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The
motor of the beast roared to life. A
crunch and clunk of gears being selected
and we suddenly lurched away from the
curb, narrowly avoiding a collision as the
large black vehicle dragging its carriage
behind slipped into the procession of
taxis and courtesy coaches filing past the
front of the terminal building. We drove
about a hundred yards before the line of
traffic slowly ground to a halt.
"I'm
Alex," my driver said, using the
opportunity of the pause to introduce
himself.
"I'm
Adrianna."
"Yes, I
know. You've already told me,
remember?"
"Gawd! I
really am jet lagged!"
Alex
glanced over at me and smiled. The glare
of the harsh morning sunlight cut right
through the tinted glass of my sunglasses
and was starting to make my eyes feel like
they had sand in them.
"I can't
wait to get to the hotel so I can freshen
up a bit." I could feel my eyes watering
as they tried to relieve the gritty,
burning sensations in them.
"There's
been a change in plan."
"A
change? I see." I didn't understand at all
and hoped he'd elaborate. I'd just
traveled half way around the world and the
last thing I felt like was having my plans
changed at the last minute. The jerking
stop-start flow of the traffic was already
starting to irritate me.
"Yes, a
change," Alex repeated.
I looked
at him, staring directly at him trying to
attract his attention but he kept his full
attention focused on the traffic ahead.
"What kind of a change?" I eventually
asked, breaking the silence that had
fallen between us.
"We
won't be going into the city. We'll be
heading directly out west. To Broken
Hill..."
"But I
thought..." I didn't know what I thought.
Maybe I was not hearing him
properly."Broken Hill is, what? It's a
suburb of Sydney?"
Alex
threw his head back and laughed
loudly.
"You
could say that," he finally said once his
guffawing had subsided.
I could
feel myself become sullen and
moody.
We
merged out of the airport road and onto a
busy freeway. I ignored Alex and turned my
attention to the sights outside. It could
have been any freeway in America with all
the billboards of familiar multinational
companies like Ford and Sony except we
were driving on the wrong side of the
road. That took a bit of getting used to,
especially once we picked up speed and
were hurtling towards...somewhere.
"I had
been hoping to do a bit of sightseeing
today. The Opera House...I saw it from the
air. It looks beautiful."
"Not
today, you won't be."
"Pardon
me?"
"Not
today. No Opera House today. You just sit
back and enjoy the scenery and let me
concentrate on driving."
"Look,"
I said, trying to remain calm. "If this is
a game you're playing with me I'm really
too tired right now. I just want to get to
my hotel and ..."
Alex
roared with laughter again.
"Settle
down, okay? This is all about trekking,
remember?"
"Well,
yes," I reluctantly agreed, remembering
the brochures and everything I'd seen that
had attracted me to Australia. "But surely
I can have just one night in a nice,
comfortable hotel room?"
Alex
gave me a look like he thought I was
totally out of my mind.
"Trekking is not Club Med,
ya know!"
"It's
not?" I unsuccessfully tried to match the
sarcasm implicit in his tone.
"It
might be where you come from, but not
here. You're in the land down under
now."
For one
terrible, disturbing moment I thought Alex
was going to break into song and start
singing that awful song from the
80s.
"No
hotel?" I asked, resigning myself to the
fact I wasn't going to get my wish.
"Nope."
"No
hotel, no Opera House?"
"Nope."
"Just
this Broken place?"
"Broken
Hill. Yes."
We drove
for a few minutes in silence with Alex
staring ahead through the bug-splattered
windshield and me gazing off absently
through the passenger window.
"Why
don't they fix it?"
"What?"
"Broken
Hill. Why Don't they fix it?"
Alex
gave me another one of his incredulous
stares and then we both burst out laughing
at my feeble attempt to make a joke. He
just shook his head at turned his
attention back to the road ahead.
We drove
some more in silence, eventually turning
off the freeway and down into the bustling
streets of the outer metropolis.
"Do you
mind?" I asked, holding my finger poised
over the controls for the radio.
"Be my
guest."
The
speakers suddenly burst to life, catching
a DJ mid-sentence talking about the
traffic. It could have been any FM station
in LA except I didn't recognize the name
of a single street or location he was
speaking about. I settled back in my seat
and let the sound of his voice wash over
me, hoping to maybe absorb by osmosis some
information about the city I thought I was
going to be spending my first night
in.
"It
looks like home," I said, feeling slightly
disappointed by the sight of a McDonalds
store.
"What's
that?"
"Nothing," I mumbled. "Do
you know Steve Irwin?"
"Who?"
"You
know, that crocodile guy."
Alex
looked at me strangely.
"Nope.
Do you?"
I
suddenly laughed and realized how silly my
question was. "Cracky!" I immediately
wished I hadn't been so foolish as to
attempt the accent with Alex listening. I
thought he was going to run off the road
and crash, he was laughing so hard.
"Y'all
gotta say it like CRY-kee."
"George
Bush meets the crocodile hunter!" I
laughed at the way Alex lampooned my own
accent to give the correct pronounciation
of the weird word I'd heard so often on
television shows about Australia. I tried
to mimic Alex, intoning the syllables just
as he'd done, but still it came out
sounding wrong.
We
played a few more little linguistic games
like this as we sped further west, heading
out of the city, the center of which I
caught occasional glimpses of fading in
the distance behind us.
"We'll
be making a stop soon."
"Good!"
I said, genuinely buoyed by the prospect
of stretching my legs and freshening
up.
"Why
don't you close your eyes for ten minutes.
I'll wake you when we get there."
"Is it
that obvious?"
Alex
just looked at me and smiled.
I knew
what would happen the second I closed my
eyes - sleep. Instant, deeply relaxing
sleep. There was a brief struggle between
my mind and my body with one desperate not
to miss a single sight and the other
exhausted almost to the point of nausea.
My body won easily and not even the gentle
vibrating of the passenger window on the
side of my head was enough to keep me
awake once I closed my eyes.
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