Wayside stops are those soporific spots where you veer carefully from the highway to a cement table and seat, a granite rubbish bin and lots of time if you care to take it.
They are roadside respites, parking bays in which we drop anchor to catch our motoring breath instead of driving ourselves mad just driving.
And certainly at this time of year. Take it easy—flourish your tea flask. Sit and soliloquise among the crumbs. The birds will love you. Your arteries will expand.
So pause, why don’t you? I’ve become connoisseur of rest areas. I’ve been resting round as long as I can remember. These days I’m doing about a litre of tea and half a kilogram of sandwiches to the parking bay.
I have also become interested in their ornithology because the magpies wait around me and the crows caw coquettishly, hoping for a crust. The rubbish bins, too, have an interesting archaeology of plastic and tin, card- board and tissue.
Some halts are spectacular with scenic views but some have just trees and a hot paddock behind the fence; but you may also become bewitched by the blue sky, the wandering, white clouds and the chances to tidy your thoughts.
We wayside stoppers are becoming a kind of cult; tea addicts of the highway, sips that pass on the right; ramblers of the radials.
Personalised number plates form an immediate conversational opening for wayside stoppers.
Coming from the Festival State I become festive and friendly even with people from the Garden State and we exchange a few sly digs.
We draw together defensively at the sight of the arrogant “The Premier State”, its occupants boasting about Nev Wran, the Bridge and the Opera House. We fire back with Bannon, Barossa and the Playhouse while the Victorians hit hard with their art centre and Lou Richards.
Yet we are not there to bicker and they soon drive off with a brief, placatory wave to be replaced by a Sunshine Stater bringing a breath of Bjelke and the Barrier Reef.
Then a car from the State of Excitement and the Fair Maid of Perth alighted from the driving seat. We asked about the Pilbara but she looked at me coldly when I said I was from the Festival State.
“Where are your balloons, playboy?” she cried. And went on her exciting way west.
But mostly we sit quietly sipping into our second cup and fondling our egg and lettuce. There is a dreamy wind through the mallee trees while the semi-trailers tyre-sing past, looking for helpless little motor cars.
When we see them pass the wayside stop we sit very still. Their drivers are the doyens of distances, the princes of prime movers. Our little car sweats quietly, through its sump. T
Soon sound returns to small things. A magpie comes and beaks a crust while a crow watches me intently.
My wife turns on the transistor. She wants to hear Dr. Hackett’s Body Program and to know about the beautiful construction of her kidneys.
She wants to get back to headline land; to the symphonic variations of daily living; onwards to waiting relatives, with a backlog of chat. So I mark one more place on my directory of wayside stops.
The magpies and crows are indifferent to our departure; they prefer station wagons swarming with children spurting pies and crumbling chips.
Farewell small oasis, silent cement table, stately granite bin. We’ve had our wayside pause.
Parting is such sweet sorrow especially when I know that out there in the bitumen jungle, sleepless and immense, the semi-trailers are waiting.
Max Fatchen