From My Notebooks in 1975: Horror Road to Sarina

Before we get down to the pleasures of Australia in the Seventies, I want to say something about Putin, in the light of what has just happened. Like most people, I suppose, I have found it hard to imagine a human being of evident intelligence, acceptable appearance and in comfortable circumstances (to say the least) . . . it is hard to imagine such a person willfully causing murders and assassinations, and consigning hundreds of thousands of his countrymen to death, apparently on a whim.

Like many of my generation my understanding of human nature is rooted in Shakespeare’s tragedies, and I think I can see a solution to the problem more clearly now.

Putin, in his own mind, is no longer a person.

He has become Russia. Not symbolically, as you might think, but ACTUALLY. Just as mediaeval kings enshrined their nations (with the assistance of God, to be sure) Putin IS Russia, he embodies Russia. So it is Russia that demands sacrifice and bloody deeds. And so it will go on until, ultimately, he over-reaches and the tragedy works itself out – possibly taking us down with it.

I once knew a famous French historian who had fought in the resistance alongside Mitterand, later president of France. They were still friends and I asked him what Mitterand was really like.

He said, “You know, Ted, they are all monsters.”

But Putin transcends that description, because HE IS RUSSIA.

And so, back to Australia in 1975 (when Putin was 23 years old.)

When you left me last week, Carol and I were riding up the coast of Queensland and at Marlborough we took the inland road to Rockhampton. It was the main road running from Marlborough to Sarina. The road ran through a rather ghostly forest of naked, bone-white eucalypts with very little sign of human life. We found out later that a couple of grizzly murders and other crimes had been committed on it, and it was talked up as a “Horror Road.”

My Naked Notes, continued:

Sunday, December 21st

Just halfway and we cross a bridge with no parapets at Lotus Creek and stop at roadhouse the other side.

Cocky fellow with blue eyes, blue tunic and shorts and a cowboy hat said coffee was 30cents, with traces of an accent which I took to be Polish, partly influenced by his manner.

“30 cents?” I said, with mild surprise.

“Is that too much?” he said. “If it is I’ll make it 50 cents. I’m like that.”

Here’s Andy

He went on to say: Why come from Marlborough to live in the middle of nowhere, except to make money.

Suitably placated he became pleasant enough. Then, into his remarks drifted a few references which began to take on an ominous reality. It transpired that he knew, and thought we knew, that the creek ten miles up the road was flooded to seven feet or more above the bridge.

Another man, curly-haired, grizzled, over-confident, started telling us things, saying he was a journalist. Called Geoff Little. Has a monthly advertising handout for tourism and sells palms. Says “I’m the most knowledgeable journalist in Australia about tropics.” In spite of this quite likeable and seems to have observed a lot.

Café well made of Mackay cedar, lustrous multi-coloured wood. Gradually realised we wouldn’t get through today, and rode off to Connors River to look.

The scene at Connors River

Cars queued before bridge. Four men playing poker on the asphalt. River was up to the base of “Give Way” sign. No sign of the bridge.

Came back to take space in the corner of the campground. Andy, proprietor of the “Lotus Creek” Roadhouse, sold us six eggs (50cents) & a tin of stew.

In rode four big refrig. trucks and parked outside, their motors running constantly. The drivers were beering up in the café and moved later to outside shelter with benches and tables. When we went to sit in café, we were sent out to join them and became involved.

Main characters are Peter, alias “Ferret”, PJ, and Clive. We got some beer off them after trying Andy. He said he couldn’t sell beer, never had sold beer. After, he came out with one for me, but by then we were already saved.

Spent a pleasant evening listening to various versions of the truck drivers’ code – Ferret writes doggerel verse – “ode to a trucky” – a friend who died when he overturned a truckload of bottles outside Gladstone, and so on. There was a young lad who ran all the errands – and another driver, McCarthy, who was a butt for their humour – simple expression, concave face, rubber legs set astride – from Tasmania, a peace sign on his shirt.

Learned about roads in the interior – the dirt road everybody takes as a matter of pride though there’s a good bitumen road now – the best routes down south again – and from Geoff, the various national parks to see up north. In particular he mentioned Euengella Park, West of Mackay. Meeting of tropical and temperate vegetation.

Ferret became sentimentally attached to Carol, and his personality tended to dominate, though the PJs were granted their space (he had his wife and son with him). Clive, the portly man on my right, had a more respectable look and told his stories as though he were on stage – but Ferret’s tales were the priceless ones.

“Woo-woo” is about a man discharged from an asylum who wants to shoot a bear. Warden sends him to gunsmith. Gunsmith explains how to find bears sleeping in caves – he searches caves shouting “Woo-woo” but hears nothing. Finally at last and biggest cave of all he hears noises of movement and “woo-woo” comes back to him. He’s about to fire when get run down by train.

Ferret was on a roll.

A fellow in the outback has just come back from his first ever visit to Melbourne. His mate asks, “What did you do there?”

“I met Bishop Lennox.”

“Who’s he?”

“Only the foremost Catholic in Australia. He’ll have holy water in his toilet.”

“What’s a toilet?”

“How would I know. I’m not a Catholic.”

Monday 22nd

Night in tent. Few mosquitoes, but hot a sticky. A lot of rain. Things under a tarp on the ground. Collected a gallon of rainwater but kept stuff dry. Much speculation on level of floods. – Lotus Creek has come up as high as Connor’s when I saw it. Meanwhile Connor’s has risen to the highest point it has reached before except in grave floods. Not known whether it is still rising.

Ferret comes over to ask us for breakfast. The truckies have broken into their loads. A carton of prime Victoria rump, Angus, supplies magnificent rump steaks. All truckies have been drinking XXXX bitter all night. It’s not considered decent for a trucky to sleep when there’s beer in range. Kevin made a trip across Lotus [before it flooded] for a crate. Meanwhile two busloads of passengers had arrived, Lotus itself had flooded, and the truckies were having a monster barbecue behind the house.

Andy came over at one point to warn them angrily against charging for the meat.

“I’m not having people doing business on my property.” He was already pissed off at the beer all over the place – afraid it would be thought that he’d sold it. (Sly Grog is what it’s called) because he’s after a license. They were openly contemptuous of him, rating him only a few notches higher than his neighbours. (The one the other side of Connors, they said, sold water at 20cents a glass during a previous flood.)

So on through the day, rump steak coming out of our ears. Flood was still high by nightfall, but Lotus was right down again. We packed up and slept in Ferret’s empty van with net over us. In morning PJ was reading “Overdrive,” a magazine devoted to trucks [with a Playboy style centrefold of a shiny new Kenworth].

The floodwaters flowing among the gum trees makes an unforgettable picture. Dark, swirling waters, moving very fast, stuff floating with it spread out over the land. The tall guinea grass, (18” to 2ft) flattened in clumps, rises and falls so fast.

Breakfast was more steak and bacon. Clive explained that the shippers knew what was taken, and always accepted that in a similar situation some of their food would go. No question of subterfuge.

We were first to leave for Connor’s River after the traffic started to come the other way. I wanted to see the cars stranded in the middle. By the time I got there cars were already streaming across [Although there was still a foot or more of water on the bridge.] – and two bikes had gone through. A third, a young coloured guy on a Honda, was waiting. He gave a strangely forceful impression – a pronounced bone structure, brown to yellow skin, a long waterproof jacket with tattered cuffs turned up and what seemed like deliberately ragged appearance. He had just got his Honda 750 – must have just passed his test.

Ferret, P.J and Clive came along too and ripped down the side of the queue of cars waiting to cross until they met cars coming the other way when they forcibly joined the queue. Carol hitched a ride over, after I’d crossed with the bike – a little wobble at the other end, but no problem. Ferret and PJ came roaring across after us. Swinging the huge rigs deftly into the space and stopped to make farewells. Ferret obviously deeply moved by his meeting Carol.

Eventually after a lot of open range and dead kangaroos, their rig passed us again and stopped. Would we meet them at the hotel in Sarina?

We rode into a small range of hills down steep, winding road of bad tar – and saw two men loading the Honda onto a trailer while the ragged rider stood resignedly nursing a bruised hand. Sad.

Motorcycle insurance in Aussie costs over $200 in NSW for third party alone (which includes passengers). More expensive than cars. There are a lot of bikers; they ride as though it’s dangerous, (there are no choppers on the road: must be illegal), and lots of them have P signs for provisional license. Provisional is for the first 12 months after passing the test. (I thought it was for learners – not so.)

In Sarina we all met again for beers and scotch and counter lunch. PJ was there to spend Christmas with his mother – hadn’t seen her since two and a half years “when she was dying in hospital” His is a Scots family – father was a schoolmaster from the West. Got impression that PJ was the black sheep.

Ferret told his “shops” story.

“Shops” is about a half-wit couple working in a Park.

“You know it must be twenty years since I last had a game of Shops,” says the big man. His mate agrees.

“Well, let’s have a game.” OK. “Right! Here’s the shop. It’s a butcher’s. I’m the butcher, see. This rake here’s the door, and you’re the customer. Right?”

So the customer comes in and the butcher yells “Who do you think you are! Get out of my shop – you want to be served here, you get on the end of the queue, or I’ll throw you out.”

He does. Queues up for twenty minutes, and again and again for most of the afternoon, at last he slogs wearily past the rake and the butcher punches him furiously in the face. He’s on the ground in the leaves when a park policeman comes by. “’Allo, ‘allo. What’s up here?” he asks the big man.

“He got punched in the face.”

He asks the little guy, “What happened to you?”

“I got punched in the face.”

“Anyone can see that. Who did it?”

“I don’t know. There was that many people in the shop, I couldn’t tell.”

Once more we all said goodbye – with much warmth.

Ferret: “You’re a lovely person, I knew straight away – you too Ted. Most people don’t do anything for me. They can be nice – I can be nice – but it doesn’t mean a thing.”

PJ: “You’ll be right.”

Changed $100 (US) at bank. That makes $220 since I landed in Sydney 3 weeks ago.

Carol coming back from Nowhere Else

Later I heard that Ferret overturned his truck outside Sarina, but he was unhurt.