The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #168402 Message #4074356
Posted By: rich-joy
05-Oct-20 - 01:19 AM
Thread Name: Mudcat Australia-New Zealand Songbook
Subject: RE: Rise Up Mudcat Songbook - Australia
Sandra posted a couple of Greg Hastings songs above, and I remembered this one :
NULLARBORING PLAIN
Written while driving across the Nullarbor in a Diatsu 500cc Handy Van
CHORUS Curse the blessed highway that's been going on for miles Across the Nullaboring Plain the lonesome traveler drives Counting cans and gum trees there isn't much to choose But the skeletons of burnt out cars and flattend kangaroos.
You've loaded up your roof racks, supplies aare stacked and stored You take along your best cassettes to stop from getting bored. Maybe you've a friend or two in your car or your can or your truck But by the time you get to Eucla mate you won't give a ..... damn.
CHORUS
You start off waving at the cars you meet along the track And then you give up hoping you ever will wave back You get so flaming bored that to stop yourself from sleep You start waving at the cows, the birds, the signposts and the sheep.
CHORUS
If by chance you break down with a station miles away There'll be no need to panic as on your knees you pray You'll never be very lonely no matter how hard you tries Cos you've always got the company of sixty million flies.
CHORUS
If you like your fauna as you're driving on your way There's very little of it if you're driving in the day You may just catch the odd roo or rabbit in the rough But they're usually quite motionless and absolutely stuffed.
CHORUS
Then at night they jump you and they'll give you quite a scare You'll even see them moving when they're never there Still you've got those insects, whose guts just must be seen And you've got the time to watch it as it spreads across the screen.
CHORUS
There's roadtrains to the left of you, roadtrains to the right Things can get quite hairy when you're driving in the night They look like giant Christmas trees as they cut off every bend But you'll wind up like a fairy with one stuffed right up your end.
CHORUS
And when at last you get there be it Perth or Sydney town A sense of great achievement no doubt you will have found You may be tired and sweaty, your back all stiff and sore But at least you've got your sticker says you've crossed the Nullarbor.
In 2020, it is a roughly 3935 kilometre (or 2445 mile) journey, on Highway 1, taking maybe 41 hours with shared driving. Apparently.
Most West Aussie Baby Boomers would have done the overland trip along the old Eyre Highway (and many of us, more than once) in the ‘bulldust’ days, long before all the roads were sealed and vehicles were air conditioned. Where you had to carry jerry cans of spare fuel and water – just in case. The roads were mostly long, hot, dry, dusty tracks (until it rained, when it was slippery mud) - covered in potholes (if large and hit at speed there goes your front end), teeth-rattling corrugations, and limestone outcrops to shred the tyres of the tired and unwary, with mostly only the occasional truck-cum-roadtrain for fleeting company (or sometimes a Speleo Expedition of cavers, as the land is littered with huge underground cave systems and sinkholes). And the road just went on for Bloody Miles and Miles!! Great fun. The only relief was stopping at the bore water tanks where you could sluice off the grime with hot - very salty – undrinkable water. I recall my Aunt and Uncle, then resident in Tasmania, visiting their Perth families in the mid 1950s - with 3 kids under 5, in a small sedan car. And they did it again a few years later, with an extra child! West Aussies (and Returned Soldiers), sure were built tough!!
I’ve now a mind to revisit some of the books written about the early post-WWII journeys undertaken (like by Ion Idriess), and about the famous Redex trials that started in 1953 (with drivers like “Gelignite Jack” Murray and Jack Brabbham), and films of which excited everyone so much at the local flicks!