May 26, 2009
At the Boyne Island caravan park we skimmed stones to see who would wash our clothes in a bucket. I lost, but the river looked beautiful, so no worries, right? We drove from Boyne to Tannum to see the beach of the town of where my good friend Sam comes from (HEY SAM). I sent her a message from a sand bank on the beach, saying I missed her. Too true!
Then we gunned it to Rockhampton and I sent my little sister Brode a postcard. We skipped lunch and made our way to Yaamba, a rest area about 40 clicks from Rocky. We want to stay in the car overnight, to see how much it hurts, to know what sort of challenges we have coming our way. Haesh showed me the best way to wash clothes in a bucket, and I hung them from a rope we set up between two trees. The old girls from the campervan next to our car cheered us on. Yoshi had started to cook dinner when we overheard a tall bearded man practicing his electric guitar, busting out some cool licks. Yosh ventured over and got to talking with “Big Joshua”, a kind man of our age, highly spirited and lyrical, and as he referred to himself, basically a big, friendly giant. We also met two French folks, Elise and Francois, who have already done a similar journey, in a van, for the past 6 months or so. (Their route took them inland in different ways, and it ran a little higgledy piggledy, but by gum they did it!). We got together, Big Joshua providing two bottles of red, the French some Ballantine’s and a goon sack (Me: “Best thing about those, once you drain them you can blow em back up for a pillow”) and via Yoshi’s cooking we gave out rice balls fried in sesame oil. Big Joshua played as we drank, some beautiful songs with deep Australian soul, smoothing the songs out of his acoustic steel. Big Joshua has a big adventure ahead of him too – he started off in Portland, Victoria, and will drive solo around the coast of the whole country, playing gigs at pubs and meeting the land his songs evoke. We hope to meet him again in Townsville at his show at the Green Ant Canteena. We all got a little drunk and decided to exercise – Yoshi screaming “Ayaka!!” with each press, Francois and Elise did sit ups to kiss, Big Joshua teaching me Mu Thai and boxing moves, how to use a skipping rope properly, and Haesh, he worked on his grammar. We also snapped a picture of both Yosh and Big Josh hanging upside down from the swings.
Later on a truckdriver named Brian who has figured out how to and now loves to kill crows as he cruises down the highway with his rig (I think he has a record of 22 in one trip) provided us with some more food – potato patties he had in the cab that his mum had made. Before tucking in I mentioned my dietary requirements and he said “Shit! I don’t want you to curl up and die like a koala.” before proceeding to list the ingredients. Besides spruiking some ridiculous cartoon and robotic porn, he also told us a joke that I might get wrong, but should sum up the spirit of absurdity. Supposedly we’d heard that for a black man to get elected as president of the United States pigs would have to fly. Well, 100 days after Barack Obama’s election, swine flu.
When it became too late we piked, but instead of sleeping in the car Big Joshua loaned us his drop tent (3 seconds and up!) and we crashed in there. A good night, and of course totally unexpected. Hence, adventure!
[visit http://www.myspace.com/joshrawiri to see Big Joshua's upcoming gigs and music!]
