T2 – 1

 


Nullabor from the helm of a "big yellow taxi",
 January 1998


I guess that’s how to write Tee Squared Minus One? You see Tee Unsquared never attained its potential. The diagnosis of the mighty chariot wasn’t exactly terminal, but it was something of an organ transplant. It sat there, not for weeks, but for precious days and dollars, and  T1 disappeared into memory’s shady crevices.


For those who know such things, it was the turbo, not the EGR. So far. But who knows the excitements that dwell ahead? But I’m sure there’s plenty of mechanics just hangin’ by the side of the road to Norseman, waiting for my chariot to limp in. Or be towed.

Yeah, right. Nullabor. No trees. No mechanics.

So yeah, T2 -1. Tomorrow probably around this time 24 hours away, long pre-sparrowfart, the journey begins. Today,  T2 -1, in borrowed chariots and time (but isn’t all time borrowed?) I’ll pick up the last supplies from the bustling fringes of the Big City. Revised plans mean that the next and only other Big City I’ll see will be Brisbane, and if God or God’s sub-gods grant me fair winds that will be about 13,932 kilometres from here. About. And a couple of thousand more before I’m here again.

Prognostications are serendipity. The six lost days already mean I have subtracted about 1800 kms from the agenda, but those were to be days in the Cities, where I’ve lived or stayed before, and around the Eyre Peninsula, which I’ve rounded before, and the Big South West Bump, too, where I’ve been before.

That was back in ’97. Several days in January, a Big Yellow Ford, and a mad dash to find a new life, new meaning. The Big Yellow Ford’s brakes failed on the Nullabor, that time, but who needs brakes on the Nullabor? It and I survived, and it became a black line on the map I’ve already posted. It included the Eyre Peninsula and the southern lump of South West WA. Esperance. Albany. I’ve had to excise them this time. I’ll turn right instead of left at Norseman. That’s a big turn, but made easier when I’ve done it before.

So that’ll be my 1800 kms and six days retrieved (God-willing).

In 24 hours I’ll be heading for the other Eyre. Lake Eyre. Kati Thanda. Because it’s there, and it’s not often both there and watery, so I’ll have to make a little once in a lifetime detour up the Oodnadatta Track.

For now? It’s the middle of a cold night as I type, and at last I’m daring to be excited. I’ll go back to my Book of the Night, currently Where the Crawdads Sing.

(Until now on this adventure I was reading Montaillou. That was deeply disturbing, but that’s a different “column.”)

Crawdads? A very different but equally edgy world. I’ll read myself back to happy sleep.

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