The Wild West
Well, I've been far too busy gallivanting around southwest Qld to attend to mundane matters like writing blogs. It's been quite the trip down memory lane, visiting the tiny towns, walking the little river walks, and remembering what it's like to work in an office with hordes of noisy people having conversations and making phone calls. I got out of the office as quick as I could and off we went, my colleague and I, to the wild west.
There were lots of pubs in the wild west. Although this one was a once-was pub. There were plenty of right-now pubs, but they weren't as nice to look at. |
That was in Roma. There was another pub (or two) in Charleville.
This one wasn't as pretty, but it was a right-now pub. Which is a good thing if you're a pub person. |
Of course we had to work, but we squeezed in a few things around the edges of the days, like going for a walk along the river where a man sat fishing on a log while smoke curled lazily from a fire lit to keep him warm.
The weather in Charleville was decidedly South Australian, all grey and gloomy and spitting rain, but at the edges of the day the sun showed up and delivered a short but adequate sunset.
That'll do. |
West of Charleville we took a quick break at the Fox Trap Roadhouse at Cooladdie where, for the sake of wanting a sticky beak around the premises, I bought a breathlessly expensive snack and Colleague splurged on a fridge magnet for purposes of memorialisation (which may not be a word, but anyways...)
And then we were in Quilpie.
There was a pub (or three). Of course there was. |
We went to the pub for dinner. "We've only got footy food!" declared the proprietor enthusiastically.
"Oh?" said I. "Is there a football match on?"
He was horrified and appalled to the point of speechlessness. "It's the first State of Origin match!" he managed to splutter when he had found his tongue. I quickly abandoned my Queensland roots and claimed South Australian citizen-ship in order to claim plausible ignorance. Pub patrons chimed in and educated Colleague and I on the finer nuances of Qld/NSW football rivalry. We pretended to be interested. At least she had the excuse of having been born overseas.
In the morning I went walking out along the railway line which in places resembled a suspension bridge without the certainty of supporting anyone who walked on it.
Quilpie had not seen a train for quite some time. |
Careful for the spaces. |
West of Quilpie we were truly in the wild west. Teenage emus clustered under a tree, pretending to be bored as all teenagers do. We stopped to take photos and they ran away, all but one who stalked toward us until he had sufficiently proved his bravado and then he ran away too.
Toompine lay on the road south-west of Quilpie. It was a little bit like the Fox Trap except newer, because the old Toompine pub got all gobbled up by white ants. The new Toompine pub did a good job of blending the old and the new, and we were served by an Irish lass who had arrived exactly 24 hours prior and who could blame her if she looked a little shell-shocked by the experience so far?
In Thargomindah we reached our furthest point, the wildest west we could get, the edge of the electricity grid if that's your measure of civilisation. We had come so far, in fact, that I was half-way back to Adelaide. Not that I was going to drive back to Adelaide when there were perfectly good aeroplanes in the world even if I had to back track all the way to Brisbane to get on them.
Half way home and time to turn around. |
The cleaner screwed up her face and leaned on her mop. "It opens at 9 tomorrow morning."
That was no good to us. The starting edges of our day would be all used up by then. The cleaner hadn't finished though. "It shuts at 6 tomorrow. Then on Saturday it opens at 7 and shuts at 7. Same on Sunday except it shuts at 6. And on Monday it's 10 til 4, and on Tuesday...." And on she went. I don't think anyone in Cunnamulla knew when the spa was open for sure. I certainly didn't, and I was standing right in front of it. Dejected and unsoaked, colleague and I went off to the pub for dinner.
On the last day we drove home, which was the sensible thing to do, back to the not-so-wild not-quite-west. Not home to Adelaide, you understand, just home to work base: I had another week of pretending to be a proper office worker wearing proper office attire and feigning interest in office politics before I hopped on a plane to take the long way home.
Comments
Post a Comment