Erik Skye Travel Blog

7 Jan 2012

Here’s the map: Google Maps – Wizard of Oz

Car’s trip odometer: 3540 clicks (km)

“L, ah,” he said. “L, O, um”, he continued. “Hey, how do you spell Lorry,” he asked the bartender. “L, O, double-R, Y,” replied the bartender, addressing me. Lorry apparently didn’t know how to spell his own name. I knew right away I was going to love this guy.

Lorry proceeded to tell me many things, such as how he blew his arm off as a boy playing with a detonator, (I never figured out what exactly a detonator was from his story) and that he works as a Bentonite miner (proudly explaining how we use Bentonite; i.e. as an ingredient in make-up, baby powder, and to aid in proper digestion of feed for livestock coming in from free range). Lorry was very animated as we spoke, and he often waved his left forearm stump in the air or patted it together with the palm of his right hand as if he had two hands. He didn’t have a lot of teeth, but he had lots of character.

“So are you married?” I asked Lorry. “No,” he replied. “Ever been?” I asked. “No, I’m not ready,” he replied. “I won’t be ready for another 36 years. I’m 64 now,” he said with a smile. Lorry was always smiling as he spoke.

I asked Lorry if he was from here (Miles, Queensland). He said ‘no, I’ve only been here 16 years’. I pressed him a little more for his background, which got us talking about travel. He’s been all over the world, apparently. When he mentioned Vietnam, I said with surprise ‘you were in Vietnam?!’ He went on to tell me how he spent 6 months there as a private in the Australian Army and then went AWOL for another 6 months. ‘How did you get back,’ I asked quickly. ‘Court-marshal,’ he said. He ended up with a dishonorable discharge out of that one. Then, years later, a group was digging around in the national archives in Canberra and found information about Lorry.  They decided to award him with the Australian Service Medal (quite an honor). He said ‘that’s when my dad found out I went to Vietnam.’ ‘What?! Your father didn’t know you were in Vietnam? Why not?’ I asked with surprise. ‘Because I never thought it was important to tell him,’ was Lorry’s response. Lorry said that when his dad opened the box and saw that his son had been awarded the Australian Service Medal, he told Lorry ‘good job’ and then went back to watching TV. Lorry clarified ‘but he was real proud of me, I know it.’

Lorry told me the Australian Army rejected his brother for having flat feet (while they took him with one arm). We laughed at the irony.

At first I was simply charmed by Lorry and his playful, open way. I was even thinking ‘jack pot – this is going to make for such a great blog write-up!’ But the more he spoke and shared with me, the more I became endeared to him. I almost became emotional at one point realizing I was in the presence of about as good and innocent a person there ever was.

I stopped in a town called Roma when I saw an old oil derrick pumping away. I went into The Big Rigs museum, and there was an elaborate production to showcase the oil industry in the area. There were nightly shows, café, and an outside park that they said took an hour to walk-down (I declined; I wasn’t THAT interested). Apparently they found oil here in the 1920’s while drilling for water and started producing the oil soon after. The next big thing here is coal seam gas, but people are concerned it could lead to the contamination of their water table.

I made a 600 click run to the west today, into the outback. The terrain was flat, and the gum trees got progressively smaller. Its all green; I can’t seem to find the red, which the outback is known for. I suspect the high rainfall of the past year has changed this landscape temporarily (to green pasture). I’m in a town called Charleville, Queensland, which I fell in love with immediately. Most small towns out here consist of a few public buildings along the highway, and you find yourself out of town by the time you realize you’d been there. However, Charleville is a real town that you have to divert into, with little neighborhoods filled with houses built on stilts, more than one business-lined street, an airport, a cosmos (galaxy) observatory, and best of all an “RSL” – a worker's club (common in bigger communities in Australia). An RSL has all the conveniences (such as dining facilities, bar, multiple quiet seating areas, pokies) packaged into one casual, well-kept establishment. They always let me use these places as a visitor, and next time I’m going to ask if they have a Laundromat.

This is as far west in Queensland as I’ll be going, and as far north as I’ll be going on this trip. Tomorrow, I drop straight down into New South Wales again.

Song of the day (click this hyperlink, let the website load briefly, then click the orange “play” next to the title)  Note - M83 is a French band named after a galaxy: M83 – Midnight City

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