Driving Crazy
There’s something about driving that puts you in touch with a country
I went on a driving trip to Northern Iowa for Labor Day weekend, a little jaunt that took seven hours each way. For some this might be pushing the extreme of what they can endure in a car. For me? A little commute to visit relatives, something I’d done hundreds of times before. It got me thinking, though. After graduating from long-distance hitchhiking I became a long-distance driver. Not professionally mind you, just a guy who likes going places and felt at home behind the wheel of a car. Chicago to Florida? No problem. Chicago to Montreal and home by way of Virginia? Easy peasy. Chicago to California and back again? Done.
And there were the foreign rental car trips. Being an American, my reaction to driving about the English countryside was “Damn this place is small.” Oh there were some issues. Driving the left-side highways and motorways? No problem. Shifting a stick shift with my left-hand? Another thing altogether. Some of us are right-handed, but some of us are really right-handed. Worked out a system, though. I clutched. Babs shifted on cue from the passenger seat. Done.
Then there was navigation of the entire Northern island of New Zealand. Stopped in a place called Napier, the art deco capital of New Zealand, the first day out and went for dinner at a pub. “Are you here for the wine tours mate?” Huh? Wine tours? Who knew? “Well now I am. Where are the wineries?”
Spent an extra day driving about the countryside in an area formerly known for its horse farms, now known for its wineries. Tasted some lovely wines, most of which were not available in the U.S. Had nice chats with the vintners. It started raining and we gave a ride to a young Japanese woman who had been biking about the countryside tasting the wines. She was a bit confused about the deciduous trees having no leaves. “Why are all the trees dead?”
Then onward, north of Auckland, in search of the world’s largest kauri tree. Is that it? Maybe. Oh wait that one’s even bigger.
Twas a long and winding search, but we finally found the spot and hiked through the New Zealand forest to a tree clearly labeled, “World’s largest kauri tree.” Well glad we got that done. Now we could explore the big honking island continent of Australia, or at least a part of it.
Rented a tiny hatchback with the dealer’s instructions: “Don’t drive off the paved roads.” Well that didn’t last very long. Enroute to Daintree, we found ourselves on a gravel road winding through the Australian rainforest. The car began emitting a horrible squeal. Alone on a muddy road, I did what most men do, ignored it. Farther along, squeal getting louder, Babs, being less cautious about asking strangers for help, flagged down a couple of Aussies in a logging truck.
“Ah mate, you’ve just got a bit of gravel stuck in the brake pad. If you just back up briskly and slam on the brakes it should come out.”
Presto. Much thanks all around and onward we went to the rainforest retreat.
A short digression here. We signed up for a night hike and were told we might even see a cassowary. We’d seen pictures in a guide book of cassowaries and odd-looking though they might appear, we had no inclinationt that they might be dangerous. That is until our hiking guide advised us that if we encountered a cassowary we should lift our hats over our head because large, though they might be, cassowaries were birds and a bit stupid if your hat were over your head it would think you were bigger than it and wouldn’t attack. What? Turns out cassowaries are emu sized birds that can disembowel a person with their sharp spurs on their feet. Didn’t actually enounter any and was glad of it.
Having experienced the rainforest, south we headed to Townsville and promptly made a right turn to head off into the outback. The farther west we went, the more it began to resemble West Texas, flat and dry with sparse vegetation and little to see but miles and miles of miles and miles.
There I was cruising down a two lane blacktop in the outback wondering in my very American mind just how fast 130 km/hour was when I came over a rise in the road and in the middle of the road lay a very large, very sleepy lizard, sunning himself (or herself, as the case may be). Did I say 130 km/hour? That’s about 80 mph or so. I swerved as best I could and heard a bit of a sickening squish as I passed the spot where the lizard lay. As Babs tells it, I turned a whiter shade of pale. “I’m sure you missed it,” she offered.
Several hours later, having turned south, we passed a stand of trees and in the shadow of the trees stood a large canine beast. “Damn that’s a big, evil looking dog. Dog? Oops. That’s a dingo.” And said dingo was looking at us with a look that said, “Dont’ even slow down or you may be lunch.”
Next day, we got an early start the next morning. We’d been traveling for days by now and the one thing we hadn’t seen, alive at least, was a kangaroo. And I really wanted to see a kangaroo.
The sun was barely up and off we set on a two lane blacktop. After days of no kangaroos, suddenly there they were. Not one, not two, not three, but four big honking kangaroos came bounding across the road directly in front of our car. “Kangaroos!”
I was pumping the brakes. I swear one leapt over the hood into the brush on the side of the road. By the time Babs got the camera out, the roos had disappeared into wooded area on the side of the road. Kangaroos? Check. Onward! Time to go see some rainbow lorikeets.
For an American unaccustomed to perfectly ordinary Australian wildlife, it can be pretty strange. I’d seen cockatoos as pets or in zoos. Turns out they’re as common as dirt in Australia, hanging about just about everrywhere. God do they make an annoying lot of noise. The avian surprise, though, came when we were on a road to a scenic gorge and suddenly there was a rainbow explosion a flurry of color in flight. We had set to flight a flock of rainbow lorikeets, a species of smallish parrots that look like, well, like rainbows in flight. Exquisite!
Rainforest, outback, roos, dingos, birds, we had seen a lot of Australia from behind the wheel of a car. Had to wait until another trip to see koalas and swim with dolphins, but that’s another story. Anyway, we were arriving in civilization so before Sydney we had to do wine tours. Did it in New Zealand. Time to do it in Australia as well. The wine was fine. The land had become tame. We finally navigated the busiest of roundabouts and dropped the little rental car at the airport dropoff in Sydney. All in all, it seems that we had driven across Australia the equivalent of driving from Boston to Miami by way of Ohio. Did I tire of driving? Uh-uh.
There is a thing about driving across continents behind the wheel of a car. You’re in touch with the land, with its people, in a way that you aren’t when you fly over it, stopping in at various places and visiting the highlights. A Zen experience? I don’t know, but it works for me.
