THE ROAD TRIP

I love to romanticise the great road trips of my youth. The green Holden Kingswood full to the brim, hours on the open road without air conditioning, our heads out the windows like labradors, doing anything we could to keep cool. There was no water in the car when I was a kid. If we needed a drink, Dad would pull over and we would help ourselves to water from the garden tap of a random house on the highway. A stop at a bakery for a pie was unheard of. For us it was all flattened, sun-warmed sandwiches and weak cordial. Today it sounds torturous but back then it was magical. There were new sights and sounds, the monotony of the everyday was broken and, despite some early fireworks about the art of packing the boot, Mum and Dad were happy.

Road trips allowed us to disengage, to decompress in real time and, despite our internal organs overheating on the vinyl-covered seats, we instinctively knew that our parents were relaxing. Holidays were our time and road trips through the countryside let our little eyes take in the colours of the Australian bush: landscapes like those of the great artists seeped into our minds and forever linked us to the places we passed through.

Over the past 20 years the seduction of cheap flights has taken us out of our cars and into the skies. We like to think of ourselves as a nation of travellers. There was a time when we would go abroad and return home in awe of what exists beyond our shores, but with a deep sense of gratitude for home. At some point I think we started to forget the latter.

The lure of cheap overseas travel has done us a disservice. We used to lament the poor country towns that missed out on passing trade when the new highway bypassed them all together. Now we don’t just bypass the country town, we bypass the country completely.

When we fail to see our own backyard, we fail to connect with ourselves, our community, our country. Much can be gained from the simplest interactions in our regional areas. The place where we stop to get a vanilla slice, stay a night or make new friends, helps us to understand and appreciate another part of our country. One of the silver linings of COVID-19 has been seeing people hit the road in that wonderfully oldfashioned way. The result will change us for the better. Once again, we will connect with the bush and understand how our landscape nourishes our souls. That is surely a good thing.

My kids love a road trip more than any other holiday. They love an old school motel. They jump up and down on the bed just as I did when I was a kid. My kids want to know who we are as Australians and that’s not found out in the classrooms or on an electronic tablet. The answer to that is discovered in real life, in our rather large backyard, through the places we go, the people we meet and the landscapes that define us. n

Words Tim Ross Photograph National Archives of Australia