Sunday, and we're on a road to nowhere

A FRIEND says that when he retires he will read books and go for drives. Now there's a historical concept.

A FRIEND says that when he retires he will read books and go for drives. Now there's a historical concept.

You have to be a certain age, and perhaps from a certain class, to understand the cultural importance the drive once held in Australia. These days, the Sunday afternoon drive is but a quaint artefact for generations born since running and walking and cycling were invested with a higher moral authority than cranking up the Holden.

Sunday cinemas and the mall also eroded the popularity of the drive.

But for a long time piling into the car after Sunday lunch was what the middle class did to pass the hours before sundown. You had to be rich enough to have a car but not so rich as to be blase about pottering around the suburbs or local landmarks just for the hell of it. And certainly not wealthy enough to spend money on entry fees to anything else that might be on offer.

Going for a drive was cheap, with the main expense an ice-cream for the kids.

Not that kids were a priority. Drives were for fathers and to a lesser extent mothers, with children suffering hours of boredom as parents pointed out the sights and urged an appropriate reaction. It was bad enough if there were three or four of you in the back seat, but at least you had sibling rivalry. Another friend, an only child, recalls Sunday drives when she sat up back, lonely as a cloud, as her parents pursued the gentle art of motoring up front.

The drive should not confused with driving to a spot for a picnic or a swim or to visit relatives. No, the drive was an end, not a means.

There were sub-categories. There was the aspirational drive through riverside suburbs where people called architects designed houses for people called Jones. (This was also known as the green-with-envy drive.) There was the bush drive where one communed with nature from a suitable distance. And there was the educational drive where one was expected to scramble out and walk to the dam wall to marvel at post-war engineering. (You had to be there for that one.)

No one went for a drive on a Sunday morning; everyone was too busy praying or putting on the roast. And only a wastrel would think about a drive on a Saturday.

I suspect my retiring friend will go for drives mid-week. And never get out of the car.

Except for an ice-cream.