Singapore to Brisbane - Grounded: A Down to Earth Journey Around the World - page 91

stretched sixty miles long—survivors spoke of having twenty seconds from the time they heard a crackling
roar approaching until the moment the flames overtook them.
The overwhelming impression I get is that this continent hates living things. It's like a part of earth
that refuses to assimilate. The creatures that make it are forced to get by either on their wits (as humans
have) or with bizarre, weaponous mutations. Basically half the animals you encounter here are capable of
killing you in a matter of seconds. And only Australia could produce the platypus—a venomous, egg-lay-
ing mammal, which naturalists at first thought must be a prank some trickster was playing on them. Or the
kangaroo—whose ridiculous, propulsive hopping, sometimes with an infant roo peeking out of an onboard
pocket, seems to have been a prank played on the animal by its creator.
We've already seen dozens upon dozens of dead roos, lying in the road and in its ditches. But it's not
until our second day of driving that we spot our first live one. And now we understand why: Kangaroos
have a death wish. They hop in packs along the roadside, and as our car approaches at least one roo will
invariably gauge our speed, gather his hoppy momentum, and zag across the pavement directly into our
path.
I don't blame him. Australia is a constantly menacing environment, and no doubt there comes a time
when you're just ready to give up the fight. So far we've managed to swerve around these suicidal
roos—mostly because we've learned to hit the brakes at the moment a troop comes into sight. I sometimes
shout out my window at the roos, preemptively: “Don't you do it, Matilda! You've too much to live for!”
The other cars on the road all have beefy front grilles, designed to buffer a roo collision by deflecting the
tawny-colored limbs and crimson guts over and around the windshield. Most cars are also equipped with
exhaust snorkels that extend above their roofs, presumably to allow the vehicle to drive through chest-deep
floods. The sight of all these rugged armaments has left us feeling less sanguine about our own naked-
grilled, nonsnorkeled, factory-issue family sedan.
When we (very occasionally) pass another car, its driver will always wave. Initially, we'd assumed our
brights must be on or that we were dragging a roo carcass or three from our undercarriage. But then we
realized these friendly hellos are just an effort to forge an ephemeral moment of human contact. You take it
any way you can get it out here. And you never know when you'll run out of gas one hundred miles from
nowhere and need to siphon from a friendly Samaritan.
OUR first night on the road we stop in Renner Springs. It's a speck in the middle of the desert with some
gas pumps, a pub, and a rambling one-story motel, all surrounding a mudhole. Our room is home to a feath-
ery cockroach the size of a badminton shuttlecock and a pair of grasshoppers with legs like chopsticks.
On our second night we reach Kynuna. Population: eighty-five. We eat dinner at a roadhouse called the
Blue Heeler. Standing on its porch, we see no other evidence of civilization in any direction, up to the ho-
rizon.
We end up drinking with a trio of local cowboys—or “jackeroos,” as they're called here. They tell us
they spend all day herding (“mustering”) cattle. These days, instead of riding on horses, they use 400 cc
motorbikes to patrol the rocky ranchlands and steer the animals into line. “Roped a huge fella today,” says
the youngest jackeroo with pride. “Had his balls still on him. Never seen a white man before. I had to pull
him down and get him by his back legs.”
Another of the jackeroos is getting liquored up and maudlin. He confesses that he misses his girlfriend
when he's out here at the cattle station. “Can't even get no cell phone signal to call her. I got my mate to
hoist me up in the cherry picker once, to wave the phone around and get some bars. 'Where are you?' she
asks me. 'I'm up in a bucket!' I say.”