The Road Was the Whole Book

The gums along the dirt roads out of Bendoc grew tall and dead straight, standing in long grey columns on either side of the bus. We rolled through them clean for the first time in days, the batteries reading full, and it was surprising how much lighter the world felt with both of those true at once.

Before long the dirt gave way to bitumen. This was the Bonang Highway, a road that winds through the forest and draws motorcyclists from a long way off for its corners. We passed exactly one car on it. For all its reputation, we had it nearly to ourselves.

Goongerah, where we stopped, is a very small town, and the camp beside it held only a couple of other campers. One of them was Rosco.

He was sixty-five and had been travelling the country since he was twenty-one. He hunted for his food and was in the area after deer on a property nearby. His Jack Russell, Rusty, kept him company, and the two of them had the easy look of a pair who had long since stopped needing to discuss arrangements. Rosco told his story plainly, the way people do when it has simply been their life rather than an adventure.

Anth found himself doing the sum while Rosco talked. Forty-four years. We had been out nearly three, and some days even that still felt like a long time. Here was a man for whom the road was not a chapter but the whole book, and he did not seem to think it remarkable at all.

Before the conversation was done, he had pressed some venison on us, and some flathead as well. When Anth mentioned that our son was a chef and would be the one to cook it, Rosco was keen enough on the idea that he gave us his number, so we could send him the recipe afterwards. It seemed a fair trade to him: his meat, Torrin’s method. Torrin had been cooking for a living since he was about seventeen, in Japan and soon in Canada, and before long he would be standing in our little bus kitchen with Rosco’s venison in front of him.

On the last morning, while Sal was on her online calls in the cab, Anth went for a walk and very nearly put his foot on a copperhead. It lay curled tight and still, almost underfoot. He stopped. It did not move. He stepped wide around it and walked on with his eyes on the ground for the rest of the way. Winter had kept snakes out of our thoughts for months. The warmer days were letting them back in.

As soon as Sal had finished her calls, we packed up and said goodbye to Rosco and Rusty. It felt less final than most goodbyes on the road. People like Rosco don’t really leave the road; they move along it, and so do we. There was every chance our paths would cross again somewhere.

In the fridge, the venison and the flathead rode on with us toward Bairnsdale, saved for the one of us who would know exactly what to do with them.Read more