White Lines, Headlights and Black Tar Rivers October 16, 2008

So…we are on our way.

Leaving Perth was more of an ordeal than any of us could have expected. On the eve of a full moon, we packed up The Funbus and The White Knight, for what has been a hugely anticipated trip. Whilst I spent time checking tyres and boxing up supplies, Patchouli was having an interesting conversation with the bank manager who had managed to send her ATM card to the wrong address. Any seasoned traveller (or indeed anyone with half a brain) knows that without access to one’s funds, the trip can’t happen. Eventually she arranged to have a new card sent to Geralton – a town that previously we had decided to travel through on day one or two without much more than a cursory glance and perhaps a little lunch. These new developments meant that we were going to have to travel to this point both later and for longer than we had planned, however, with much enthusiasm, we simply changed the plan…it was after all, not a plan set in stone.

So here I sit in Dongara, around 65 km form Geralton, under a full moon typing a blog for which I have no internet connection in order to post; but considering how I got here, this is the least of my concern. After the bank shenanigans, which were hyper-stressful for Patchouli, we eventually found the road beneath our tyres and headed for the outskirts of the city.  Filling up with fuel, some funny bastard thought he would nod at Patchouli’s [brand new] tyre and comment “you know you’ve got a really big screw through your tyre there don’t you, love?”.  Only he wasn’t a funny bastard. In any case, he wasn’t joking.

It was 5pm.  We raced to Patchouli’s “tyre guy” and she smiled and batted her [extraordinarily long by the way] eyelashes until he willingly replaced the tyre in a speedy pit stop style.  Unfortunately, we were already 5 hours behind schedule before we had even encountered this particular spanner screw in the works, so we were pushed for time as to where we should make our first stop.

After a short phone call and a dinner gleaned through the power of Drive Thru (despite the plethora of health food aboard both the Funbus and The White Knight alike), it was arranged that we stay at a friends’s property just outside of town, full of the wonders of country life for the children to feel that we were “on our way”, including horses and chickens, blue tongued lizards and snakes; close enough for us to reach and organise the beds in the car/bus before both the adult members of the party fell asleep in a heap from the exhausting nature of the day; on our way North on the Brand Highway; but most importantly, a friendly sanctuary where, incidentally we were all spoiled rotten with cooked breakfast and teas and coffees at the very hint of thirst.

So the next day we drove with nothing more than the excitement of knowing that we were on the road, finally; with no plan except to turn around at Coral Bay…probably; with the sun beaming down on us so hard that my right arm is already browner than my left; with the notion that anything is possible, we just have to want it badly enough. So here I sit. Wanting a night’s sleep like never before, yet longing for the morning as though I was a child on christmas eve.