Every time I return to Australia I am in a sense going home. Not just to the place I once lived and where my parents still live, but to the time I once lived. My trips every year are awash with nostalgia, and even though I seem to do – and see – the same things every year it’s never quite enough. It’s as if my true destination is always out of reach. I don’t just want to be in Australia. I want to be in the Australia of my past: The Australia I left behind.
Imagine if magic was real, and by some awesome circumstance I was granted a single wish. Suppose, for that wish, I decided upon the following:
“I want to borrow a car that drives backwards in time.”
I’d use this car to drive all the way around Australia. Only I wouldn’t end up where I started, I’d end up where I started.
I’d set out from Newcastle, in early January of 2015, heading North. About twenty days until Darwin I’d figure, mostly on Highway 1. That’s 3.5 hours of driving a day. The car handles beautifully, and is fantastically equipped. It’s a Sandman, with a painting of a surfer on the side. It should blend in well.
I get as far as Kempsey the first day. I’ve been here before, many years earlier, but don’t remember any of it. I buy supplies at the local supermarket (the car has a fridge), book a room at a small hotel and spend the night playing Puzzle & Dragons on my phone. I’m tired after the driving, and fall asleep quickly. When I wake, it’s January 2014.
I buy the paper and read it over breakfast. Everything seems strangely familiar, but then 2014 was just yesterday wasn’t it? I send some texts and get replies. I tweet something innocuous like “Happy New Year!” It feels just like 2015. I continue driving.
I don’t even know the name of the town I stay in that night. I eat dinner in a pub, and talk to some old guys about the past. I ask them what they expect from 2014, but they think I mean about them. One says he hopes he lives to see 2015. At the rate he’s drinking, I doubt he will. When I climb into bed that night I wonder who slept in my room exactly a year ago, before realizing it was me. Puzzle & Dragons no longer works, so I read a copy of People magazine before the clocks ticks over into 2013.
I get a late start and the year is half-way over before I hit the road. I drive all the way to The Gold Coast, arriving after dark. I find a hotel, flop onto the bed and sleep into the past.
I’ve wanted to visit The Gold Coast my whole life, and chuckle at the thought I apparently got here a few years ago! It’s a tourist trap but I love it, and spend a lot of time walking the beaches and visiting souvenir shops. I like it so much I decide to spend two days here, but when I wake in 2011 the floods have put a pall on activities. I walk around in the rain a while, knowing everything will eventually be alright, but end up watching coverage on TV like I had years ago. In the afternoon I send some postcards, realizing as I post them that they have already arrived. Did you get one?
Late that day I set out. My hotel had been palatial and I had eaten well. Brisbane wasn’t far and the roads were speedy. I listened to cricket on the radio and wondered what I was doing in Newcastle as I drove. I think about calling mum and dad but decide I had better not in case I answer the phone myself. I consider that this was the year I graduated, which is something I consider a milestone in my life. I realize this trip is another.
I pull into Brisbane just after midnight. The clerk seems surprised when I ask him the date, and then more-so when I ask him the year. It’s 2010. Apparently I don’t have to be asleep for it to work. It’s been almost a week since I would wake in the same year I fell asleep.
Brisbane is beautiful but I feel a pull farther northward, or rather a pull from the past, and hardly see the city as I depart. I realize as I continue north that the twenty-first century doesn’t see as interesting as it had been. I spent all of 2010 driving to Rockhampton, and then press on up the coast, year-by-year, spending every night in tiny hotels in small seaside towns until I reach Cairns in 2006.
I’ve never been this far North. The driving has been surprisingly easy: the car doesn’t ever need refueling, the air conditioning is arctic and the seats impossibly comfortable. Every time I stop I refill the fridge with Curly Wurly’s and Lift and there’s always a bag of Cheese & Onion chips on the passenger seat. The back seats are full of newspapers and magazines, all of which have impossible dates on them. The windows are tinted but not too much and I wonder what someone would think if they looked in. My phone lost signal days (years?) ago, but it still works as a camera and I snap photos everywhere, being careful to hide it from onlookers. Somewhere I’m 34 I think as I eat fish and chips for dinner. I feel that age now, but the mirror on the sunshade proves I’m still 42. I treat myself to a movie after dinner: Star Wars Episode III. It’s been years since I saw it in the cinema. I love it.
The sun rises on 2005 and I visit an internet cafe to get some information. I’m about to start the long haul to Darwin and need to consider practicalities. I had brought thousands in cash with me (knowing the credit card wouldn’t work a day or two out of Newcastle) but soon enough the plastic notes wouldn’t be accepted. It takes me a while to find a money changer, who eyes me suspiciously when I buy thousands in US dollars. I buy supplies for two weeks on the road and a camp bed. I go to a surf shop and buy a floppy black Rip Curl hat, which I hope I’ll keep forever. I’m in a bookstore and remember David Gemmell is still alive, and buy a library of his books to read on the road. I probably haven’t read some of these since 2006.
Driving west from Cairns is like driving into the unknown. The roads are long and empty, and there are no towns. Darwin is almost two weeks away and most of those nights will be spent on my camp bed. I resist the urge to press on and drive nonstop. I’m in no rush actually, and it’s strangely reassuring to spend the years after 2001 in isolation. I’m very aware as the years spiral past that the world was changing, and perhaps not for the better. I’m glad to be heading in the other direction.
The radio works surprisingly well considering where I am. In fact it works too well, since it seems to be able to pick up transmissions from anywhere. I spend hours listening to music from many countries, and instead settle on an 80s channel out of New Zealand. The DJs talk of recent events like they just happened but to me they are distant memories. I press on and drive into the Northern Territory late in 1998. It’s still years to Darwin.
Five years to be precise. Five more nights spent sleeping next to the car, listening to foreign radio and eating beans and Maggi noodles. I’m sick of water and chips and chocolate and need some meat, so the day before Darwin I stop at one of the first pubs I’ve seen in years and eat everything they have. It’s 1994, I’m 22 somewhere and a decade seems to have just passed me by. There’s only a few hundred people in this town, and no shops to speak of. I suddenly wish I was in Sydney, or Newcastle. I know I am in America.
I empty the trash from my car. A girl watches me closely. I wonder if she is interested in the fact that the logos on all the food seem fake (in truth they haven’t been designed yet), but eventually she asks me where I got my thongs. She means my Crocs. I tell her ‘Brisbane’ and she nods. I wonder what she may have said if I had told her they hadn’t been invented yet. When I get to Darwin I need to buy new clothes. I need to buy many things.
I spent the last of my plastic money at the pub. I buy everyone a round, and then I buy them all dinner and gas for their cars as well. I wonder if they wonder why, but no-one asks. I find a plastic $100 in my wallet on which I had scrawled ‘1996’. It’s play money now, so I put it in the glove box. I drive an hour or so up the road toward Darwin pull out my bed and lie down under the stars. The sky is crystal clear. I think there may be a space shuttle up there somewhere. I curse myself for not bringing a history book with me for reference. I’ve become too accustomed to looking things up on the web, which is still in its infancy.
I wake early and drive on, resisting the urge to stop at every little shop and scan the shelves. I spy a bookstore and make a note to visit the next day on my way out, and eventually pull into the nicest hotel I can find. It’s before noon in 1993. I go to the TAB for a reunion with Adam, who I knew was up here in that year. I find him, he’s very young. He’s very suspicious at first, but then realizes it really is me. We go and get something to eat and I tell him incredible things. I show him my phone and explain that everyone will have one one day. He boggles. I tell him I’ll see him again soon (which I know is true) and then go and relax in my room, watching The Noise until 1992, at which point I am fast asleep.
The next full day I spent restocking in Darwin. It will be a long drive around the northwest coast to Perth. I go to the bank and exchange my US dollars for a fortune in (paper) $20 dollar bills. I foolishly kept a few plastic $50’s and stuff them in the glove box with the $100. It hardly matters, everything is so much cheaper now than I’m used to. I buy clothes and food and many game books from the bookstore I saw on the way in. I go to a shopping center and wander around. This is the first time the surrealism of this trip overcomes me. I find an arcade and watch them install some new games. One is Street Fighter 2. I play the first game and beat it immediately, and the employees are stunned. I walk on and find a newsagent and buy every game magazine I can find. I haven’t read Zzap 64! in decades, and look forward to buying a copy every year.
But that won’t happen I know, since I’m heading out on roads that drive through nowhere. The girl in the NRMA office tells me Perth is about 50 hours drive away. I want to do that in less than ten years. She’s wearing a Kurt Cobain t-shirt and I think again of Gemmell, and all the other heroes still alive. I estimate she’s about 25 which makes her older than me. For the first time in my trip I want to stop. I want to go back. I can’t though, this is A Contract. I’ve only half-way done, with 20 years to go.
I set out for Broome, on the northwest coast, driving from sunup to lunch and resting in the afternoons. The roads are mostly empty, and what traffic I see are 4WD or large tourist busses. When I set out my car got a lot of attention from people, but by now it’s mostly ignored, although I can’t help but wonder what other motorists think of seeing a Sandman driving on such isolated roads. The heat is intense, but the fridge in my car and my camp stove means I eat well. I arrive in Broome only 3 days after Darwin, in 1988.
This is a tourist town, full of people and bats. The beaches are beautiful and I go on a cruise. The boat is full of Japanese tourists, and one couple speaks good English. I explain I’ve been to Japan many times, but am vague about when and where. Heading back to the hotel later I see a group of kids wearing school uniforms and remember I’m still in school thousands of kilometers away myself. The TV only has two channels, and the local newspaper doesn’t print a guide. I leave it on ABC until I realize Dr Who isn’t on tonight, then switch it over to the local channel and watch The Flying Doctors.
When I wake in 1987 I realize I’m in the best decade again, albeit in the middle of nowhere! I have a strange need to buy stuff and listen to stuff and watch stuff, but Perth is years away. At the pub I get some advice from a bus driver on the fastest route, and reckon I can make it in 3 days. The car is impossibly – almost magically – comfortable so that’s no problem. I fill up again on supplies and head southwest.
As I drive I imagine myself on the other side of the country. I’m only 15, in high school, a whole life ahead of me. I imagine myself sitting around playing The Sacred Armor of Antiriad while listening to a-Ha. I remember the last thing I’d want to do at that age was drive from Broome to Perth but right now it seems like exactly the right thing to do. When I pull over and set up my little camp every night it could be any day of any year. I find ABC TV on the radio and listen to an episode of Dr Who late at night before sleep. It’s Jon Pertwee and somewhere on Earth I know he’s still alive. The thought makes me happy.
The advice the bus driver gave me was good, and I pull into Perth late at night in 1985. I don’t want the year to end, but the shops are closed and I have enough trouble finding a hotel. I end up booking a luxurious room for what feels like a bargain to my future money. I can’t even find a restaurant and eat a bag of chips in the pub for dinner. I idly play a poker machine while listening to the guys in the pub talk about how Aussat will make their phone calls cheaper. They don’t mean cell phones. In my room before bed I read the newspaper since all the channels have ended for the day.
1984 was a great year, and is again. Perth seems to have a lot to see and do, but I spend the year in bookstores and toystores and video arcades and (after some searching) a game store. Many things are purchased, including over a dozen Game & Watches. At a Woolworths I spend too much time playing Jet Set Willy on the demo C64, and briefly consider buying it. I had lunch in McDonalds and it tasted like my youth. I went back for dinner but it was closed, and ended up buying a massive order of fish and chips and shared it with seagulls in the park. I watched Monkey on TV (in black and white), and then played City Of Thieves until I fell asleep.
My next major stop would be Adelaide, at least 4 days drive. The southern coast was much more populated than up north, and I knew my days of sleeping under the sky were likely behind me. When I leave Perth in 1983 the sun is shining (as it has every day) and there is a smile on my face. I now know I will complete this trip on time, and I’ll always remember the experience. I drive to Kalgoolie and spend the afternoon in a gold-mining museum. I buy some postcards but can’t think of the addresses of anyone I could send them to. The lady at the post office helps me though, and I send one to my Nan in Hamilton, telling her I miss her. Postcage costs 16 cents. I eat in a pub. The barmaid wears a Joy Division shirt, wears glasses and has green painted nails. For this part of the world she’s ahead of her time. As I fall asleep in the room upstairs I realize no-one seems to have dyed hair or tattoos.
Breakfast is in the same pub. It’s now 1982, and as I eat the same barmaid arrives for work, wearing a Spandau Ballet shirt. I feel mischievous, and strike up a conversation, telling her about a great band called Joy Division. She thinks I’m creepy so I return to reading the newspaper. Charlie’s getting married at last, apparently. I doubt it will last.
As I leave to get into the car, and for the first time on my trip, I see another Sandman, and I wonder exactly when the car was released. Hopefully more than ten years from now, else things may get uncomfortable. The one parked two down from mine has R2-D2 and C-3Po painted (badly) on the side and a home made number plate which reads ‘THEFORCE’. I imagine the owner would get a kick seeing the inside of mine, as I pull out of Kalgoolie and spend a very long day driving to the edge of the Nullabor Plain. I collapse in a tiny bed in a tiny hotel in a tiny town, sleep like the dead, and leave early in 1980 realizing I never even knew the name of the place. I drive the featureless Nullabor Plain, listening to a ‘Die besten neuen Hits‘ radio station out of Berlin and make it to the town of Ceduna before lunch. It’s 1981.
Ceduna is tiny and has a beautiful beach. The locals are friendly and I have dinner with an older guy who works at the radio telescope. He cuts his pie into tiny pieces before eating it and talks excitedly about SETI and aliens being contacted within ‘our lifetimes’. “Not mine, and certainly not yours” I think, but I smile and buy him another drink. He’s impressed with my t-shirt, which I bought back in Darwin (in ’92) and has a print of a mermaid on it. I realize the print quality is too good for this time, and make a note to buy some new clothes. I sleep in an airy room with a beach view, and it costs me only $8. With just the cash I have with me, I could live here comfortably for years.
I make a decision the next day, in 1980. I will skip the rest of the southcoast – Adelaide, Melbourne and Tasmania – and head directly for Sydney via Canberra. At four hours of driving a day I could be in Sydney in 1976. I drive to Port Augusta and arrive before lunch. The heat is scorching but the sea breeze is cool. I buy a risque postcard (which have become increasingly common) and file it away since I have no-one to send it to yet. There is a fair on in town, and I buy an Star Wars showbag which contains nothing much related to the film. Eating my fish and chips for lunch, I chuckle at an ancient article in the newspaper that had been used to wrap the food predicting where Skylab may fall. Of all things I go rollerskating in the afternoon, and am easily the oldest person on the rink. My knees ache after a few minutes, and I reckon my 8-year-old self over in Newcastle could skate rings around me. I take off the skates, buy a pluto pop, and play Space Invaders until dark.
The next day I drive through the bush for a few hours until I – surprisingly – find myself in fields of grapes. I’m in Victoria now, in wine country. I stop in Mildura and eat chicken for lunch. Fast-food restaurants don’t seem to exist any more, and most of my meals these past few days have been in pubs. The lollies and chips and soft-drink I’m eating on the road haven’t changed except in the packaging. I toss some aluminium cans into a garbage can and wonder if anyone will find them strange. I have no interest in wine (or beer), which seems to amuse the barman, but he gives me a coke anyway. It will be a week or so before I can say ‘diet coke’ again. There’s a petrol station next to the pub so I wander in to buy some Polly Waffles and end up walking out with a Smurfette t-shirt and almost 70 packs of Star Wars trading cards. I put the shirt on and stash the cards in a box in the back of the van, with everything else. Tonight I’ll stay in an old estate hotel, and dinner is communal. I sit with a family from Queensland, who find it hard to believe I’m driving around Australia. They have a son who is about 13 and obsessed with Star Wars. Later, after dinner, I interrupt his predictions about what will happen in ‘the next film’ (all wrong, by the way) and grab most of the cards from the car and give them to him. He beams. I go to bed and wake in 1978.
I set out early as usual, stuffing down Polly Waffles and Juicy Juice for breakfast as I drive all morning to Wagga Wagga. I see kangaroos, cockatoos and locusts on the road, and as I stop to pee in a small town my car draws altogether too much attention. This concerns me slightly, but I find a rock station on the radio and when The Skyhooks come on I stop caring. It’s a long drive and when I arrive I’m too tired to do much but wander around looking for dinner. A chipper serves my needs and I book a room in a surprisingly nice motel. I laze by the pool, watching some kids playing Marco Polo and and smile as a young man tries to impress a girl with talk of digital watches. My room doesn’t have a TV so I go to watch the black-and-white in the common room but end up playing pool with a suspicious American who won’t talk about his past. He beats me soundly, but my loss of a $2 note feels like garbage money. I idly play pinball until my eyes hurt then go to bed.
I’m torn the next day: should I detour to Canberra? I only had 3 days left on my trip, and Newcastle was only two long days of driving away. I decide to skip Canberra and head directly to Sydney. Traffic, which has been mild (almost nonexistent) for much of my trip starts becoming a problem, and I don’t arrive in the CBD until afternoon. Everything looks different, in particular the absence of most of the skyscrapers I am used to. I drive down to the Quay and book the best room in the room with the best views, and even then it’s only a couple of hundred dollars. The porter looks at my Smurfette t-shirt with disdain, and the fact I have no luggage and arrived in what looks like a clown’s car raised more than a few eyebrows. But my money is good and I splash it around. It’s 1977, I’m Sydney and suddenly (relatively) wealthy. Time to have some fun!
I visit the shops (but buy nothing) walk through the park and then gardens around to the Opera House. Everything is dirtier than I remember it, and The Rocks seems positively dangerous as I walk across to the bridge. The fumes from the cars as I cross to the north side almost overcome me, and Luna Park is dirty and frankly a bit scary. I take a ferry back across the harbour and eat like a king in my room: pie and chips, washed down with coke. The hotel has no gift shop, so I duck into the train station for lollies. I sit on my balcony watching the lights come on as night falls on Sydney, and then go to a nearby pub and talk with depressed businessmen about their hometowns. I know a little about nostalgia, and understand how they feel.
The next day I just wander around the city some more, amazed by the fashions and the (lack of) technology. The grand department stores are bustling, and I linger in the international food departments eyeing the unusual sweets. I buy a gigantic lolly snake for later and eat lamb chops for lunch (hold the mint sauce). I’m so used to this city but it seems so small, and not particularly welcoming to a tourist. It’s also far less multicultural than I know it will one day become. I enter a book store but can’t find anything of interest, and even the newsagent holds little appeal. Very little of my interests seem to have been invented yet. In the afternoon I take a bus to Bondi beach and watch the world go by, overcome with the feeling I don’t belong. I return to my hotel and sleep like a king until it’s 1975.
It’s the last day of my trip, and I have somewhere to be. Traffic out of Sydney is even worse than it will be 40 years later, and it takes me over an hour to reach Hornsby, where I stop for lunch. I continue on afterwards, on roads that would be almost forgotten when the highways are built, and stop for a rest in Swansea in the early afternoon. The smell of the sea is strong, and I can keenly feel the end of my journey. As I drive through Gateshead and think of my 3-year-old-self not 30 seconds drive away I briefly slow down, but I resist the urge. When I reach Broadmeadow I can’t help but detour into Dorothy street but drive away when I see someone in the front yard of the home I remember well. I continue on and pull into the Nobby’s beach carpark just before sunset in 1975. I’m late and someone waits there for me. I get out and approach him.
“Did you enjoy yourself?” he asks with a smile?
“Yes” is all I said as I hand him the keys. He gets in and drives away.
I’m suddenly very tired, so very tired. I take a seat in the tiny restaurant in the surfhouse and put my head down. I’m so tired I don’t even realize that I had taken nothing from the car except myself and my phone. I rest my head in my hands and fall asleep. Seemingly instants later I am awoken by the ringing of a cellphone. A teenage girl at the next seat asks me “Are you ok?” She’s wearing green contacts, and a (retro) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles shirt.
It’s 2015 again and I’m home.
