Journey’s end
After visiting Digger in Kalgoorlie, I drove his old ute across Australia. In Australia, ute is short for utility vehicle — or what we Poms call a pick-up truck. Digger had recently bought himself a secondhand Toyota Landcruiser, with double fuel tanks and an extended cab to accommodate a massive fridge behind the seat to keep his beers cold. So he had no further use for his faithful old workhorse. I was to drive it across the continent to his home in Wandiligong, Victoria, an old gold miner’s cottage that he abandoned after his marriage failed, and leave it there.
The ute was a 3.8 litre diesel Toyota Hilux, sun-bleached beige, originally used for herding cattle. Steer-sized dents in the door panels gave it character. Digger bought it 18 years ago from a Wondiligong notable called James Fraser. Since then it has been across Australia and back several times.
Before I set out across the outback, did I harbour anxieties that the ute might be feeling its age and break down? That it might fail, for example, on the Nullarbor— a treeless, waterless plain uninhabited except for a dingo-infested roadhouse (in Aussie parlance, a ‘chew and spew’) every 50 or 100 miles? Or that it might leave me high and dry on the desolate, baking slopes around Iron Knob?
I did not.
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