Back to the Rock




Robert J. Rubis

 
© Copyright 2024 by Robert J. Rubis


Photo by Brett Stanley courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Photo by Brett Stanley courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

It was my first foray into the wilds of Australia although “the Outback” had been on my Bucket List since college. A librarians’ conference in Perth was the perfect opportunity to cross this one off. Picking up a rental car at the airport instead of checking into the conference hotel, I spent every free moment of the next four days travelling up and down the coast from Perth, and then, conference over, turning my back on the city and heading straight inland, destination Kallgoorlie, 600 kilometres due east. Twenty years of speculation had made the Outback at once larger than life and at the same time a mystical fairyland populated in equal measure by sage aboriginals and feral kangaroos. And it did not disappoint, with the subtropical Perth suburbs quickly giving way to inland scrub, barren hillsides and long stretches of undulating blacktop punctuated by increasingly regular remains of hapless kangaroos pilloried by the same “roo-bars” that adorned my own rental. As the frequency of roadkill increased so did the waves of pungent putrescence until it became the dominant backdrop to a literal descent into darkness. As daylight faded, the shadows crept in, in a surreal dreamlike split-screen deja-vu between imagination and reality. But nothing would prepare me for what I really found there: a mystery that surfaces randomly in the unpredictable shoals of memory, sending me back to those cluttered shelves of travel memorabilia. There, behind the Kathmandu washerwoman’s water-carrying pot, the handcarved trekking stick from the Everest viewpoint at Namche Bazaar and the junk shop saddlebags from just behind the Cairo Grand Bazaar rests a 1980’s cassette-tape caddy with literally the soundtrack of my life through the ’70’s and ‘80s.

The last time I checked for the unlabelled cassette tape. I came up empty, but the rest of my road-trip markers were still there. The full rack of Beatles and Stones that defined my final college years still give way to the Lou Reeds and David Bowies from my post-college Keg-waiter days and then to the Clockwork Orange soundtrack that powered me through the Rockies on my first big road-trip. Driving cab in Toronto, I was “takin’ care of business” to Randy Bachman’s hard-driving rock, and finally the Moody Blues invokes memories of long evening stretches in the deserts of the southwest on my roundabout return to the west coast. The unlabelled tape from Oz marked the end of both the cassette era and of my free-wheeling solo explorations of the highways of the world, and the story of how it came to be plays a big part in that end.

I can still picture it sitting there on the console of my rental car as I pulled out of the remote gas station somewhere west of Coolgardie on Highway 94 from Perth. The rental, surprisingly uncluttered after two days on the road, had featured just Willy Nelson and Lee Kernagan, tapes I’d picked up on the way inland, but they had now been joined a third, mystery cassette. I distinctly recall pulling into the deserted gas station and thinking that when I’d topped up, I’d swap the well-known American for the Aussie C&W singer I’d just discovered. But now, where there had been two tapes sitting end-to-end on the dash console, a third now nestled.

I slowed, pulled over and just stared at it. Where did it come from? Who could have left it there? When? And what exactly was ON it that a random stranger might bequeath me?

The longer I looked at it, the more agitated I became. And then it came to me. I’d pulled in, flipped the car door open, and stepped out to fuel up the car, a right-hand drive. With the fuel filler cap on the passenger side, I had to step around the back to fuel up then head in to pay. No pre-pay necessary, here in the Australian bush. The Code of the Outback seemed in play. And no apparent reason to lock the vehicle before heading inside, or to even ensure the doors were closed. I hadn’t seen a soul for the past half hour and the only sign of life in the “servo” was the Open sign lit up in the front window.

Strangely, I have no recollection of any exchange with the proprietor here. There’s just the pulling in to Willy’s nasal drawl, fuelling up, then pulling out and freezing as I reached down to swap out one tape for the other.

Yesterday had been a whole different story. Of course, I was just leaving the sophistication of the city at that time, many hours and miles from the desolation of the great Australian empty.

G’Day, Mate”, the weathered, middle-aged man had opined. “Whutcher Pleasure?”

Ah, I need t couple tapes. Not much reception out here.”

Yah got that right, Mate,” he agreed. “Gets worse the farther east ya go. On the way to Alice?”

I doubt it,” I considered. “Just seeing how far I can get in the time I have.”

Ah,” he nodded sagely. “Some good road-toons are just what you need.”

Any suggestions?” I asked.

Canuck, are Yuh?” He queried. “ I see Ya picked out a Willy Nelson. Something like that take yer fancy?”

Uh, yeah, sure.” I responded. Willy crooning “on the Road again”, or “I’ll be gone 500 miles till the day is done”, both fit my mood for this trip.

Okey-Dokey”, he continued. “Don’t have any of your Lightfoot or Stompin’ Tom, but this here’s just the ticket. Young feller. Been around a bit, but never made it real big on your side of the pond. More of a local boy. He’s the real deal, though.” He handed me a cassette with the obligatory booted and cowboy-hatted figure adorning the cover.

Sounds good,” I responded. “Never heard of him, but I’ll take your word for it. I’ll take the pair.” And that was my introduction to Lee Kernaghan.

Good Onya!”, he ventured. “Enjoy. Booyah!”

Booyah? As in something like “with a large measure of joy or exuberance”.“Hadn’t heard that in a while. Amazing what social pleasantries tended to jump the pond even back then, before cell phones and social media.

But I had. Enjoyed them, with a large measure of “Booyah” as I cruised Highway 94, my mood barely dampened by the growing roadkill carnage the farther inland I went. The down-home lyrics and wistful rendering of Kernaghan’s “Boys from the Bush”, and “You’re the Reason I Never Heard Hank Jr. Play” were a perfect counterpoint to Willy’s American crossover country ballads. So I had spent the past 24 hours alternating happily between Willy and Lee as the miles rolled by and the Australian Outback became a permanent part of my experiential memory map.

And now, inexplicably, there were three, where there had been two. WTF???

I must have sat there for five long minutes, alternating between anticipation of what awaited me apprehension about what it might be. An invitation to an Outback tailgate party? Hardly, considering few fellow wanderers I’d encountered. A warning to stay away? That seemed equally unlikely. Stay away from what? I’d spent the previous night parked on the brink of a large tailings dump, hoping that the many terrifying denizens of the Australian bush would find easier prey than a lone Canuck huddled in the back seat of a rental car. Happily, when I wasn’t rechecking the seat pockets for wayward funnel-web spiders (generally not found this far west) or the floorboards for hitchhiking Inland Taipans, I alternated between listening to Willy and Lee, scanning the skies for the elusive Southern Cross and congratulating myself on finally having actually MADE IT to the Australian bush. I certainly hadn’t seen anything that seemed I should be warned off.

But be that as it may, now there was this giant spanner in the works of my perfect little Australian junket. It was time to fish or cut bait. In a rush I grabbed the battered plastic case, ripped the cassette out and tipped it into the player.

A few seconds of dead air were followed by a sibilant tape-hiss, and then the low, melancholy dirge of a digerido, the long, rhythmic undertone punctuated by staccato bursts of exclamation, and then a faint but rising chorus of “Back to the Rock. Come. Booyah. Back to the Rock. Come. BOOyah. Back to the Rock. Come BOOYAH!

That was it. No welcome. No Warning. No decipherable message at all. I listened for a full twenty minutes until the cryptic six-worded chant crescendoed, then faded back into the background and the didj’s drone trailed off to just tape-hiss once again.

WTF indeed? Back to the Rock? Ayers Rock, assumedly? Go back? Come back, when I clearly hadn’t come even close? Although I had made it 600 kilometres inland from the Perth suburbs, I was still a long way from Alice, and a side-trip another day’s travel east was out of the question. A return flight was looming and I had 600 kilometres to retrace. So I never made it to Ayers Rock on that trip, and the mystery remains as fresh in memory today as it was while I sat in that rental car all those years ago.

I did create my own little mystery, though, perhaps a tit-for-tat for what I had been treated to. When I returned the car later the next day, the rental returns attendant took one look at my odometer, did a double-take as he confirmed the “unlimited mileage” checkbox and exclaimed,

“Crikey! 4300 kilometres? Where’d you Go, Mate? All the way to ALICE?”

I couldn’t help myself. In my best Johnny Cash, I belted out “Of travel I’ve had my Share, man. I’ve been Everywhere!” But being a good Canuck, I capped that with, “ But I’ve never been “Back to the Rock”.

Perhaps next trip….

*****

Robert J. Rubis (Rob) is a former International School teacher and now second-career transit bus driver as he negotiates the challenges of being a late-blooming father (his son was born when he was 56, his daughter as he was about to turn 61). After a 10-year stint as a classroom teacher and school librarian in Canada, he discovered the International school network and jumped in with both feet to an eventful year in Tripoli (1985-86,as Khadaffi and Reagan were sabre-rattling) followed by a 25 year stint at the International School Bangkok. In the early 2000’s Rob became interested in, then concerned about and finally invested in the developing Climate Change crisis. His “investment” involved writing two novels of speculative fiction exploring a “what if” scenario involving the willful (and global) ignorance of the warning signs Mother Nature has been sending. Unfortunately, finding either an agent or a publisher eluded him and in 2007, when his son was born, he self-published ("Mai Shangri-La" and “The Wayback Machine” both available on Amazon) and turned his attention to raising a family. He returned home to Canada in 2011 to both avoid the worst of the climate crises he forsees coming soon (and beginning now) and to allow his kids to know their grandparents. Rob's son, now 17, is a budding film-maker and his daughter a nascent writer, so it is to support and encourage them (showing by example?) that he has taken up writing again. A lot of stories have been percolating over the past 15 years, and a third novel is itching to take shape.


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