Saturday 1.06pm - Border Gate Truck Stop          They’re renegades out here on the border; they actually are so in between the two states they don’t even pay council rates. The truck stop is manned by a real hard case disguised as an unassuming Grandmother. It is definitely worth a look, if only just to check-out the graffitied walls inside and the couple of sleazy truckies hunched over their hamburgers. I was surprised at the swearing and carry-on regardless of my presence. Not that I would expect anything less it’s just that it seemed forced. A Truckee inside launched into a joke about a lesbian and her c#nt after asking whether I wanted to hear a joke and receiving my reply “not if it’s dirty”. My lack of enthusiasm propelled him further “Hey, what winks and f#cks like a tiger”? Well I really don’t know the answer to this one but I looked up and caught him winking wildly at me.

But sleazy truck drivers with sick senses of humour aside, if travelling the Nullarbor and traversing two borders isn’t hard enough just try and decipher the drink measurements. Typically you will go into your local bar and want a small beer or a larger beer. Well in WA I would ask for a pot or pint, but yesterday I crossed the border so last night I was drinking schooners and pints. If I buy a schooner now at the Border Gate Truck Stop and walk approximately 50m over the border to NSW, my schooner suddenly becomes a midday as the midday is schooner size and the schooners a bit smaller than a pint. And if you head north up the east coast you will confuse matters even further.

Saturday - 1.40pm Broken Hill

I don’t think I’ve ever been let down by a town like Broken Hill let me down. I’m quite familiar with the typical town enveloping mine scenario (think Mt Isa). I wasn’t exactly expecting the expected. Broken Hill in my mind was this fantastically whimsical place aligned in whimsicality only with such artistic hovels as Lightning Ridge and the like, a touch of Iron Knob perhaps. But I arrive to find the open-cut the town centres around non-operational and decrepit. High standards maybe, but the place seemed inauthentic without dump trucks buzzing around that old pit adding to the layers of red dust coating local windowsills. The long since redundant mine had left a pile of waste behind, and in a daggy almost kitsch logic someone decided to built a restaurant on top. …destined from its inception to be a major tourist attraction.

And all that fanfare about Pro Hart. Well I stopped at the Visitor Information Centre and I waited along with eight others (yes the tourism industry is apparently booming in Broken Hill) for the old biddy to wind up her conversation about her heart condition with one of the sorry locals who had dropped by. Id intended to spend a good hour in Broken Hill but after we’d been through all her symptoms I only had 20 minutes remaining… This left me enough time to visit the stockpile straddling Broken Earth Cafe and waste $2 on the memorial before venturing off downtown in search of Pro Hart’s gallery with his crazy coloured car parked out front. 

I passed through Oxide Street, Chloride Street, Sulphide Street and Bromide Street, all in search of Kaolin Street but do you think I could find the most flamboyant piece of art in this dusty and dirty ol’ town if not the whole of NSW? I looked for a good 30 minutes and resigned myself to the fact that perhaps it was at the mechanics getting a service on this particular day. So with no art to view I wandered down Wolfrom Street captured some pretty uninspiring pictures of the sweetest little mining huts you may find in all of Australia. And that is the major, if not only, draw card of this town. And not forgetting the Palace Hotel, a fine ornate Hotel it’s just a pity I didn’t have time to report back on the beers. I continue on to Topar, where I fuel up and are reassuringly convinced that I am finally back in the New South Wales (NSW) thanks to the two cattle dogs I meet, a pup and its obese rectangular shaped mother. That’s the uniquely bred characteristic of the Australian Blue Heeler… if overfed they eventually morph into doggy breathed coffee tables.

Saturday 3.21pm - Wilcannia

Dad et al don’t want me to stop for fuel at the aboriginal community of Wilcannia. So for their own peace of mind I won’t. But for a little perspective… my WA relatives warned me off Northbridge when I first arrived in WA, and that Kashmiri family I stayed with in Delhi didn’t want me going to Goa alone. Look… in short, it wasn’t all that bad. A burnt-out wreck 100m before town and a bit of rubbish on the side of the road alluded to disasters much much worse.

From Wilcannia the flat terrain begins to gently rise and fall, slowly becoming treed. 100km out of Cobar and its dodgem city. Goats, emus, and kangaroos are rife but none appear to be particularly suicidal. Although other wildlife such as the curious grey nomad appeared to be more friendly on this leg of my journey. After previously suffering from stares and only mildly friendly nods of the head, I was overjoyed to have been invited over for a cup of tea on a toilet break just short of Cobar. Overjoyed even though I politely declined.

Saturday  9.05pm - Cobar

“What do you recommend” have got to be the four dumbest words ever spoken to a plain Jane at the local Returned Serviceman Leagues (RSL) club. Particularly at Cobar’s combined Bowling and Golf Club in “Malcolm’s Chinese Restaurant”. And by the way, anyone as well travelled as I, should have learnt by now not to eat at regional RSL clubs in their cliché Chinese Restaurants.  Mind you let’s backs track 10 minutes…

I had pulled into the Oasis Motel at 8.55pm and asked where I could eat. I was pointed in the direction of the Bowling/Golf Club and was told “but be quick”. I stupidly responded “but its Saturday night”. And so predictably received “welcome to Cobar”. I’ve been away so long Id forgotten that wry and dry NSW sarcasm. West Australians try to do it but they don’t do it so well. It’s more prominent in country NSW of course. The only other option was the Caltex Roadhouse and that’s never an option as far as I’m concerned, let alone after dining intermittently at roadhouses for the last five days. 

The thing is, I swore off Chinese food many years ago. I said no to that predictably deep fried crusty/soggy sh#t forever. Admittedly forced to consume it on two separate occasions when living in Mt Isa where the only takeaway was predictably deep-fried crusty/soggy sh#t. In my defence I did do it under protest and with much disdain.

On the up side, it was Cobar however where I found my second ‘big” thing on my trip, a trip thus far that had been under-whelmingly big. A giant Tooheys New can about three or four metres by two metres perched on top of the Grand Hotel. I do have a hinting suspicion it’s unintentionally “big” though. I contemplate that thought as I launch myself and my red Suzuki deep into wheat, cotton, and sheep country. Its getting greener and the trees are growing taller and the road is becoming rougher. I know this because my CD’s are falling loose and at times shimmying clean off the seat, the closer I get to Dubbo (another under-extraordinary regional city). 

Sunday 12.35pm - Dunedoo

I’m sooo itchy, so God damn itchy. The box says take one tablet, so I take four. The incurable itch does not even distract me from the irony that my slightly more upmarket motel style accommodation last night (the last night of my road trip) was harbouring a small army of bed bugs between the sheets in room five. I sit here waiting for my meds to kick in but there’s incessant scratching and not much else happening in Dunedoo. I take a photo of a rather large fibreglass swan, my third “big” thing in 3158.2km across Australia.

 Sunday 3.55pm - almost home

The Golden Highway, although rough, is quite pleasantly meandering between paddocks of lucerne, cattle, sheep, and a scattering of horses. There are noticeably more utes with stickers and dogs attached to the back. It’s not uncommon to see such gems as “don’t drink and drive, smoke dope and fly“or “don’t drink and drive, you’ll spill you drink” and more often “shit happens” plastered on the back window. Thankfully it’s more uncommon to see “my other toy has tits” (those stickers tend to frequent outback Queensland more so). I’m winding through the Great Dividing Range teetering on the edge of the Hunter Valley. After living in WA for four years and driving the Nullarbor over the last four days, arriving in the Upper Hunter Valley is comparable to arriving at the Cotswold in England. I love it, I love it but mostly I love its flaws. I love the crap roads, those decrepit houses, and the raging storm clouds above. The air thick with moisture and of course… anticipation.