Welcome to Our World: Crossing Continents: a Father and Son Take the Road from Melbourne to London

By David Gairns and Will Gairns

Yet I knew even then that this whole Melbourne to London thing was over the top. It was quite outrageous. Utterly preposterous. But I was a gonertotally, hopelessly bitten.
Having an adventure is easy. Step 1drive down ones street. Step 2keep driving. Step 3stop at London!
Welcome to Our World is about a comfortably settled David Gairns and his teenage son Will on one extraordinary drive from Melbourne, Australia to London, England through Asia in 2010. The spark that started it, their hopes, their dreams, their doubts and stresses are all here. It tells of Wills girlfriend Lauren who just kept on popping up and of father and son bonding or not bonding at all, as so happens. It is about a real journey and a life journey, of acting the fool and finding a life. Of the highs and the lows and of the joy of being alive, of so many generous strangers who helped along the way.
They hope you enjoy the drive, the experience, the journey and the adventures they encountered everywhere.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Apr 10, 2017
• ISBN: 9781524520410

David Gairns

David Gairns David is a man who used to think a big trip ended after a day's driving! He was born and educated in Australia and has been a construction manager, academic, company director and building consultant primarily involved in providing expert evidence. Father of Hamish and Will, David is married to Ros and they live in Melbourne. Welcome to Our World written with Will is his first book. In some ways coming late to writing is a blessing. It allowed David time to reflect on what’s important in telling a story about what was essentially a long drive. From the mud and confusion of writing it became crystal clear that his relationship with Will and others was what their journey was really about. As much as a long drive and all the extraordinary events that went with it, their time together was about how a father and son got on, their tolerance of each other. David’s writing reflects that focus. Will Gairns A trip to Europe? Or a week or two in Thailand, maybe? Not Will. There can't be many 18 year-olds who have captained a school cricket team, worked on farms during school holidays, driven solo across the Nullabor, lived and worked on a cattle station in the mid-west of Western Australia and driven Melbourne to London with his father. But that's Will. He has recently completed his carpentry apprenticeship, and was travelling in South and Central America at the time of writing.

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Copyright © 2017 by David Gairns. 706596

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016920515

ISBN:   Softcover       978-1-5245-2040-3

             Hardcover     978-1-5245-2042-7

             EBook           978-1-5245-2041-0

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Rev. date: 02/27/2017

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WELCOME TO OUR WORLD

Crossing Continents:

a father and son take the

road from Melbourne to London

David Gairns & Will Gairns

The concept of time, as its commonly understood by normal

people with normal jobs and normal goddamn lives, doesn’t

exist on the road. The nights spread out like the dark,

godforsaken highways that distinguish them, and the days run

together like Thanksgiving dinner smothered in gravy. You

never really know where you are or what time it is, and the outside

world starts to fade away.

It’s cool.

Tiffanie DeBartolo, How to Kill a Rock Star

I am looking for someone to share in an adventure that I am arranging, and it’s very difficult to find anyone.

I should think so—in these parts! We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner!

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

Of the gladdest moments in human life, methinks, is the departure upon a distant journey to unknown lands.

Sir Richard Francis Burton, Journal Entry, East Africa, 2 December 1856. (1821 – 1890)

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Town near Dali, China

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East meets West, Pingyao, China

Contents

Month of Sundays

Preface

1. Crazy Dream: Love, Passion and the Carnet

2. Visiting the Neighbours

3. Up Close and Personal – in Bed with a Ghetto Blaster

4. Flores

5. Islands in the Sun

6. Worst. City. Ever.

7. Now We Are Three

8. Soi Sauce

9. Très Bon!

10. Rain, Rain, Go Away

11. Might and Power

12. What’s Cookin’?

13. Days of Wonder

14. Slap Happy

15. Border

16. Chasing Trains

17. Gobi Crossing

18. Ends of the Earth

19. Russia in a Day

20. On the Road to Shambhala

21. Getting Down to Business

22. Fuel? Who needs Fuel?

23. Once was a Sea

24. Family Drive

25. Come the Day

26. Thanks Dad

27. Letter to a Son

28. Go Now!

29. Counting by Two

30. When the Music Plays

31. One Very Big Thank You

32. This Book, Our Car

33. History Lessons

Month of Sundays

We started on the morning of Sunday, 13 June, 2010. Here’s where we were each Sunday morning.

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Where’s the hotel, Will? Near Olgii, Mongolia.

Preface

Be careful—if you listen to the radio you too could be bitten. Beware, the overlanding bug!

I just loved it. It was so different from the world I knew, so utterly ridiculous. There would be no 5-star resorts, no tourist hordes, no luxury coaches or sumptuous private trains. You’d think yourself lucky, perhaps if there was running water in some places or if the toilets worked. Michelin restaurants? Not a chance! And to cap it all off the destination didn’t really seem to matter all that much. I could hardly believe what I was hearing…

It was about May 2008. Searching for cracks and leaks to photograph inside a house for a gold mining company burrowing under Ballarat, north-west of Melbourne I could hear snippets of talkback radio wafting in from an adjacent room. The mention of strange and wondrous places stopped me in my tracks. Camera dangling, and Dictaphone pocketed, I got closer to hear. Jon Faine, an ABC¹ talkback radio host was talking. He told of a fabulous journey he was soon to embark on with his son, Jack: a road trip from Melbourne to London. Melbourne to London! I was just transfixed.

The segment was brief, the picture painted scanty, but within minutes I was transported to a very different place from where I was at in life. My imagination soared and in my mind’s eye I could picture life on the road, driving through distant and mysterious countries some of which I couldn’t even spot on a map. Turkmenistan? Where’s that? Regardless my fascination was irrepressible. I could feel the swell lifting our ferry as island Indonesia was explored, and imagined inhaling heavenly incense wafting from some tiny Balinese shrine, and breathing deeply divine aromas of lemongrass and lime, frangipani and magnolia drifting through a little Mekong café. Yet I could also smell the stench of a squalid Kazakh toilet and feel the car jolting and shuddering while navigating some lonely track in backblocks Mongolia. I could imagine all these things and many more and the prospect left me breathless. There were so many possibilities, but regardless of where the route would eventually take us, I fantasied, we would be following a path so very few people take, and whoever took that path would live to the full all that would come their way whether good or bad, sublime or awful. In my mind’s eye I was on the road already.

Yet I knew even then that this whole Melbourne to London thing was over the top. It was quite outrageous. Utterly preposterous. But I was a goner—totally, hopelessly bitten.

* * *

‘Have you finished yet?’ The owners wanted to head off and dragged me back to reality. I soon finished the inspection but continued wondering, imagining and in my daydreams, driving.

The route swept through by Faine that morning was just breathtaking and I could detect no fantasy, no make-believe about it. As best I could gather this was the real thing he was describing. He, they were actually going to do it. To drive it, albeit with some disturbing gaps in their itinerary (the resolution of which makes fascinating reading). Nevertheless, as Faine says in From Here to There’² published after we left: ‘Somehow I convinced myself that it was do-able’. I remember being excited and incredibly attracted to the concept of driving out of a garage in Melbourne and many months later ending up in London. The long and lonely road of dreams (or should that be nightmares?) to a tee! But, while many other listeners on that day would ponder over the possibilities or dream, for me however these weren’t enough. Like Jon and Jack Faine I too wanted it to be real, to happen. For me it was like a spark starting a fire, which as it turned out, wouldn’t be extinguished for two long years. However as my imagination soared, this wasn’t just a holiday that was being described; this was almost a new take on life.

At the time, who would have thought a life change for a somewhat settled senior could occur like that? Or at all? So quickly? So unexpectedly? But it happened: very soon, it wasn’t a talkback radio presenter and his son on that road, not you, the reader, nor someone else, but me. And. My. Son. That first flash of excitement was daunting, frightening perhaps, but ultimately, blissfully wonderful.

Looking beyond the spark and the fire, you might ask why? What did I find so tantalizingly attractive about sitting in a car, in a metal can if you like, with son Will as it turned out in the end, and at times others for almost six months, for 35,000 kilometres? I still don’t know the answer to that question; however, like others, I found the concept of the slow, protracted journey through exotic countries

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Meeting the locals, Timor-Leste.

simply irresistible. Ted Simon, who took four years to circle the globe as well as wander off on whatever fascinating side road took his fancy, was asked a similar question many times: why did he choose to ride his motorcycle around the world? While he had dozens of ingenious explanations, he says in his insightful follow-up book on his many adventures, Riding High³: ‘The honest answer was too short and uncomfortable. I did it because I felt like it. All else followed from that’. And perhaps for us that was also enough.

The proposed drive in the family car felt like a great expedition, and in a strange sense, was an expedition; the destination itself, London, didn’t seem to matter. Yes, while English speaking and one of the world’s great cities, it could easily have been other places like Antwerp or Ostend or Bruges—it was the journey that was at the heart of the trip; it was the destination. It would be lengthy, in a small a group (of two and three at times), it would need planning and preparation on a scale I could not have imagined. But most importantly for me and my mindset, I was the one shaping it; there would be no package to buy, no brochure to read, no guide calling us together each day. It would be our journey and ours alone—in a real, extraordinary sense we would be in charge of our own destiny. I just loved it.

One word describes all of this: adventure, albeit adventure stripped bare of glitz, of gloss and certainly of glory. And for me at that brief moment in life, when not closeted by health issues, by circumstance, by inseparable family ties and dependencies or being close bound by my own comfort zone, and with retirement now not so distant, the attraction was quite exquisite, and in a strange sense, the timing urgent. I knew putting off planning such a trip for a year or two would kill it, as inevitably something would intervene (even if you, the reader, might struggle a little to conceive that preparing for a departure perhaps two years away could possibly be urgent!).

* * *

In practical terms our journey was about getting to the end, to London, in one piece, that is without Will or me getting cold feet, or quitting, or splitting up due to some stupid argument, without breaking down in some godforsaken place, or being involved in a car accident, or having the car stolen, or being halted by early snow, or being hit by ill health or some other calamity. It was also about a father and son spending much time together, relishing the silences as well as the banter, being thrown into whatever came our way and about fun, and laughter, great music and good food and generous people, we hoped, assisting us to find our way. Beyond everything else, it was we were to find, about discovering we needed each other more than we could ever have imagined. And who could want for more than that?

You might ask was there doubt; was there a crack through which negative thoughts managed to squeeze, were there even second thoughts? On day one, listening to the radio in that house in Ballarat, there were no doubts. The rose-coloured glass through which I viewed life on the road, as I drove back home to Melbourne worked wonders, and the glow was indeed warm. But yes there were second thoughts, quickly followed by third, fourth, and fifth. The singular question was, of course, was this actually a good idea? Or was it a fool’s dream, one which was almost inevitably going to end in a train wreck?

It was only after a day or two passed that the possible downsides started to niggle, and at times to shake me violently—not only in the long period before we departed but once on the road as well. For instance, we would be driving through many countries, some with the worst drivers in the world I was told, without any car related insurance. Not even third party. In effect travelling naked—utterly exposed. Lonely Planet’s warning⁴ that driving on Java is not for the faint hearted, that a few times every year a driver so unfortunate as to hit a villager met his or her end then and there at the hands of angry villagers, rocked me deeply as we crossed on a car ferry to start our own drive through Java. The advice was drive on… (to a police station).

Even the thought of sharing the driving daily with an eighteen year old, with barely dry ink on his probationary licence squeezed in, forced its way through at times (as it turned out I nearly cried as the end of our journey neared—Will’s driving would be the envy of almost anyone—whether they be 18 or 28 or my age).

Black is a very different colour to rose. No light gets in, no rainbow spans the sky and no sunshine enhances the view. But dawn breaks, the sky brightens and colours greet yet another day. Will wrote (he was working on a cattle station, Wooleen, in Western Australia in the months before we left) oblivious to my unsettling thoughts, then an email came in from one of the wonderfully generous correspondents providing helpful information about something or other, and so we moved on, even if at one point it was by driving at 30 km/h across half the world, and solemnly pledging never to drive at night (which vow was broken of course, on day one of driving on foreign soil!), or pulling to one side when another car came into view, until finally reality returned, my nightmares receded, the glass became clear, and I could see some beautiful light and even a little colour again.

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RESORT: camping west of Darvi, Mongolia.

Once on the road, our journey was about the ordinary, the everyday—of being more comfortable on the move, being in the car driving, making progress, than staying still. And the practical, of being faced with searching out new accommodation every driving day, of ladling cold water from a mandi⁵ over ourselves to have a shower each morning for weeks on end in Indonesia because that’s all there was; it was about trusting complete strangers when we were lost, which was most of the time, of the joy and exhilaration at seeing our car being lifted off a ship after its first ocean voyage to Dili, Timor-Leste and an overcrowded ferry, a fire and mass panic, a car freighter that went missing and the many hitchhikers we gave lifts to and the money they offered us because that’s what locals there did. And it was about attempting to buy back our snow chains stolen in Ulaanbaatar, of the daily game of charades which for us wasn’t a game, of taxis guiding us into wonderfully remote cities in Kazakhstan and Russia and not wanting payment, of generous Indonesian people going out of their way to assist us who were total strangers, and unexpected passengers who became a highlight of the journey and wonderful bakso⁶ and bark and sautéed bees and smiling street vendors everywhere.

And of course it was also about the remote and breathtakingly dramatic steppes of Mongolia, of camping where the car rolled to a halt as it didn’t matter where that was, of Will learning the gentle art of making U-turns through four lanes of traffic, and ignoring one-way street signs and playing dodgem with motorbikes, and of us laughing and swearing together as we missed a crucial freeway exit in Jakarta for the third time, of police and money and police car back seats, of painful separation from loved ones, from Ros and Hamish at home, and trust of a son, and joy in being alive and fortunate, and acceptance that nothing is perfect, that things do happen, and life continues.

We do hope you enjoy travelling with us, of being another passenger on an extraordinary journey by a couple of very ordinary people, a father and son just out for a drive.

Hop in, I’m starting the engine now…

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Breakfast near Elliot, northern Australia.

1

Crazy Dream: Love, Passion and the Carnet

I had a dream, a passion: to drive to the other side of the world, dipping in and out of places I barely knew existed via an obscure route I knew even less about. Was this crazy? Of the intricate machinations of trip planning, buying maps and saying goodbye.

Who would have thought they would go to work one day, listen to mere snippets of a radio program and head home consumed by what was to develop into an insatiable desire to embark on an extraordinary journey to the other side of the world. Who would have thought a settled and greying 61 year-old father starting to attend funerals for close friends, toying with the possibility of retirement, with a mortgage, a job, and wife and kids and the whole shebang, would feel the jolt that day of suddenly feeling a sense of elation, of wonder at the audacity of driving out of one’s garage in Melbourne, down the road and ending up months later in England? In London? This was about as abrupt a transformation in mindset as most normal people could contemplate; as I could imagine. It felt like a dream but this was no fantasy—I wanted it to happen. Who would have imagined that? Yet it occurred. To me. To us.

Two years later…

It is leaden and gloomy outside the car and not much brighter inside. Will and I talk little but share a mutual feeling of utter relief. A year and a half of exhaustive preparations, of planning and organizing are done; the endless talking, the repeated telling of our plans to our friends, to family, to those at work, to mates at pubs that Will frequents are finally over. We are at last in the car. Driving. Doing it. I can hardly believe it’s happening—but I’m close to tears.

Pulling up outside a Youth Hostel reminds me of the good times Ros, my wife, and I had had in the UK decades ago. Then hostels were full of fresh young people like us, on the move, doing the same things we were doing, but here something feels wrong. Twenty somethings from worlds close and far buzz about in couples and small groups, talking amongst themselves, tapping on laptops and chatting on Skype, cooking and eating, laughing and happy. Will is at home and relaxed—but I’m not. I feel quite uneasy, stung by the change, strung between a familiar old life and a very uncertain new one that I have thrust myself into.

We go for take-away. Will, familiar with this backpacker precinct from his drives to and from Western Australia, leads me on foot to McDonald’s through now dark streets, a tunnel, a lane and a shortcut. After our purchase, and perhaps sensing my despondency he grabs his bag of burger and chips and heads off to a pub, the first of his postprandial wanderings, to undoubtedly find far better company than mine. So much for father and son bonding…

Getting lost seems an appropriate beginning to this uncertain journey which fits awkwardly between farce and whimsy. It also feels the perfect way to finish a ghastly first day. Lost. In the dark, in Adelaide, only hours from the start! I shudder to think what Ros, my disbelieving partner in life would say peering over my shoulder that night: ‘Come back you fool… ’. I cringe at the thought, and vow never to tell her. Or Will for that matter—I just can’t. I fervently hope that if ever there was to be a low point in this whole overblown odyssey this would be it. While help was undoubtedly at hand, I am pissed off with myself, embarrassed and bewildered, and wander around in the blackness probing this lane and that, searching for anything familiar until, finally at a street’s end I see the soft glow of a welcoming entry. I thankfully slink in to the Hostel, sink deep into a sofa, crumpled bag of cold burger and limp chips in hand, just wanting this day to be done with.

It isn’t—Will wanders back, relaxed: ‘Had a good night, Dad?’ ‘Yeah Will, just great…’ I lie. We had, or rather Will had selected a six-bed dorm for the night. The realisation quickly dawns that single-sex dorm days are well and truly over. My feeling of just being in the wrong place deepens and sears my battered mind—this isn’t me—I’m not 18—this is total and utter folly. Amongst the draped towels, scattered clothes, backpacks and clutter, and bustling bodies getting ready for bed I painfully climb the thin rod rungs of my bunk, fail dismally at tucking in my bedding, drag the sheet across, and just want this shit of a day to be over.

Before fitful sleep engulfs me a day that was once so eagerly awaited scrapes back over me…

The Start

Ros and Hamish, our older son, watch on, hardly involved. In the harsh glare of fluorescents lighting the early morning gloom, a journey perhaps of a lifetime is born under the cobwebs and clutter cramming a cold and draughty garage backing an inner Melbourne lane. In a few brief moments the last of the bits are stowed, and the kisses and hugs and one word farewell—‘bye’—for that is all it is, are over. Lingering would have set the tears flowing which for me at least, are welling fast. They both stare blankly at us in silence, mourners at a funeral, holding back their own emotions, wanting this farewell to be over, waiting for us just to go. Why does a departure which should be joyous, a celebration, feel so flat, so empty, so nothing? Is it guilt on my part? A feeling of utter selfishness? Or is it just wanting them with us, perhaps sensing it will be so long before I hold those I love close again?

Before our departure, Hamish takes one last photo of Will and me as we stand stiffly in front of the car, blackness outside, coldness all around. Will just glares at the camera, angry looking and the result is close to macabre: ‘We’re done. Just finish it. Leave it Hamo. I just want to go’ is what he was undoubtedly thinking. Later I laugh as Peter Fleming describes in News from Tartary his and Kini Maillart’s own departure and last photographs taken before a very different journey in 1935. A fellow journalist takes their final photo and through wafting magnesium smoke Fleming toys with, in his words ‘not improbable’ captions: ‘… The last photograph taken… this foolhardy enterprise… In light of the Provincial Governor’s report… hope must now be definitely abandoned… ’⁷ I love it and Fleming’s self-deprecation, perceptive descriptions of the many people they travelled with or met, and his downplay of the hardships and serious risks they were exposed to on their unlikely and uncertain travels from Peking to Kashmir give considerable encouragement, now 80 years on, for us to not take our own cushy little jaunt too seriously.

Ros blinks away her tears, the photos end, the camera is put away and at last we depart, rumbling unceremoniously down a cobbled bluestone lane, past slinky metal roller doors and cranky timber gates. With relief I look away from the mirror, from those I love standing alone at the garage door, turn as the lane ends and the long road of dreams begins. But at that moment there are no dreams but only nightmares. Here, only a minute from the start, I am lost in my misery, drained and apprehensive—where is this all going to end? Why am I doing this? Why? I ask myself. Next to me, Will sits silently staring ahead, lost in his world.

Downhill through West Brunswick we silently coast in the just dawning light, the streets almost deserted on this early Sunday morning. We swing right onto the freeway, leave Moonee Ponds creek where it is a cheerful, bubbling stream no more and head out through Essendon and the usual turn off to my work, to a job which now seems as relevant to me as our own journey is to the family in the Toyota just ahead or the couple talking earnestly in the taxi passing by. I say little; Will offers even less. But the silence is uncomfortable and to break it I ask him what he thinks will be the highlight; ‘Mongolia’ he says without hesitation, without enthusiasm. His mind seems far away; where that is I don’t know, but I sense it’s not Mongolia… I later asked him:

‘The day we left was pretty weird, probably because of different reasons to you [dad]. I was nervous about being away for such a long time more so than the actual trip itself. Especially because I [had] just come back to Melbourne after being away for 4 months.’

Will

Past The Bellevue, The Regency, and Hillside we glide, where small parcels of land are sold and grand dreams are purchased. Past the last of the trees of Ballarat’s Avenue of Honour, dying reminders of young brothers and sons, of brave lives lost in World War I deserts of Egypt and Palestine and quagmires of France and Belgium. And on to the Western Highway past Lake Burrumbeet, all dry and reedy following years of great drought, and Burrumbeet Hotel with its faded yellow window sign offering Sunday Lunch where all you can eat is called roast of the day and nouvelle cuisine is a language only others can speak.

In the quiet of our steel cocoon, disturbed only by the flatulent drumming of tires on asphalt and quiet rush of wind over our snorkel, scattered thoughts sift through my mind as we pass through the last of the vast wheat paddocks of Western Victoria, still oddly golden from the searing summer now past and head across the state border into South Australia and, by mid-afternoon, Adelaide.

* * *

At an early point in the piece I had to ask Will the big question, the ultimate question for the trip I had in mind—would he join me in the car? To a young man, having only very recently left school, with no interest in studying at university, and with a yearning for a different life maybe on a cattle station, or as a chippie, or who knows what, who’d loved to spend time with mates on farms during school holidays, mixing it with rough diamonds, the ‘Charlies’ of this world, this was of course like asking him if he liked beer or girls or sex!

I told him things would go wrong, the trip would be wearisome at times, that we would be living out of crap hotels, there would be disagreement, perhaps even anger between us; but despite this, what I was offering Will was a chance so few fathers are able to offer. With rent or mortgage commitments, and family and work responsibilities pressing heavily, constraining, so few parents could even contemplate or would perhaps risk spending long days cooped up inside a car with their offspring for months on end. But for Will, even though he’d be away from his mates, from a young woman he’d only just met in Byron Bay at schoolies (how little did I know…), perhaps understandably, it took just seconds for him to say YES! While I was more than grateful for this I knew in fact that Will had indulged me by agreeing to come along; the trip would be nothing without him. Nevertheless it seemed like it was going to work.

As soon as he heard what was afoot Hamish wanted to come too, but graciously withdrew when I pointed out where he was at in life with his university course just restarted following months of backpacking through Southeast Asia with mates. The timing was hopeless for him I said whereas it was perfect for Will.

But there was another more fundamental reason which I couldn’t discuss with him or anyone else—somehow, I couldn’t think of both of them coming. In my mind’s eye I could see but couldn’t look at the car crash, the plane metaphorically falling from the sky. For Ros one son would be a tragedy, two sons unthinkable. I was just so appreciative of Hamish’s maturity and understanding.

I remember however the moment in time in what seems eons ago, when I realised the enormity of all that I needed to say to Ros. To somehow tell her, the person who was the most important in my life, that I wanted to spend my treasured long service leave with someone else, without her, that I would need to increase our mortgage, to fritter away a fair chunk of family income on a trip, and, oh, by the way, that I needed a new car. And all that was the good side—I couldn’t even contemplate discussing the possible downsides, the risks…

At this point I faltered: how could I possibly think of telling Ros about my dream, my inner fantasies? I started to wonder if this trip, still held in the womb, had not possessed me, was not just a crazy, stupid dream. Was I still capable of making rational decisions?

And then, as at other times, my mind turned to a handful of special people and the remarkable journeys they had taken: Shirley Hardy-Rix and Brian Rix’s motorbike epic of 2003 from UK to Australia, David and Chris Holloway, two young Australian brothers who had had an extraordinary time driving their Subaru from London to Sydney through Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and China only a year or so before; Paul and Dorcas Cullen and their three young daughters, Clare, Kerry and Aislinn who had travelled somewhat haphazardly by train from Hong Kong to Dublin, and back again in 1993, Jon Faine and Jack Faine’s fabulous adventure from Melbourne to London of 2008, and Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman’s grand motorbike circumnavigation came quickly to mind. These were real people who had taken remarkable journeys. They were not mad, not possessed but rather individuals who had seized a dream and lived it. And thankfully rationality returned.

So my focus turned again to the still difficult conversation to come. How do I start I pondered?

For me, in 2009, my first stroke of luck came by way of ominous noises from the gearbox of my old Camry wagon. With over 260k on the clock it was clear to me, and just as importantly to Ros, that it was near its end, becoming unreliable. But would be OK for one of the boys until it finally died. There was nothing for it but another car. For work of course. Any why wouldn’t it just so happen that the car selected would also be suitable for long drives, or actually just one very long drive—to London? And so, as ironically as irony gets, one of the less awkward issues was sorted! Solved by the ominous clunk of an automatic gearbox!

Of course the biggest issue remained. How could I try to get Ros on board, to be comfortable with what appeared on the surface, and of course was in reality nothing more than an enormous and expensive indulgence?

And then the Faines stepped in or rather their website. Without much explanation I told Ros that I had asked Will to come and he had agreed. She already knew about Jon and Jack Faine’s journey, and about my bubbling excitement as each new entry appeared on the site. She knew, I hoped, from that snippet of conversation that Will and I wanted to do a Jon and Jack Faine. To drive to London. Together. In our car.

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Outside Kakadu National Park.

What more wonderful thing could a father and son desire? What better use of time, some hard earned money and long service leave could a 60 plus year old father and his 18 year old son do than this? And just because so few are able to, and so few do, was not a reason.

Ros characteristically, however said little. Was this her way of saying I’m not going to waste my breath on such a stupid proposal? But perhaps, at times, few words are needed between people who know each other intimately. After a suitable interlude when the trip wasn’t mentioned again, I took the timid step of simply hoping that she could live with what we proposed and that she saw the value and perhaps was even comfortably on board the journey. In time it was obvious to me that she was with us wholeheartedly and for that I was just so grateful.

One thing I knew however was that Ros was never coming. Without uttering a word, both of us knew that it would not work with her; that it would only end in tears. This was, after all, a father and son trip.

I needed to tell my older sisters Berenice and Marilyn, and brother-in-law, Richard and family. Face to face, I could see uncertainty and fear in Berenice’s eyes. Richard also smelt risk but of a different complexion: ‘I’m not going to pay your ransom!’ brought laughter and mayhem to the dinner table as Richard behaved like Richard does and made his position abundantly clear. Work was very different. At a meeting with my two business partners, Alasdair Macleod and Paul McLaughlin, months prior to going, we got to the