Knackered, Cactused, and Rooted

Prologue to a Road Trip

Welcome to Letters From the Road, and the very first letter!

Back in 2019, our family took a year off to travel, and we spent 9 months in South America, the U.S., Canada, followed by 3 months driving around Australia. Letters From the Road is the story of that road trip around Australia, told one weekly installment at a time, featuring my journal entries.

Thanks so much for joining. I’m excited to have you here, and I hope you stick around to enjoy many more.

Luke

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To set the stage for things, I think only one word is needed.

Knackered.

It’s one of those wonderful Australian adjectives, of which we have many, a very descriptive way of saying that you’re exhausted.

Australians are well known for having a quirky way with words, and thus there are also other excellent ways of expressing that you’re tired, like being cactused or rooted.

Rooted is my favourite, because it makes me think of getting attacked by a pig. Cactused is a close second, though. It always makes me think of cactus - obviously - which doesn’t make sense because obviously plants just sit around all day so shouldn’t be tired.

Of the three, though, I think knackered best describes how you feel after driving long distances, like a full day on the road. The kind of distance that makes the ozone layer weep. The kind of distance after which your car makes an exhausted sigh when you open up the cap to pump in more diesel. Knackered just sounds like your crumpled body spilling out of the car, navigating stiff legs, sweaty buttocks, and pants that have been driven up into your bits.

And knackered is also the best way I can think of to describe the collective state of my family - my wife Katie, and two boys Henry and Oscar - in mid-August of 2019.

We were at the tail end of 9 months spent in South America, the U.S, and Canada, at which point we’d driven over 15,000 miles (24,000 kilometres) during our travels. Six weeks later, we’d be hopping in our car in Melbourne, Australia to head out for a further 3 months on the road.

I wrote this at the time:

August 12 - The Wyndgate Hotel, St. George, Utah

It’s hot out, but I’m sitting by the pool. And I’m in the shade, which makes a difference in these parts. We’ve had reasonably mild weather, mild to warm and pleasant. Not anymore. We’re in the Southwest in mid-August, which is probably stupid, but oh well. 

Maybe it is the heat, but the past two days I’ve felt exhausted. I’m tired of travelling, it surprises me to say. On a trip like this, there has to be a constant push forward, an engine, a tailwind, and on this trip I feel like that push has largely come from me. Everything from ‘What’s for dinner tonight?’, to where we’re camping next, it all requires thought, input, rumination. And I don’t want to think about it anymore.

And it has spilled over into making me grumpy. The way Katie gives me directions annoys me. The way the boys are constantly pestering each other annoys me. Not being able to go on a big hike at King’s Canyon because we needed a consensus amongst us & my brother Nick annoys me. Having to get a consensus for everything and doing *almost* everything together annoys me. Thinking ahead a month to us rushing around Melbourne so we can hurry up and get on the road again annoys me, not to mention makes me tired just thinking about it.

A forever ongoing road trip is too hard, one built on 4-day stints in places is, anyways. I hate how I am feeling too, because tomorrow we’re going to Zion National Park, and then Bryce Canyon, and then Grand Canyon… and I’m wishing I could just stay in bed at the Wyndgate for a week, drinking their cucumber water and eating their free hot breakfasts.

How stupid is that?

When the Wyndgate, with their kiddie-sized pool and watery breakfast eggs, feels like a place you could stay for a while, you know that things are a bit amiss.

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I would venture to guess that a big trip to Australia makes a lot of bucket lists. It also could probably be found accompanied by ‘once in a lifetime’ and other overly slushy adjectives.

That’s probably for good reason. First, it occupies a sunny and warm corner of most people’s minds. Australia’s a land filled with golden haired surfers and friendly furry animals that hop around. Every day is sunny, every day is a beach day, and there’s that majestic harbour and bridge and opera house. Second, it’s literally really far from anything, so going to Australia ends up being a once in a lifetime thing just for practical reasons because getting here is painful.

Usually the weeks and months leading into a trip are wonderful, sometimes more so than the trip itself. Anticipation lets your mind wander and embellish the experiences of your future self. We’d lived in Australia for nearly 10 years when we started planning our road trip, and yet I could still day dream about Henry and Oscar catching trout for dinner out of the billabong, while Katie happily kept the crocodiles at bay with a cast iron skillet that she’d later use to fry up the fish. I would be chopping wood for the fire in the golden light of an afternoon in the outback, looking ruggedly handsome in a singlet, a thong, and an akubra hat.

Clearly I will be going somewhere other than the Saloon Bar after I am done chopping.

Scenes like these were certainly the hope when planning the year long adventure in 2019. We would spend 4 months in South America, living in Buenos Aires, visiting the Galapagos Islands, and trekking to Machu Picchu. Another 5 months would be spent road tripping around the U.S. and Canada, visiting friends and sleeping under the stars in National Parks along the way.

Finally, we would return to our home in Australia for the icing on our three layered cake of a year, a three month road trip circling the western half of the continent. Australians love road trips, and would call this one a half lap, and a classic.

Our version of the half lap saw us driving north out of Melbourne, headed right up the center to Uluru (Ayers Rock). We’d then cut straight west on the Tanami Track, a 643 mile (1,035 kilometre) unsealed road that slices right through the deepest red of the outback. The Tanami then connects to the legendary Gibb River Road, which runs through the heart of the Kimberley, the most northwest part of the Australia. It’s a place of rolling red rock bluffs, waterfalls, and freshies - freshwater crocodiles.

We could barely make it out of the car - Cape Peron, Francois Peron National Park.

Once we hit the west coast, we’d head straight south through Perth and then turn back east once the roads don’t go south anymore. We’d then head back to Melbourne by way of the Nullarbor, a treeless plain that sits atop the Great Australian Bight - sheer cliffs dropping into the Southern Ocean. Looking out from those cliffs, the next stop is Antarctica.

And there’s so much in between, a highlight list in name alone, with places like Purnululu (also known as the Bungle Bungle Range), and its red mountains that look like beehives, the magical gorges and desert water holes of Karijini, and the Ningaloo Reef, a place with some of the best snorkelling and diving in the world, right off the beach. Which is good, because my swimming is suspect.

Today a UNESCO World Heritage Site, tomorrow a National Park. Dare I say, looking at it now in retrospect and accepting all slushy adjectives for the moment, it would qualify as a once in a lifetime experience?

And yet, after travelling for nine months and the 15,000 miles we’d driven between January and October, my excitement had dulled a bit. We weren’t headed for the boozy Bondi Beach version of Australia, we were headed for the Mad Max post-apocalyptic off-road and mohawks version. That golden light in my mind’s eye was a bit cloudier, making and those crocodiles slightly more than Katie could handle with her skillet, and me look less sexy when chopping wood.

So it was that my parents drove us to O’Hare Airport in Chicago, so that we could head back to Australia and get back in the car, my knackered body and mind distracted with free cucumber water, a bed, and a stationary chair next to the swimming pool.

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