us, and kept it waiting for our 10pm supper. You're really not meant to drive past dusk here because of the myriad animals who are about at night, and we've been religious about it. Leaving Moree so late meant we did have to go a little bit into dusk—and christ, the locusts are enough to convince me it's just not worth it, forgetting the kangaroos and emus and whatnot. It sounded like rain as they committed suicide on our windscreen by the billions, and wedged their little dead bodies into the airvents to get heated and stinky and keep their memories alive with us just a little longer.

Right, Coonamble. We've been hearing the legends of Coonamble for the last 6 years from Ben, and there was no way we were going to miss it. His family owned butcher shops, an abattoir to supply the butcher shops, cows to supply the abattoir, and wheat farms to supply the cows. It's the circle of life. Ben's mum, as noted, is brilliant and let us stay in her house and fed us (very well) for two nights. Her neighbours Bob and Joy are also fantastic and lovely and all the other adjectives which apply to good people. Uncle Lenny brought massive piles of prawns and a whole leg of lamb. Theresa and her kids and partner came round for dinner. Betty's friends (she is very popular) popped round. They let us park the van in their driveways and on lawns...it was like old home week.

Ben and Fiona and David and I went up to Lightening Ridge on Thursday, toured a surreal opal mine (where no one bought me any opals) and watched a movie that smacked of David Lynch about the denizens of this town—famous for being the sort of place you disappear to when you've, you know, killed someone or decided to not pay taxes or just want to be your own boss. In a hole in the ground.

Lunch at the sprawling bowls club (lawn bows, not alley), where we signed up to be temporary members and watched the locals play keno and ate massive quantities of food and drank XXXX beer. All very Twin Peaks.

Friday saw Uncle Lenny come through for us with the loan of his farm truck and an ATV. Ben brought a few guns and the four of us spent the day not killing much and driving around Lenny's farm Warrina, looking for kangaroos and gulars (very pretty birds with silvery white wings and a pink belly, also deeply stupid) and avoiding the snakes and seeing wild emus generally being very badass. Uncle Lenny also brought Fiona and I stylish bags emblazoned 'London, Paris, New York, Coonamble, Milan.' Uncle Lenny rocks.

In the afternoon, we went to the Warrina creek to catch yabbies with Bob. These are sort of like crawfish, caught with bits of meat in baskets and on string. David did very well, and between them the boys got about 10 of the creepy little blue-clawed things. We are all very salt-of-the-earth here in Coonamble, rural and blue collar and all that is wholesome and good.