Older than Dad

This is me and Dad on that 1982 road trip. As you can see we could have taught the hipsters a style trick or two and our oral hygiene was impeccable. Even in the outback we kept up our sartorial and health standards.

This is how I remember Dad. This is the image I see when I'm thinking of him. Here he is with George the dog, his adored granddaughter Sophie and me. George was a huge Alsatian that Dad found wandering around lost in the outback. 

Dad was a handsome man with a deep chocolatey voice. He was fifty seven when he died on one of his road trips into the outback. I have lived far longer than he did. If he were alive today he would be eighty eight. He wouldn't look anything like my memory of him.

It's a bit like Marilyn Monroe. She died young and attractive. Dad wasn't young but he wasn't old either. It is strange to be a person who is older than her father. When he was alive he seemed so much older than me.

Today in Broken Hill we met a man who is older than both of us. We met the very charming ninety year old Jack Absalom. To visit Jack Absalom's gallery was the first on our Broken Hill sight seeing list. We were surprised when the old man opened the door of his art gallery and ushered us inside.

We wandered around looking at the paintings and marvelling at this self taught artist. He had started off life as an opal miner at twelve years old, turned to roo shooting for a few years before he decided to become an artist. He was a fruity old gent, as was my father. Another thing they had in common was their love of opals. Dad had always loved opals. I bought a pair of earrings that Jack had mined himself in memory of Dad. He would have bought me a pair if he had been alive.

Here's Jack giving me an old man hug.

And here's one of Jack's paintings. And after that we visited the slag heap which overlooks Broken Hill.

The troops posing from the slag heap overlooking Broken Hill?

The lovely outback sky.

And then we headed out of town to Silverton where we were told we could get the best hamburger in town.

A lot of Mad Max was shot around here.

And it was picturesque.

And full of Twin Peaks mystery. Paul found a random bra in a dried up creek bed but luckily no body or crime scene. It was a wonderful day and then we returned to our temporary home where Paul cooked up a feast.

On the road

  We  Where are all the people at Mascot airport going to? Why are they all up so excruciatingly early? And who are they? Do they all have souls? And why is airport food so expensive and disgusting?

And why was the driver of our airport bus so cheerful and so chatty?

Enough of the soul searching. I was picked up by cheery Dave at 5.30am. Paul and Tina were already in the bus. We got to the airport in record time and then waited and waited for our flight. 

We are flying Rex and will arrive in Dubbo at 9.30am where Peter Dunn will be waiting for us. We will then drive for eight and a bit hours to Broken Hill. 

In preparation for this visit I finally read the scripts for the Tele-series. I have been putting it off for months but as we will shortly be meeting the cast and crew I thought I should know a bit about the plot.

I hadn't wanted to read it because I was worried about how this new rendition was going to deviate from the original book and film. There had been all sorts of talk about casting the ocker town cop Jock as a young Aboriginal woman.

I wasn't happy with that idea. I knew they had to tease out the the story line to make four hours of television. 

Luckily, Jock was still a man who will be played by David Wenham.

Kangaroos have been replaced with feral pigs, there is a lot of nudity and violence but the basics of beer, two up and flies remain as we follow John Grant's descent into hell. Not the same as the original but I can almost hear Dad say "take the money and run".

The forty five minute flight was a breeze. A bit bumpy but they gave us free coffee and rice crackers.

Peter was there to greet us and we set off on our outback adventure. 

Long straight roads slice though the vivid red earth endlessly merging into the blue sky on the horizon.

Eight hours on the road is a long time.

We stopped at Cobar for lunch. Peter had made some gourmet sandwiches and a thermos of hot tea. We turned off the main road and headed to a local lookout. At the top of a very windy hill we peered down into a huge open cut mine.

 It was a gold mine. We gulped down our tea and sandwiches as we battled a gale force wind. And then it was back into the car.

Some hours later we arrived in Wilcannia. The last time I was here was with Paul and Dad. We camped on the banks of the Darling River and nearly froze in the night. Today we strolled around the lovely old buildings and down to the river. Apparently Wilcannia was the third largest port in NSW after Sydney and Morpeth near Newcastle. This information comes courtesy of a nice old bloke who thrust tourist information pamphlets at us. The sun was shining and we saw flocks of red tailed black cockatoos swooping and swirling in the clear sky. Alas, the two coffee shops were closed. As were all the shops in Wilcannia. The only place that was open for business was the police station.

And then it was back on the road. We have seen a lot of wild life on this trip. Lots of dead kangaroos, a few live ones, emus, sheep, goats,cows and lots of birds. More hours elapsed before we arrived at our cheerful accommodation. We unpacked and headed into town for dinner.

We found some good cheer in one of the many pubs in Broken Hill.

There was a special tribute room to Priscilla Queen of the Desert. A bit disconcerting but less so than if it had been a tribute room to that other great Australian film Wake in Fright. And then a well deserved steak.

And then back to bed. And so ends day one of our road trip.

Broken Hill

It is my birthday today and on Thursday I am going on a trip to Broken Hill to visit the television set for the remake of Dad's novel Wake in Fright. Both the birthday and the trip are creating a feeling of nostalgia for the past when the future was unknown and exciting. Now a lot of that future has become the past and the unknown turned into fact. 

Recently a woman asked me to describe my childhood. I thought for a while. A childhood is hard to sum up in one word. Eventually I came up with "exciting". And it was in parts. It was also full of travel,responsibility, love,uncertainty and self doubt.

To be travelling to Broken Hill with my brother Paul, sister in law Tina and old friend Peter Dunn is something I'm really looking forward to. The three of us are flying to Dubbo where we'll meet up with Peter and then drive for eight hours to Broken Hill where we'll stay until Tuesday.

The very thought of it rekindles that sense of excitement that I remember from my childhood. As you get older that fizzy sense of excitement that you experience as a child becomes less frequent. 

Dad provided a lot of those fizzy moments. You never really knew what to expect from him. 

Below is a picture taken of him in Broken Hill taken by my Uncle Philip. This was the trip that created the inspiration for the book Wake in Fright. He looks so young and he was. I had just been born and he spent three months in Broken Hill working as a journalist.

I have no memory of this. My first memories of Dad were of a larger than life sort of swashbuckling hero that could fix anything. I remember the motorbike with a sidecar that he would pack his children into. I can remember him packing the four of us into the one bath to save time. I can remember the many road trips around Australia and the two big overseas trips where I was taken out of school for two years. I can remember the many gifts he like to buy his family and the dogs he was always bringing home. I was always in awe of his writing talent.

Paul and I did a mammoth road trip to Adelaide with Dad in 1982 and we visited Broken Hill. This trip I'm about to do brings back memories of that trip. Paul and I were in charge of setting up our various campsites while Dad adjourned to the Pub.

So now thirty five years later Paul and I are revisiting a time and place that will have changed enormously. Out of my close family of six only Paul and I are alive to celebrate and remember times past. 

And we will be watching the shooting of the Tele series that is a remake of the classic Ted Kotcheff film of 1971. So we will be celebrating Dad's talent from a new perspective. A book that was published in 1961 being reimagined in 2017. That's a pretty special legacy Dad left us with.