34-37 Degrees South - 2023

Road Trips
Brid Morahan
Remember that one when I sang along with the chorus of ‘Flame Trees’
on the AM band, roared it out the open window on the road to Bourke?
Just to keep my spirits up—no aircon in the Datsun
and over fifty in the car.
How about the manic humming, the fog was thick and hazy
on the road from Bright with the heater on full-bore?
Eye-skin peeled back peering into white to avoid hitting the bikes
and going off the edge.
No music on the road from Walgett on dusk with roos all over,
head gasket blown, fuel light on, no water and no phone,
no coverage anyway, seventy-five clicks and busting for a wee
til I made it to the Ridge.
That time I rolled the car on a backroad of Uralla
and stepped out through where the windscreen used to be—
the bush looked the same all round and when you found me, I was walking
the wrong way—back to where I’d come from.
I remember petrol rations—odds and evens on the rego plates,
the locust plague gumming up the grille and the time Snow the cat
jumped out the window on the road to Warrnambool—she was waiting on the
doorstep when I got home two weeks later.
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