[Editors Note: In an unprecedented grovel I'm beginning this post with an apology to all those who believed me abducted or absconded! The Outback of Australia turned out to be the most impossible region to achieve any internet time - not least because Reb and I are too tight to pay the $30 to stay in a caravan park, ergo rarely even have electricity for the laptop (and you try asking where the nearest Internet Cafe is in Willabongadongdong!). Needless to say, over the next few weeks as I descend on Perth I will be typing up a mountain of notes and bringing you up to speed. OK, grovel over - here's the latest, entitled 'Highway to Hell']:
Highway to Hell
I had it all planned. A clever tribute to the Outback, laden with full stops in place of traffic lights; commas leading you up highways; exclamation marks to record calamities; and semicolons for side trips (and brackets to let you in on the local secrets). I was going to carefully pull over at paragraphs, use capital letters to signal the beginning and a trail of… to pull you to a stop. The title? Gone Walkabout. The beginning? I start the engine. The middle? I push the accelerator. The end? I push the brake. Oh, how wrong could I be. Australia’s lineal highways have stripped me of the literary curves and swerves I usually prune, and reduced me to the arrow straight, tell-it-like-it-is truth. The sparsest, remotest… most soul-sapping… nothingness you have ever seen. Roads so straight they send you round the bend! Continue reading ‘Highway to Hell’
