We are going forth, though I believe it best we don’t. We are going north to awaken the sleeping dogs of our half-remembered escapades, though it would be better to let them lie. We are going up there into saltbush and mirage among the shinglebacks and taipans to meet our young selves, though they are long dead, transmuted into misty recollections, unrecognisable men whose brave dialogues end in frustrating ellipsis … We are heading into the dead heart to reprise our empire-building days, though we built no empires.
We are travelling to Wilcannia, a group of fogeys driving endless kilometres reminiscing in bucket seats while listening to Schubert, trying to reenact that which, if reenacted, would insult the modern world. Who else would go to Wilcannia willingly? Who ever has? Since the fish died and wool went under, who has ever driven to that town in search of anything but a look at how things shouldn’t be?
Credit: Robin Cowcher
We will drive on dirt roads at such speed the wind will leave our comb-overs gaping like pillaged dumpsters. Emeritus alpha males on safari, our cars bristling with rifles and rods and our Nixon-era mindsets fuelled by doo-wop, antidepressants and blood-thinners. A grand tour, up through NSW, then through the Hungerford dog gate into Queensland and along the Budgerigar Creek and across Bulloo Downs drinking middling quantities of mid-strength beer.
We’ve always driven to places no one else wanted to be and rolled out our swags and drunk somebody’s idea of wine and shouted insults at each other across campfires in dry riverbeds. We’re hooked on senseless male excursions that carry an atavistic whiff of a war party out raiding.
The first to ring in and cancel was Marcus. “I’m out.” Work had got on top of him. Important meetings with OS bigwigs flying in from OS, where they live.
Then old Andy’s new knee rejected him. We’d suspected it would. Modernity generally has. He was too sore to sit in a car, and would need porcelain beneath him at stool, he said. We offered nappies and codeine, but he said he’d stay home and recuperate and be ready for the big one next year.
Ramo, who has always cut a balderdashing figure sitting by a fire, can in hand, said he was having problems with his general manager – an uppity type with her own ideas, liable to go rogue and approve herself a decent human wage once he’d driven out of phone range. “I can’t make it this year, boys,” he explained. “It’s hard to find old-fashioned, fear-driven toadies to mind the shop any more.”
Mort called in from Flinders citing more fungal infections than a catacomb janitor. Only three weren’t contagious, so we accepted his cancellation gladly and wished him well staying home sucking gin and regaling his kelpies with tales in which he brandished a sceptre rather than a garden rake.
Laurie is a retired cop and had delighted at the idea of driving into the blank interior, having one himself. But an opportunity came up to “play golf in Thailand”, so he cancelled too. I don’t even want to guess what “golf in Thailand” is a euphemism for. But I can easily hear a magistrate saying, “I find you guilty of Golf in Thailand, as charged, and sentence you to two years.”
