The thing about living in the country is that pretty much any drive further than Woolworths can be considered a roadtrip. Literally 4 minutes out of the centre of town you hit sorghum fields and windmills, cows that stare at you and potholes that could swallow you whole.
I’m still 2 weeks off actually living in Dalby, but I was there for the weekend visiting Boyfriend, and we went on a bit of a roadtrip for our friend Tom’s 21st Birthday. That is to say, we went to go see Tom for his birthday, we didn’t just drive into the countryside in celebration of his birth or anything.
It wasn’t *that* far, but upon reflection, except for one big day of driving in New Zealand once, I think it’s the furthest I’ve ever driven in one day. I think I’d convinced myself it was going to be easy, given that I now regularly drive the 2 hours, 40 to Dalby. I thought, 4 hours to the coast? Pfft, easy! Well…. It wasn’t excruciatingly difficult, but my bum did go numb and by the time I got there I felt moderately incapable of speech.
Fun things about our roadtrip:
I discovered what a windmill is. No, that makes me sound like an idiot. I KNOW what a windmill is, I’d just never thought about the word wind… mill… it’s a mill… driven by wind. DON’T LOOK AT ME LIKE I’M AN IDIOT. I bet a bunch of you had never thought of that either. I like words that do that to you. SHUT UP.
I didn’t kill any birds.
I did scream a lot whenever we came near a bird until Boyfriend freaked out and asked me to stop…. I still did it anyway.
I bought petrol in a tiny town called Cooyar. The pump didn’t have an electronic dial, just the kind with the numbers that flip down like an old clock. It was awesome.
Blackbutt. It doesn’t matter if you’re both adults and one of you is a teacher and everything, that shit is still funny.
The creepy little shop in Kilcoy makes REALLY good food.
Boyfriend’s students are literally everywhere. Even when we’re in some random town hours away from school. They. Are. There.
They are always watching.
No one knows how to pronounce the D’aguilar highway, but we have started calling it “The D’ag”.
Despite both being wordsmiths who love language, hours of driving will make us both stumble when trying to play word games.
Word games are still a good way to avoid napping while driving.
We should have been able to think of a lot more Australian towns starting with D.
Our own town SHOULD have been the first town we thought of.
This is the route we took:
We did it twice, obviously.
And this is the route I take to Dalby… I also did it twice.
So over 4 days I drove for about 13 hours. Effort!
