Rite to Roam
Miena, Tasmania - July 2025
I love the road. I love it so much that I get completely done over by it. Glad to get home, but just as glad to leave again. It’s almost certainly a trait I inherited from my father, at least in a practical sense, but probably it’s in the DNA. I’ve been thinking of how it’s a glorious thing to do, just as much as it is a curse. It’s the most dangerous thing we do, as domesticated citizens of the world. I jest that I’m nearly killed a few times with each journey; that’s it’s how I’ll probably go out. Hilarious. But, the vistas, the events, the destinations, the dance of other travelers shifting though a passing show of scenery and the immense quantity of thinking you get to indulge as it all happens is as much of a reason as any. It isn’t a means to an end. It’s life and it’s vital. >>>> In the early days of the Re-mains, we’d discuss how one’s car was like an office, where you did your work. Mick Daley wrote the song, “Always Workin”, around the idea that travelling by road was as valid a place of toil and means of scheming up the future as any other. This is how it is. >>>> In keeping track of some basic ruminations on the act, I can offer the following: Food; It’s ham, cheese and tomato toasties for me - it’s reliable. Fuel prices; Who sets that agenda and do the regions get to take turns? FM Radio; it’s completely jammed circa 1987. AM radio; It’s still exists. When something interesting is found on that bandwidth, it just scratches away into static. The Laws of Expectancy; You know Bathurst? It really is full of blokes in cars that think it’s all conrod straight. Roadkill; is there anything more sad than an upturned, rigor-mortised wombat? Roads; Whose are the worst? NSW or Qld? Cause it aint the rest of the states. Traffic lights in the ACT; a rear-end opportunity. Driving in Adelaide; A sometimes entitled, passive-aggressively fraught experience and over absolutely nothing. When in Qld; What indicators? Absolute truths; The last 200 of a 1000 km day is decidedly longer than the first 800. Hazards; They are multitudinal, but nothing is as scary as the 40km stretch of the M1 parallel to the NSW Central Coast - everything wrong can happen there and normally does… I really hate it. 110 kph in this country is fast enough. Coffee; is fuel system. AdBlue; IS NOT fuel - [pm me for details]. >>>> My favourite destination is my car, it’s my office and my cafeteria, a workbench on four wheels is a necessary deal, to take you on your journey to the stars. (thank you to M. Daley for explaining the above in a couple of lines what I took a score to do)