After we landed at Melbournes Tullamarine Airport around breakfast time 40 years ago we were greeted in the terminal by two men, Brian Jameson the coach driver - lanky, laconic, wiry light brown hair, broad Australian accent, fortyish - and Roger the cook and radio operator - well fed, rotund, black hair, cheeky grin, knockabout, thirtyish - and taken outside to stow our baggage in the lockers of a 16 tonne Australian Pacific Coach. We then drove out of Melbourne via the Keilor Road to connect with the Princes Highway heading towards Ballarat, while Brian explained the rules of the road trip and pointed out some sights along the way. We already had enough food supplies so that we could travel all the way to Perth, camping out and helping Roger prepare meals by the roadside during the day and wherever we stopped for the night. It was a fairly mild August day and mostly sunny, so we didnt stop until somewhere near the hills around Ararat for our first meal. Being teenagers who werent necessarily all together in one class or even in the same year we also started eyeing each-other off, making conversation here and there, and adjusting from being well away from our own homes and neighbourhood. My brother Jock was on trip, as were a number of classmates / acquaintances including Stuart Kidd, Mark Roberts, Dimity Paine, Lynelle McElroy, Sheenagh Francis and Peta Ruth State. I also knew some of those from brother Jocks year, as hes only a year younger than me - Bradley Price, Gary and Karen Blyth, Ann Bloxham, Paul and Paula Williams - by name, and some other familiar faces whose names I didnt know. I tried not to think about the sorry way I had felt when we left home early that morning, and how difficult things had been with Dad Jock.. After lunch near Ararat, we skirted the Grampians glowing in the hazy afternoon light and stopped late in the day in the Wimmera town of Horsham, which seemed deserted for such a sizeable regional centre - the locals were probably all out at the Aussie Rules ground. We then drove for a couple more hours and it was already getting dark and chilly by the time we arrived at a campground on a large sheep station on the plains between Bordertown and Keith. We pitched our tents and gear as fast as we could because within an hour of sunset there was heavy drew on the ground that later turned to frost during the night. We had our first barbecue and stayed close to the fire, roasting our faces while freezing our backs, talking and trying to warm up until we went to our various under canvas roosts. By then it was misty, still and quiet, and the ground felt like an ice-tray but we were mostly pretty comfortable on inflatable lilos. In the frigid early hours we were disturbed by a large flock of sheep who had decided to graze all through and around the tensts, startling us all with their nosiy bleating and their woolly aroma, and a few tents had to be re-installed because some of the sheep, in the confusion, tried charging through them. By then it was almost dawn, and even colder, probably a few degrees below zero celsius (we had just switched to the metric system in Australia earlier that year), so we got up, had a hasty breakast and returned to a misty Princes Highway on a still life winters day.
Posted on: Sun, 24 Aug 2014 06:54:46 +0000
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