Recently, I decided it would be an interesting thing to do if I was to go and visit my sister at her place of work. Her place of work just happens to be a mine site at Leinster which is approximately 1000 km's from Perth.
Not trusting my car to make the journey on less than about 5 litres of oil I decided to rent a car for the journey. As an added bonus instead of driving my little rust bucket 2000 km's in the space of 3 days, I get to tear along the highway in a Falcon with the stereo and air conditioning cranked right up. Needless to say, I think I enjoyed the drive a lot more in the rental car.
There is one thing that needs to be said about the Australian outback. And please excuse my language when I say... "F*ck is it BORING!". The optimal way to travel in the Australian outback is to blind fold yourself and only allow yourself a 30 second peek every hour or so. This allows you to get a glimpse of every different type of scenery and gives you a good enough view to know that you don't want to watch the 59 minute and 30 second transition to the next type of scenery. Unfortunately if I had adopted this policy, it would have been a slow and dangerous journey because I was the one who was driving.
I also have a warning for those who have never driven to Kalgoorlie before. About half way between Southern Cross and Coolgardie, there is a sign pointing off the road saying "Scenic View". You'll know the one if you go past it. It's the only one for 50 km in either direction. Foolishly, I thought to myself it's been a long drive, I'll go and have a look. The only thing that is there is a couple of bins and a huge great rock. You're immediate assumption is that if you climb to the top of the rock, you will get a most impressive view of something. The only thing you can see from the top of the rock is a bit of a salt pan, lots of trees and the ever increasing cloud of flies clustered around your head on account of you being the only person for 50 km's in any direction.
The drive to Kalgoorlie was uneventful. I got there, organised a place to stay for the night, went into the centre of the town, walked around a bit, bought some dinner (Chicken Treat - Kalgoorlie isn't that uncivilised) and went back to the motel to read my book. I awoke early the next morning to start the next leg of my journey. I think it was about 8 am (Hey, this is Sunday we are talking about). Pulled out of Kalgoorlie and headed north up to Menzies where I stopped for breakfast. There are certain things you expect and some you don't. When you are in the middle of nowhere and you stop at a roadhouse in a town of approximately 90 people, the last thing you expect to see is an Intellect keypad like you find in Coles, so I made a point of using it. Breakfast was good and I bought a Choc Wedge for the road. This was a mistake. You only realise a bit of the chocolate fell off when you discover the melted remains all over your clothes.
While cruising north along the road, I had a large number of road trains go past in the other direction without incident. Finally one of them showered me with a hail of small pebbles that it was leaking out the back, putting a couple of chips in my windscreen. Needless to say I was not impressed realising that this was probably going to cost me money as it was a rent a car. I arrived in Leinster, met up with my sister, got a tour around the mine site, concluded that $65,000 a year definitely isn't enough to be stuck there driving trucks 70 hours a week, had lunch, and left. Yes it's true. I spent 20 hours driving to and from Leinster just to spend 2 hours there. And people thought I was sane! On the way back it got darker and darker. This was an ominous warning that night was approaching. From my long life, up in the hills, I can tell these things. The approach of night has lots of little tell tale signs that the experienced bushperson can pick up on. I knew this was bad because I wasn't going to be back in Kalgoorlie before dark (Insert spooky music here). It finally happened when I had just passed through Menzies. An hour to go until I was back in Kalgoorlie. The flow of events went something like this. "Uh-o.. THUNK!" Where the time span of those events was about 1/2 a second. And it's true. It does take you a second to react. My foot never came off the accelerator and my hands never moved on the steering wheel and a second after I hit it, I said "F*CK!". The stupid kangaroo had decided that it would cross the road while it could see where it was going. It ended up sticking its head in front of my right headlight while I was going 110 km/h and consequently used the side of its head to smash my right indicator, render low beam on the right headlight virtually useless and then used its shoulder to do some panel damage down the right hand side of the car. But it was a rental car! So instead of my car being destroyed it was someone else's car. Except that I end up paying the first $500 of any damage (and we all know how long $500 takes to achieve) and I don't get any momentous of my very first roo strike.
So, the moral of the story? Well I should have stuck to my original game plan, had no life and spent the weekend in at work on the net like I usually do! I would have been many dollars better off, got a lot more done (well that is debatable) and Skippy wouldn't be crow food! Next time someone tells you to "Get a life!", tell them Skippy doesn't deserve it!