On the road to fatherly wisdom

An eye-widening rock’n’roll tale of survival and well-travelled advice.

An unintended stop at Cock’s, in Nhill.

“Kaniva beer?” my mate Dave asked with a snigger at the Commercial Hotel in the western Victorian town of the same name. The elderly barmaid looked at him wearily and said: “You’ve got no idea how many times I’ve heard that stupid joke.”

We had stopped halfway between Adelaide and Melbourne on a road trip, heading to The Palais to see a band we all liked called Superchunk.

“I’ll have the parmy, please,” I asked the lady.

“Sorry?”

“I’ll have the parmy.”

“You mean the parma.”

“Yes. The parma.”

It was nearly my final meal.

It was Dr Andy’s turn at the wheel. He had just started working as a psychiatrist, which is why we referred to him as Dr Andy, or the Doc. The next town was Nhill, famous for the coin-operated talking horse on its main street.

We weren’t far out of Kaniva when Dr Andy veered off the road and into the dirt while doing 110-ish around a bend. He panicked a bit and slammed on the brakes of the brand-new Falcon station wagon we had rented. The wheels locked. The car spun around, the tyres exploded, and we skidded backwards along the Western Highway for about 200m on the rims. We spun around again and were going forwards now, crossing into the oncoming lane — mercifully, miraculously empty — sending about a dozen white road marker signs flying, making a chunk-a-dah chunk-a-dah sound as they bashed into the vehicle and flew over the bonnet. We finally came to rest in a sodden grassy depression on the other side of the freeway, stopping a few metres shy of a giant cement pipe.

We couldn’t get out of the car because the chassis had twisted so much that the doors were jammed shut. We wound down the windows and climbed out. The four of us stood staring at each other, laughing nervously.

“God, I’m so sorry,” the Doc said. “Is everyone OK?” We were. Dave and I started chain smoking and when I took a drag I noticed blood on my cigarette. I had ground my elbows so hard against the fabric seat that I had given myself carpet burn, bracing for the impact that never came.

A truck came over the hill and the driver slowed and called out: “I’ll radio the cops in Nhill and get them to come and help you guys.”

The local copper arrived about half an hour later. Surveying the scratched bitumen and shredded rubber snaking back towards Adelaide, he shook his head and said: “Well, you’re the luckiest bunch of bastards I’ve seen in a while.”

The copper explained that Cock was on his way.

Cock towed the wrecked car to his mechanics workshop in Nhill. It had a big painting of a rooster on its roof in honour of Cock, who explained it was a nickname from his country footy days, the origins of which are best left undocumented.

Cock said the car was a write-off. He would ring the rental company and arrange for it to be sent back to Adelaide. He asked us why we were going to Melbourne.

“We were meant to be seeing a band in St Kilda tonight,” I said.

“You might be able to hitchhike,” Cock said. “I can take you to the roadhouse, there’s always truckies going to Melbourne and they’re often happy to have the company.”

We split into pairs, Dave and the Doc, me and Paul. Dave and the Doc won hitchhiking lotto. A bloke driving a brand-new removal truck explained he only had a light load and there was a king-size mattress in the back they were welcome to lie on.

I approached a few blokes in the roadhouse and eventually one said yes, but explained he had just ordered a meal and would be a little while. We sat away from him, not talking much. He had ordered a steak with chips, grilled tomatoes and mushrooms. He had a painstaking way of slowly buttering his sliced white bread. When he finished, he got some cheesecake, then ordered a coffee and smoked a couple of darts. On settling the bill he made lengthy chitchat with the lady behind the counter about when he would next be back in Nhill, and so forth. He finally motioned to us and we followed him to his truck.

It wasn’t a big truck and it was fully loaded up so Paul and I sat across the bench seat in the front with him. It wasn’t until I got in the cabin that I realised he had a plastic leg. He wasn’t a very chatty bloke. About half an hour in he asked me to reach into the glove box and get his tablets out. He had them in a large zip-lock bag. He explained that he had to take a red one for his circulation, two white ones for something else, then a blue one in an hour’s time, and if I could just make a note of all that it would be a great help.

We were already way behind Dave and the Doc when the one-legged truckie said he knew a good detour to get us to Melbourne. He turned off the freeway and onto a dirt road.

“Do you boys drink stout?” he asked out of the blue.

“Umm, I don’t mind it,” I said.

“I don’t really drink it any more,” he said. “Makes me too horny.”

I looked at Paul out of the corner of my eye. He was staring out the window looking genuinely terrified. I started wondering whether I could grab the zip-lock bag out of the driver’s glove box and hold it over his head until he suffocated, then push him out of the moving truck and take control of the wheel.

It was now about 7pm, pitch dark, and we were still two hours from Melbourne.

I then remembered I had promised to ring my mum when we got into Melbourne at the originally scheduled time of 5pm. In these pre-mobile days I needed to find a pay phone. I knew she would be worried sick.

I asked the driver if we could stop in the next town so I could call. He stopped at a servo in Beaufort where there were trucks roaring past and lots of commotion. “Hi, Mum, we’re in Melbourne,” I lied.

“That’s nice, love. I was getting worried.”

“Yeah, sorry, we got a bit held up.”

“Where are you exactly? It sounds awfully loud.”

I walked back to the truck and was happy to see Paul in the cabin, rather than face down in the grass being set upon by a highly aroused one-legged man who had just consumed a longneck of Toohey’s Old. “I can drive you straight to The Palais,” the driver said. “I’ll have you there at 9 when your band plays.”

The lights of Melbourne appeared over the horizon, we got across town in no time and very kindly, as promised, the driver dropped us at the venue’s door.

My daughter is about to turn 18 and we were chatting the other day about whether parents should tell their children everything they did or cover their tracks with the odd white lie. While I have opted for strategy A, my key advice to children involves white lies. Always remember to ring your mum, but don’t necessarily tell her exactly what’s happening.