Another Country Diary

The zen of the long drive.

Living (and traveling) between cities and the country has been a consistent part of my life from the time, when as a teenager, I moved from the country to Melbourne to go to college. It was hard to get back there until I bought my first car when I was 20. Since then, I have been heading either from the city to the country or from Sydney to Melbourne following work. I'm used to it and I like it. Traveling alone on a long drive has a complexity that always gives me something new and it's not the same things that you get from 'travel'. 

As a Traveler or Tourist, you're looking for new experiences and sensations from your journey and the destinations you visit. While that can happen in a car, most of these trips were just about getting from A to B and could have been by air or train (if you didn't also need the car when you arrived. And if you could afford it.) I've been driving from Melbourne to Sydney at least  four or five times a year for thirty years or so. When I started that trip of around 3000 kilometers it took more than a day (especially in the old cars I used to own), requiring an overnight stop or roadside sleep. Now it can be driven in 10 hours in relative comfort. From Bungendore it takes about 7 hours to get to Melbourne and 3 to Sydney. 

The other aspect involves the urge to record some of that now very familiar scenery (with an occasional fresh moment as a new bit of dual highway is opened) and the strange doggedness of getting to the destination. It becomes an intellectual tussle. "Wow, look at the light on that hill. I 'hafta' photograph it. I'll just pull over. Hmm, where is it safe? Damn, can't slow down now, there's a truck behind. I'll just signal and then try and find a spot. Oh, now it's not as nice, it was better with those trees framing the edge. I'll go back. Damn, the highway is divided so I'll have to find somewhere to turn around. God that was beautiful, just the perfect angle! Go on truck, pass me so I can stop. I can't see anywhere ahead. Oh, it's too much trouble, there'll be another good shot ahead", and you speed up again, and there isn't an angle as nice or you flash past another "Wow" moment and the same equivocating process starts again.

It's like that much quoted Seamus Heaney poem Postscript where he writes about driving through County Clare  "when the wind and the light are working off each other". 

Useless to think you'll park and capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And find the heart unlatched and blow it open.

This time, just out of Gundagai I did stop. Not at the first wow moment but before the light had changed. Just before the clouds swept a heavy summer thunderstorm over the road and everyone slowed or pulled over as the highway was inches deep in water. Five minutes later it was gone, leaving only that intoxicating smell of rain on dry ground and dry grass, that came through the air conditioner. It prompted me to open the windows and filled the car with hot wet ion charged air.

Memo to self: Don't just avoid the dilemma by trying to photograph out the window with one hand while you're traveling at 110k. Even if the clouds are spectacular and the light patterns weird. Just watch the road or you'll die.

It's still raining. (Us country folk always have to talk about the weather.) The silver cinneraria has been beaten around by heavy rain and looks most untidy outside the kitchen window. The leaves hold the water droplets for ages. Behind it in the photograph is the little lemon tree that's been hit by the frost each year since we planted it. At the moment it is looking very green and glossy. I promise I'll build a better shelter this winter, just draping plastic over it isn't enough.

The usual matter of fact Bureau of Meteorology report for the ACT was quite chatty when I checked it online last night. There was almost a short novel on the day's page. The results for Tuggeranong were apparently reported incorrectly the day before. People had obviously sent in their own totals and there was talk of historical records before the Canberra airport bureau office opened in 1939. All very chatty. Apparently we've already doubled the average monthly rainfall (52.9mm) in the first five days of the month. What that means to the farmers is that the paddocks are already showing green under the dry grass and you can see the dams filling. There's a shallow soak with a car tire in it on the road into town that we use as a gauge. 'It's over the tire!'...'Yeah, I noticed'. 'It's drying out, you can see the tire'...'Yeah, hope it rains soon' etc. 

I know that it is raining because the flat roof in the back is leaking inside, and I can hear the drips into the buckets from my work room up the front of the house. It only happens when the rain is really heavy and I think it's a design fault in the ridge gutter where it tries to make the runoff turn a corner and it then comes in under the iron. I'll have to have a go at caulking it when it dries.

The dogs and cat have to be really serious about going out to wee. The look on their faces makes you think they blame you for it. 'Damn you for house training me!' On one of these expeditions, the cat caught a thumbnail sized frog and brought it inside. It had one leg sticking out a bit but was hopping ok. I caught it and released it outside. The cat is still looking around under the couch thinking she'll find it.

There are lots of frogs in the yard because of our pond in the back garden. We don't often have them visit, but sometimes late at night, they come towards the light and the insects, and hop through the open back door. In the pond they make quite a racket, although our neighbors say they don't mind. With the wind and heavy rain I don't think anyone will have heard them for a while, even with summer's open windows.