On The Road

I read somewhere that the latest V8 performance cars get better fuel efficiency over long distances than the new model “fuel efficient” little run arounds. That makes sense. But I still drove for 11 hours on Wednesday for around $70, which I don’t think is that bad.


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Driving for 11 hours on your own in one day is horrible. It’s also really cool, and you develop a sense of not only the size of this country but also the feel of movement and control of direction. It gets to a very metaphorical point about 8 hours in.

However, by the time you hit 10, the whole experience starts to wear thin… much like the Brand Highway.

For one thing, I had nowhere near enough music to last. The four CDs I brought for when the radio went out of range are now anathema to my ears where once they were anthems. I never want to hear another Newton Faulkner song in my life.

Newton Faulker’s name doesn’t suit how he sounds or looks. He should be the guy who discovered DNA ligase with a name like that, not a folk-pop star.

I do feel a little more of my deeply suppressed excitement since I took the trip though.

I now have:
a) Actually been to the town where I’ll be living into the blurry and indefinite future (Even if only for a few hours).
b) Inspected, applied for, and been approved for a place to live there (In what must be the record time of only a few hours).
c) Taken two minor but important wrong turns which made two 4-hour drives into two 4.5-5-hour drives.
d) Used too many numbers and words that sound like numbers in that last sentence.

The best bit about it all is that I have to do it again on Tuesday. That’s when I move in, pay my first couple of weeks of rent, settle my meager and basic possessions into the small-but-full-of-potential-kick-ass-ery unit that I will now be the tenant of, and tend to it.

So, Monday, golf; Tuesday, Geraldton and back; Wednesday, Melbourne via Adelaide; Thursday – Sunday, driving back west; Monday, it begins.

Mondays sound good.

“Highway 1, twelve-hour drive…” – The Waifs.

The Town and the City

When sometimes I catch myself saying that I grew up in a small town, what I really mean is that I grew up in a big town. Perhaps the biggest town in the world.

The city of Perth, Western Australia, is home to 1.65 million people and growing fast, but that’s a lie – Perth’s not really a city. Perth is a town that got out of hand, a lack of natural predators leading to an unnatural boom, a streetful of warm-hearted, corner-shop-type beach bums that accidentally woke up in the twentieth century and found a city built around them teeming with money, space, people but no real desire to change much since the days it was a sleepy little town.

I guess what I’m trying to say here is that despite my sarcasm to the contrary, I’m not really a small-town guy. If I was even half a one back when I lived in Perth, three years in Melbourne put paid to any lingering doubts.

In 16 days, all that is going to change.

I got the call from the paper on Tuesday the 15th of December.

“I dunno if you’ve heard, you’ve been knocked back from the job you applied for.”
“Right.”
“But would you like one in Geraldton?”
“Lemme think about that.”

Geraldton. G-Banger. Uncle Jerry. The jewel of the mid-west, the gateway to the Abrolhos Islands, the sun-spanked, wind-swept, wide-open mouth that spews rock-laden bulkers into the Indian and gobbles fish and families in exchange.

Apparently Geraldton is the fastest growing city in Western Australia, and the fourth largest. There’s that word again: City.

The name Istanbul comes from a Turkish mis-reading and mis-pronounciation of the Greek signs that littered the paths toward it, simply reading “To the City”. Rome was simply “The City” as was Athens, long before they became the names of metropolitan areas they were empires, and the city at their hearts needed no name.

And, two weeks ago, I knew only two things about the port city of Geraldton:
1) It had a port.
2) It sure as shit wasn’t a city.

Of course now I know a little more.
“I’d love the job, I’m very keen,” I said. And we’ll see.

But for all the worry, the stress, the loss, the change, the adventure and the heartbreak already faced and all that yet to come, I’m moving forwards. Because you’ll never serve the world, and you’ll never make it worth your life’s while, sitting where you’re comfortable.

“I ain’t going to the town/I’m going to the city” – Interpol