IRREGULAR WRITINGS by Dave Graney

February, 2010

We grew up in Mount Gambier with no car in the household. Well, you can walk everywhere really but it still made a trip in a vehicle a bit exotic when we were kids. But then you could get your licence at 16. 

The road toll was something shocking but we all viewed the drink driving laws as a bit of an imposition that would soon go away. Everybody would come to their senses. The off roads around Mt Gambier were full of drunken drivers, farmers and their sons, hoiking it around the unsealed roads like they were on a rally, blind as bats. Shickered! Molo! 

Later on, we had a car parked outside our house. Mum had gotten sick of the walking and wanted a bit of power. It was a Mitsubishi Colt, and then a Honda Civic. We were all leaving home as soon as we thought we could. My sister Marianne drove off with a friend in a fantastic hotted up white Holden FB station wagon. My older brother had a great Holden HD and then a Ford Transit van with mag wheels. I had a Hillman Minx I found to be so embarrassing I left it by the side of the road one day when it broke down. A cop came around and I sold it to him for $20. The column gear shift had a funny kink pull to get it into reverse and the back doors flew open when I went around a corner.

Panel Vans were big among my friends. Morris Minors with wooden panels down the side and Holden EH and EJ models being popular amongst those who surfed the cruel and cold waves down around the South East. Those cars were ubiquitous. Someone found a purple Dodge DeSoto on a farm and scored it for less than a hundred bucks. It had such a powerful V8 motor, giant leather seats and very helpful holders for beer bottles down by your legs. We liked to salute each other with long necked 740 ml bottles as we drove up and down the main street. We were in a tight spot and did the best we could to get some personal space happening. Toranas were murderous. Big engines and tiny brakes. A friend from school picked me up in a car his mother had bought him. A green Ford Falcon GTHO. The seatbelt was like that on a jet, going up straight over both shoulders. 

In our late teens we got to know the highway between Mt Gambier and Adelaide. It was always a drive into the unknown. Adventures, booze definitely, dope sure, perhaps sex. We all piled into the car and drove for five or six hours, taking many breaks to water the long paddock by the side of the road.

At the end of the trip was a dramatic series of turns and twists in the road leading finally to the Devil’s Elbow. It was a leaning into each other holding your breath moment as we careened into that turn, dangerous and exciting. Afterwards, it was a relaxed roll down the hill to the corner of Glen Osmond Road and Adelaide itself. My auntie Celeste was in the Carmelite Convent on the corner there. I had visited her with my mother on a few occasions and found it so distressing as they talked and finally tried to clutch each other through the bars in the room where the nuns were allowed to talk to people from outside. Later, things got more relaxed. I painted a little cottage there once. The whole place had quite a Modernist feel to it. Open and full of sunlight. I visited her there when there were only a few nuns left. It seemed to be quite an idyllic place for an older woman to live. 

The entrance into Adelaide is a bit more relaxed now. A straight descent has been blasted through the hard rock. It’s easier for cars but apparently not so for large trucks. The winding descent had allowed for more serious gearing down and braking over a longer period with a heavy load on the back. Like a train ascending or descending a mountain with switchbacks built into the climb. Now it’s a long, slow ascent and the descent depends more on the brakes. Perhaps the truckers need some pills to slow down nowadays? Something calming? A free herbal tea stall at one of the last truck bays before the descent?