When they rose the next day the morning star was still shimmering off to the west. All three had terrible hangovers. The surf had dropped, and the waves were too small to ride, so they packed up the tent and continued their journey.
“Would you mind if we didn’t stay at Crescent tonight, and I booked us in at Scotts Head instead?” Mick surprised Phil.
“Why?” Phil asked.
“There’s someone who wants to kill me at Crescent Head.”
“Who?”
“This mad bastard, Mungers.”
“Why?”
“He reckons I ripped him off.”
“Did you?”
“I may have shortchanged him a little, but that’s the nature of the business we were in, Phil.”
“Past catching up with you?”
“Not really. I’d love to snot the bastard once and for all. Just trying to avoid a confrontation. Could be quite traumatic for D.C.”
“How considerate.”
“I know, always thinking of others, eh?”
“Rightio, then. Mick changes the plans again. Are you okay with that?” Phil asked Drew while making eye contact in the rear vision mirror. Drew shrugged his shoulders and went back to looking out the window.
Mick used his phone to look up the number of the caravan park at Scotts Head and booked a tent site. After passing through Nabiac, Mick asked Phil if they could leave the M1, drive through Taree on the old highway, and have breakfast. Drew had some music for the moment: Monday Morning Gunk by Radio Birdman. The song started out mellow, but as it picked up pace, Mick became animated. He was far more used to overcoming hangovers than the other two. Drew flashed back to forty years earlier, when they passed through this floodplain landscape of cow pastures and dilapidated farmhouses for the first time.
I was lying on my bed
Feelin’ like I was nearly dead
Got my soul on fire
Mama you can’t mean it
I was bleeding from my pride
I was bleeding from my eyes
Got my soul on ice
Mama you can cream it
Early morning rise
Got my guts in my eyes
Got my soul on fire
All right.
Phil pulled into a service station in Taree and topped up the petrol. Mick and Drew went into the sunny little cafe next door and ordered breakfast. After a quiet morning meal and multiple cups of tea and coffee, they explored the country town on foot. There were shops you’d never find on the new highway: a saddlery, a chandlery, a gun shop, and even a photographic store with a collection of vintage cameras in the window. Drew pointed out the same camera he had with him on their trip forty years ago; a Kodak Rettinette. He took photos of his friends with his iPhone as they wandered about.
Later, at South Kempsey, they turned left at Macleay Valley Way. The old highway brought back memories and seemed like a back road compared to the new three lane freeway. The white multi building dairy was still operational and black cows were packed tightly in a grassy field. As they passed the turnoff to the Slim Dusty Center, Mick told them about a visit he’d made to it in the early ‘90s.
“I was on Gold Tops with a chick from Byron who wanted to check it out.”
“You went in there on magic mushrooms?” Phil was incredulous.
“Yeah, it was like stepping into the past. I felt like I was wandering around inside his head. The great man was there in person, at least I think it was him. Everyone looked like Slim Dusty to me that day. Even the chick I was with, and kids and the sheep and Shetland pony out the back.”
“It’s incredible you’ve survived so long.”
“I’m like a fine wine, I continue to improve …”
“You’re more like a vintage cheese,” Phil cut him off.
“And you’re like that bottle of vinegar you swig every now and then, thinking it’s port.”
“I’m comfortable with that.” They both laughed.
Phil was secretly impressed by the craziness of Mick’s extended childhood. He thought about all the fun he had missed out on while taking life so seriously. They continued over the Macleay River and on to Frederikton, where Mick convinced the others to have a meat pie for lunch at Freddo’s Pies.
“I’m a pie a day man, when I can afford it,” he admitted to the others.
“That must stretch your finances. Still, good to splash out and treat yourself, eh?” Phil bagged him.
“You know, I worked out that I spend about a thousand dollars a year on pies.”
“Wow. So, you’ve factored your pies into your budget.”
“I suppose I have.”
Phil parked outside the boldly signposted pie shop and the three men spent a long while reading the expansive chalkboard menu. There were over twenty different types of pie, including the “world famous cherry pie”. Outside they sat on the wooden picnic table, scoffed their pies and gulped their chocolate milk like they were still teenagers.
“Can we go past the Clybucca crash site?” Mick asked Phil, over lunch.
“Why would you want to go there?”
“Me Auntie June died in that crash.”
“Holy crap, I didn’t know that mate. Wasn’t that the worst bus crash in Australian history?”
“Yep, in ‘89. Five years after our trip in ‘84, two months after the Grafton bus crash.”
“Cripes.”
“That’s why they built the new highway. Those two head-ons.”
“That’s right. I remember the furore. ‘Highway of Death!’ Gee, it took ‘em a while to finish it, eh?”
“Forty years.”
“Still, they’ve done a top job on it, not that you’d know from here.”
“She was on her way back to Sydney from visiting her son, my cousin Brian, in Brissy. Thirty-five people were killed, including Auntie June.”
“How did it happen?”
“They reckon one of the drivers fell asleep at the wheel.”
The Memorial Grove was little more than a small plot of native trees in the centre of a car park. There was a knee-high rock with a plaque on it, and Mick picked a red Hibiscus flower, laid it on the rock, bowed his head, mumbled a prayer, genuflected and crossed his heart. Phil saw him wipe the tears from his eyes before getting back in the car.
“Sorry, mate. Were you two close?” Phil inquired.
“Naa, I hated her guts. She was a cow. Massive alcoholic. Tear strips of ya if you did something wrong. But she was a cunny funt, I’ll give her that. Oh, and she took care of me when my folks didn’t – and me and Brian got on well.”
As they continued north, Drew played a song. Great Southern Land by Icehouse.
Standing at the limit of an endless ocean
Stranded like a runaway lost at Sea
City on a rainy day down in the harbour
Watching as the grey clouds shadow the bay
Looking everywhere ’cause I had to find you
This is not the way that I remember it here
Anyone will tell you it’s a prisoner island
Hidden in the summer for a million years
Great Southern Land.
Phil told Drew where they were going next. “Jenny asked me to drop you off at your grandfather’s place in Donnellyville for an hour. Mick and I will go down and set up at Scotts Head and then come and pick you up. Look up your grandpa in the book of photos Jenny gave you.”
Drew took the booklet of photographs from the cardboard box and read the back of each one until he found the one titled “Grandpa.” After his name was the description – My mother’s father. Always very nice to me, but not a big talker. His wife, my grandmother, Imelda, died five years ago.
Directed by Google Maps, Phil found Drew’s grandfather’s place with ease. Mick stayed in the car while Phil walked Drew up to the old farmhouse. Drew took his box of memorabilia with him, like a safety blanket, and Phil left him at the front door with his grandfather. Drew sat with his grandfather in almost complete silence. The grandfather clock on the wall made more noise than them. Had his grandmother been there the room would have been brimming with conversation, even though it would have been her that did all the talking.
Drew saw how dirty the place had become since the passing of his grandmother. There was a layer of oily dust coating everything, and it was obvious that the cups from which they drank their tea had not been washed properly. The Gingernut biscuit his grandfather gave him was so hard it was almost impossible to eat. Books and newspapers were piled all over the place; the indoor plants were a tragic symbol of the state of things, dead. After finishing their tea, Drew followed his grandfather onto the back veranda, where they sat in the sun. The wood of the veranda was rotting away, and the timber chairs they sat on were dangerously old. The once immaculately groomed lawn and vegetable patch were overgrown, and quilts of creeper vines laced over the fences, shed, and up the downpipe from the roof guttering.
Down on the coast, Phil set up their campsite, and Mick, speaking like he was in the army, asked Phil if it was alright if he took off for a while.
“Permission to be dismissed, Sir!’
“Go on, piss off, get outta here.”
Mick disappeared for about an hour and returned with red eyes.
“Just caught up with old mate, Scotty Scott.”
“You’re kidding, his name’s Scott Scott and he lives in Scotts head?”
“No one knows what his real name is, but his nickname is Scotty Scott.”
“Wow, that’s some genius stuff right there.”
Phil and Mick picked Drew up from his grandfather’s place and they returned to the campsite at Scotts Head. In Donnellyville, as Drew’s grandad put the cups in the sink, he saw on the windowsill the little black Matchbox car he had given Drew for Christmas in 1976. It was an Aston Martin DB5, a miniature replica of the vehicle James Bond drove in the film he took him to for his seventh birthday. His grandfather smiled sadly and put it on the mantelpiece above the fireplace, next to the photo of his wife.
Back down on the beach there wasn’t much surf, so they had an afternoon swim together. After their swim, they walked around the rocks. Mick was still quite stoned and spent a long time staring into rock pools at little fish, crabs, sea urchins, and seaweed. He’d spent a great deal of his life like this, stoned, floating around looking at sea life in rock pools. It was one of his favourite things to do apart from surfing, an escape from the world he didn’t understand. Phil watched him from where he was sitting with Drew and wondered what had happened to Mick that prevented him from growing up.
After Drew had taken his 6 pm call from Jenny, he handed the phone to Phil.
“Hey Phil, how’s it all going?”
“Everything’s going well, Jen.”
“Has Drew spoken much?”
“Not much.”
“Nor to me. But don’t worry. Sometimes I think he’s just brooding.”
“I can imagine how pissed off he is, but he doesn’t mention it. I tell you what, though, he’s a bloody genius at picking songs to suit the moment.”
“He’s always been great at that. Mick always said he should have been a D.J.”
“I know, but I encouraged him to be a baker. You don’t suppose all those early mornings did something to his brain?”
“No one’s to blame Phil. It’s just one of those things.”
“One of those shitty things.”
“You also encouraged him to join the surf club and look how much he got out of that. He’s saved hundreds of people’s lives.”
“Yeah, he’s a bloody legend. It just tears me up, that’s all.”
“I know.”
“Anyway, it’s dinner time, better feed and water the kids.”
“I bet you’re spoiling them.”
“I feel like par-boiling Mick sometimes.”
“I can imagine. Oh, are you okay to go past Penny’s place in Bellingen tomorrow? She’ll be at home all day.”
“Yeah, it’s on our itinerary.”
“Thanks for everything, Phil.”
“No worries, speak soon, Jen.”
After showering and having an early dinner, Mick pulled out the bag of weed he’d bought from Scotty Scott. The other two watched Mick take a clean bowl and some nail scissors from his toiletry bag and deftly chop up a big bud. He then cooked a cigarette with his lighter until it was black with soot and mixed the two ingredients. It was like witnessing a tradesman who had served his apprenticeship in the dark arts. Mick took three Tally Ho papers from the packet and licked and glued them together. When he lit the big joint, a perfect song started on Drew’s portable speaker. The Boys Light Up by Australian Crawl. Mick wondered again whether Drew really had lost his memory or if he was exaggerating his suffering for sympathy. He hoped it was the latter but knew better.
I was heading for my mountain home
Where all the ladies’ names are Joan
Where husbands work back late at night
Hopes are up for trousers down
With hostess on a business flight
Taxi in a Mercedes drive
I hope that driver’s coming out alive
The garden is a dorseted
That lady, she’s so corseted
She’s got 15 ways to lead that boy astray
He thinks he’s one and only
But that lovely, she’s so lonely
She pumps him full of breakfast and she sends him on his way
What a sing-song dance
What a performance
What a cheap tent show
Oh, no, no, no, no, no
Then the boys light up
Then the boys light up
Then the boys light up
Then the boys light up, light up, light up.
Chapter Five of Highway One – The Mix Tape Reunion, will be available next week:
For $25, including postage. Just DM me on Facebook or email me at [email protected]
