Running Down the Road.

Distant thunder rumbled all night, invading my tortured dream of trying to row a boat backwards up a waterfall that rained swords.

Morning got me out of the boat. Under a heavy low leaden sky we pulled out of town and across the Murray River, winding along the long low bridge that traverses its tributaries and creeks. I turned left onto the same B-road we'd taken yesterday, through the farm flatlands of northern Victoria, southbound this time. The opposite direction and a vastly altered sky turned the scene into something entirely different. Yesterday’s hot dry dusty wheatstalk horizon became a wet, pallid, metallic monochrome sci-fi set built for a movie about another planet. My, how it rained. 

One of the teenagers had bluetoothed some music from the back seat. A repetitive piano motif stole out of the eight or however many speakers are in the car; they seem to be everywhere, under the seats, behind the dash, a couple in the roof lining; limpid wet notes dropping down like fat ripe fruit off some kind of weird music tree. We smashed through the rain and the teenager turned up the volume. I had bought Tubular Bells exactly fifty years ago and this playing stripped half a century away - in a good way. The music's last plaintive guitar notes faded and died an hour later as we hit the next town.

*

The Numurkah Bakery Cafe is a vast barn of a place. Enormous tables where you can spread out the newspapers if you still read them, little corners and nooks and crannies and a couple of huge bars, at the junction of two such someone takes your order. Chilled display cases full of pre-prepared sandwiches, pastries, cakes, pies. Maybe they export them. I don't know. Maybe the locals have big appetites. We ordered toasted sandwiches and coffee, the benchmark by which every cafe is judged. They were good, it was good, the lady behind the counter was efficient and friendly and my card didn't work. Damn. Out of cash. A quick transfer and all good. Five stars.

Halfway down the state I'd noticed patches of blue in the windscreen. The heavy metal sky was softening and as we rolled toward Melbourne the sun broke through. It's usually the other way; Melbourne a wet nightmare and the sun on the stubble. Those last few fifty or so kilometres were scored with Van Morrison, Nick Drake, Arlo Guthrie, The Jam and the Small Faces. As the city's silhouette rose in the distance I realised that I had not chosen a single track out of the entire weekend's playlist. 

Job done, I thought; not that I was gloating. Like hell I wasn't.