I’m always worried by people who are slaves to road maps; who go directly from A to B without the slightest diversion.
I’m a misreader of maps, a wanderer down tracks and along quiet roads and I appear suddenly in people’s drives and farmers private lanes, stuttering my apologies as people race to lock up their tow band daughters and to slam the dairy door.
I only half listen to directions.
My wife says, “Shouldn’t we have turned left at that road?”
Or “Darling, aren’t we on the road to Pinnaroo?”
How would I know? I’m only the driver. I’m perverse that way. I have been lost in all the best places. I have wandered into little puzzled towns. I have run out of petrol, kilometres from anywhere, and have waited beside the road for the inevitable farm utility with a couple of dogs hanging over the side with wind-brushed ears and showing their rural fangs at this suspicious fellow in the big old trousers who is beckoning from the culvert.
Sometimes getting directions in the country is likely to send one deeper into the bewildering hinterland so that one could easily finish at Booleroo Centre or Smithfield.
It’s because I never read sign- posts. I am always looking somewhere else. This is one way to enjoy the countryside.
People are always telling me to get lost and I try my best.
One finishes sometimes at little pubs under pepper trees, places with counter lunches with a homely touch; or at country stores where they’ll heat the pasties for you.
Certainly I’ve never had a sense of direction, I have always gone every which way. I have even been lost in Gawler.
One reason I don’t like bus tours is their obsessive organisation and impeccable geographical knowledge. Sticking to the schedule; cheerful enough in the bus with the merry driver and the people who have just won last week’s bingo. There is soothing music and you might even have the dreaded singsong if you’re under a chatty charter.
That’s why I’m an uncharted traveller, soothed by the breathalysed breeze as I pour tea from our old vacuum flask with its silvered interior and its cracked plastic cup that leaks down my lower lip.
I sit in my folding flesh in my folding chair while my wife sorts out the neat heaps of sandwiches and I look at them and think: Here’s a couple who’ve made their pile.
Road side lunch under trees with their branches set in a blue background of sky with a foreground of willy-wagtails chittering insect gossip
This quiet road is not on the map. It is no doubt the responsibility of some council and in the ward of some earnest councillor who worries about its surface in his budgetary dreams. It is an all-weather road but only just. It has soft edges and a bumpy middle but peace lies on it and sleepy lizards absorb the last warm rays of autumn before winter has them sorting out their armoured underwear.
I find a roadside butterfly, a beautiful thing, orange with veined wings and there’s a grasshopper that leaps in a tiny frenzy of propulsion. What a wonderful way to escape your creditors?
Sun and shadow, bird and branch and one last tomato sandwich with thee beneath the bough.
More tea, dear? It’s restful here.
You’re dribbling again. It’s the plastic cup, dear.
Put a Band-aid on it, my love.
How quietly the day lazes away across the paddocks to the ranges leaning against the afternoon.
Old cows with long-service udders come to eye us and I thank them for their product as I add a little to my tea.
My wife is reading aloud from her book, some phrase she wants me to remember by someone I want only to forget.
The world will take us back soon enough. For I can hear the main road humming with ruthless energy.
“Wipe your chin,” says my wife.
I wipe it slowly before the curious cows and wish them well.
We arrive home eventually for finally I have remembered the way.
So what are you doing at the weekend? Playing some highly organised bowls match or going to eight-races at Morphettville or hauling your highly organised trailerboat to the crowded ramps.
Why not come and lose yourself with me? Miss a few turnings and then dream as we eat our tomato sandwiches. Why, you may even drink from the incredible cracked plastic cup by the road with soft edges where butterflies blaze and sleepy lizards hibernate, out of reach of Ronald Reagan, the Australian Swimming Union and even poor Dr Cornwall.
Max Fatchen