Turns Out There Really IS a Crack of Dawn
Last Wednesday (Yes, that is over a week ago. Yes, I am somewhat slow in getting around to writing posts. Yes, sue me. No, don’t.) I arose at the crack of dawn in order to accompany Brendan to a place I’d never been before. For reasons far too boring to disclose he was going to Port Pirie for the day and I decided, “What the hell, I’ve never been there, I might just tag along!” Bearing in mind this is the exact logic that saw me leaving New Zealand, not passing Go, not collecting two hundred dollars and going directly to jail. (What? This place did start out as a penal colony.) Perhaps I should put in place a rule that states that if my entire reason for going to a place is because I haven’t been there before then I’m not allowed to go anywhere until I’ve come up with a better reason. Why? Well I’m glad you asked.
Before I really get started I’d just like to point out that Australians are profoundly unimaginitive when it comes to naming geographical locations. On our way to Port Pirie we went through a town called Redhill. Guess what it’s built on. Yeah. A red hill.
Now. I’m not a morning person. I’ve never been a morning person. I never will be a morning person. Most importantly I don’t want to be a morning person. However I still got up just in time to skip breakfast in order to be ready by the time Brendan wanted to leave. That was fine, I stuffed some rice crackers in my bag, no worries. I’d eat ‘em in the car. It wasn’t like there’d be much else to fill the next two hours or so. Certainly not scenery. And as it turned out I was fortunate to have thought to bring something to while away the time. You see, for a while we were forced to follow a pair of sheds.
No, really. Sheds. Your common, garden variety (*snicker*) sheds. Big ones. On trucks. These sheds were being transported in much the same way as one might transport, for example, a particularly lovely old house from an inconvenient location to a less inconvenient location, say, one you own. Of course if you’re going to buy a house it’s much easier to buy the land it’s on as well but maybe that’s just me being lazy. The transportation of sheds seemed to me to be taking the idea of pre-fabrication to a whole new and somewhat excessive level. They weren’t even particularly nice sheds. About the only thing they had going for them, in fact, was that they were as wide as the road. Unpainted, their only remotely intriguing feature were the metal security grills on the windows and doors. I couldn’t help but wonder, has the Australian government finally managed to come up with the most ridiculous and least cost-effective way of transporting prisoners in the universe? It’d certainly be the least practical. The doors and windows were the strongest part of the structure I suspected. The material used to build the walls didn’t look as though it was much thicker than the material used to build the wall between me and my promiscuous neighbour in the halls-of-residence (dorm) when I went to uni. But enough about the sheds. Eventually we got past them (thanks to their police escort, serving to reinforce the prisoner transport theory) and made our merry, if uneventful way to Port Pirie.
Never go there. Never. It doesn’t matter if you’re running low on petrol, if it’s just for a toilet break or if the engine fell out of your car and it’s the middle of summer and you have no water and there’s no other help around for miles and miles. Do. Not. Go. There. Dullest place I’ve ever been. And I’ve been to Coober Pedy.
It’s hard to decide which was the highlight of my visit. Part of me values the learning experience that visiting the local clothing store provided. I walked in the door and was assaulted by an odour I had trouble identifying for a moment. Now I’m one of those obsessive types who, when faced with something they know that they should be able to give a name to they simply can’t leave it alone until they manage to do so. As a result I began to browse the floral prints and woolen cardies that marked the place as a grandma store. Then I realised that part of the smell was commonly known as “old people”. There was another aspect to it. One I’d become familiar with during my hospital visits. Disinfectant? No. Rubber gloves? I wish. It was urine. The place smelled of old people and urine. The niggling frustration I’d felt satisfied I left the store as quickly as I could without looking like I’d been shoplifting.
But another part of me favours the public toilet there. After a massive cup of coffee and a bit over two hours in the car I was fair set to burst so my first mission was to locate the nearest bog. That’s Kathese for toilet for the unenlightened. Fortunately my way was marked by a massive sign that said TOILETS. It even had a helpful arrow below the word TOILETS in case I might have mistakenly believed that the toilets were actually the wall of the local cafe. I wouldn’t be surprised if that had been a problem in the past. So I hobbled in the direction the arrow had pointed me in and managed to locate the TOILETS only to discover, to my dismay, that they were locked up.
A helpful local sitting nearby having a smoke suggested that perhaps I might need to get the key for the TOILETS from the nearby supermarket, henceforth referred to as Woolies. So, knees pressed together so tightly I could feel them begin to fuse, I hobbled into the shopping centre (hah!) and up to the Woolies service desk to request the key. That’s how desperate I was to pee. Normally I’m not the type to draw attention to my intentions in public. Under normal circumstances I would have said to myself, “bugger that” and gone to find a toilet that wasn’t locked. I knew, though, that my time was short. As I stood there, waiting for the key, I suddenly had a revelation.
So that was why the clothing store smelled like it did.
Tagged: Travel.