Ben's Blog

Leaving Sleepy Hollow on a sunny Sunday morning, the hills peter out soon enough and we’re rolling through endless plains, very sparsely treed, just the occasional old man red gum the farmer hasn’t cut down yet. Forty years of driving past on the Combine Harvester muttering to himself, “ I must cut down that fucking tree before I die”.

It gets so monotonous that I wake up my sleepy navigator when I see a hill. “Look Jaz, a whole mountain range”. Turns out its just piles of wheat covered in blue plastic. So much wheat they don’t know what to do with it. The silos are so full they just pile it up higgledy-piggledy. Did you know we grow enough wheat to feed one hundred million people? We could feed the whole of Africa but they can’t afford it, and we can’t give it to them as it would have a detrimental effect on prices. A pity really, to watch them all starve to death while our wheat feeds a billion mice. Ah well, too bad.

I do love nothing more than rolling down the highway, with my arm out the window, singing at the top of my lungs, watching our shadow race across the waving grass, but it’s such a guilty pleasure these days, with all those emissions to worry about. The sad little towns roll by, so picturesque in their evanescence; Inglewood, Nhill, Speed? Whichiproof, Rainbow. The locals have taken to propping effigies in the street to make it look bustling. It’s so long  since they sold anything at the general store they just change the sign to ‘Antiques’. The flood has finally subsided in Charlton, but not the anger; lots of big hand painted signs cursing the loathsome insurance companies. Plenty of squashed animals on the road as usual. Lucky I brought my trusty pocket guide to identifying 2D wildlife. I am always pleased to see the dead animals on the side of the road, it means there must be plenty more out there; the smart ones. If there were none that would be a worry.

Lots of signs on the highway to keep one amused on the long journey; signs to keep you awake; ‘Don’t sleep and drive!’ The previous sign demanded ‘Take a power nap now’, so I did but I ran off the road almost immediately. One sign says; ‘ Concentrate on the road. Do not read this sign’. A hand made sign says ‘Salt 4 Sale’ last year it said ‘Hay 4 Sale.’

A sign of the times!

I keep thinking those clusters of tall concrete silos at the railway sidings remind me of cigarettes so I get the uncontrollable urge to light up. Apparently they have been classified as subliminal advertising and must bear a sign stating ‘This is not a giant cigarette’. Great behemoths whiz by constantly, carting several tons of pesticides from one saturated paddock to another; and they wonder why we’re reluctant to eat that shit.

As the sun reaches it’s zenith we pull into Rainbow; and I thought Castlemaine was quiet. The floor on the general store is worn down to the knots, the faded frocks in the window are just coming into fashion again now. The place is like the Marie Celeste. We could have strolled out with a brand new gramophone.

We’d come to ferret out an old mate from a bygone era. Last time I layed eyes on Fabian he was an angelic youth with a mop of blonde curls and a butterfly net glued to his hand. His hair is now short and grey but he still clutches the net. He has a sinecure locating colonies of critically endangered insects and preserving their habitat before they become evolutionary history. The last skeriks of natural bush consist of thin slivers on the roadside verge, so Fabian drives around all day, then plucks his specimens from the radiator; the modern day version of the butterfly net.

As the sun sinks in the west, appropriately enough, we find a lovely little spot on the Murray called Gol Gol. Time is of the essence, so we quickly set up tent, lasso dead branches – there is no dry wood below 4 metres – light fire, make tea, sit, relax. Aahh, the great outdoors.

Soon enough we hear the chug, chug, chug of The African Queen as she rounds the big river bend, but to our dismay it is just another party of cashed up Bogans on their Super Deluxe Houseboat, belching and farting and spewing their way to oblivion. With typical Bogan sensitivity they weigh anchor directly across the river and immediately start up the doof doof music and the outboard on the dingy and the jet skis and even the trail bikes, all accompanied by much guffawing and yelling of ribald abuse, there goes the neighborhood. I did have the naïve notion that the locals loved the Murray River, despite them constantly referring to it as ‘The Main Drain’, but it seems they only ever get upset when it is too low for their beloved water-skiing. When, after exhaustive studies that cost millions of dollars by learned people with letters after their names, the government suggested ever so meekly that maybe, just maybe, we could give a wee squidgeon of precious water back to the iconic river to stave off complete ecological collapse, the collective response from the mouth to the headwaters, was emphatic; the proposal was torn to shreds and stomped on and burnt in a giant bonfire reminiscent of Crystal Nacht.

And what, prey tell, do they actually do with all that lovely water they suck from the river with their massive diesel pumps day and night? They feed the World Wide Wine Glut, or they grow so many oranges they rot on the trees. And if you think that‘s bad, you should see what the dry land farmers get up to; the seasons are so erratic out in the Mallee, you get a good crop one year in every three or four if you’re lucky, but you never know how things will pan out so you plough the field anyway, sow the crop, pray for rain and hope for the best. If you get the best you’re laughing all the way to the bank, if you get the worse, seven thousand acres of topsoil ends up in New Zealand where it turns the snow a lovely shade of pink.

Ben Boyang   September 2011