The motor of the beast roared to life. A crunch and clunk of gears
being selected and we suddenly lurched away from the curb, narrowly
avoiding a collision as the large black vehicle dragging its carriage
behind slipped into the procession of taxis and courtesy coaches
filing past the front of the terminal building. We drove about a
hundred yards before the line of traffic slowly ground to a halt.
“I’m Alex,” my driver said, using the opportunity of the pause to
introduce himself.
“I’m Adrianna.”
“Yes, I know. You’ve already told me, remember?”
“Gawd! I really am jet lagged!”
Alex glanced over at me and smiled. The glare of the harsh morning
sunlight cut right through the tinted glass of my sunglasses and was
starting to make my eyes feel like they had sand in them.
“I can’t wait to get to the hotel so I can freshen up a bit.” I could
feel my eyes watering as they tried to relieve the gritty, burning
sensations in them.
“There’s been a change in plan.”
“A change? I see.” I didn’t understand at all and hoped he’d
elaborate. I’d just traveled half way around the world and the last
thing I felt like was having my plans changed at the last minute. The
jerking stop-start flow of the traffic was already starting to
irritate me.
“Yes, a change,” Alex repeated.
I looked at him, staring directly at him trying to attract his
attention but he kept his full attention focused on the traffic ahead.
“What kind of a change?” I eventually asked, breaking the silence that
had fallen between us.
“We won’t be going into the city. We’ll be heading directly out west.
To Broken Hill…”
“But I thought…” I didn’t know what I thought. Maybe I was not
hearing him properly.”Broken Hill is, what? It’s a suburb of Sydney?”
Alex threw his head back and laughed loudly.
“You could say that,” he finally said once his guffawing had subsided.
I could feel myself become sullen and moody.
We merged out of the airport road and onto a busy freeway. I ignored
Alex and turned my attention to the sights outside. It could have been
any freeway in America with all the billboards of familiar
multinational companies like Ford and Sony except we were driving on
the wrong side of the road. That took a bit of getting used to,
especially once we picked up speed and were hurtling
towards…somewhere.
“I had been hoping to do a bit of sightseeing today. The Opera
House…I saw it from the air. It looks beautiful.”
“Not today, you won’t be.”
“Pardon me?”
“Not today. No Opera House today. You just sit back and enjoy the
scenery and let me concentrate on driving.”
“Look,” I said, trying to remain calm. “If this is a game you’re
playing with me I’m really too tired right now. I just want to get to
my hotel and …”
Alex roared with laughter again.
“Settle down, okay? This is all about trekking, remember?”
“Well, yes,” I reluctantly agreed, remembering the brochures and
everything I’d seen that had attracted me to Australia. “But surely I
can have just one night in a nice, comfortable hotel room?”
Alex gave me a look like he thought I was totally out of my mind.
“Trekking is not Club Med, ya know!”
“It’s not?” I unsuccessfully tried to match the sarcasm implicit in
his tone.
“It might be where you come from, but not here. You’re in the land
down under now.”
For one terrible, disturbing moment I thought Alex was going to break
into song and start singing that awful song from the 80s.
“No hotel?” I asked, resigning myself to the fact I wasn’t going to
get my wish.
“Nope.”
“No hotel, no Opera House?”
“Nope.”
“Just this Broken place?”
“Broken Hill. Yes.”
We drove for a few minutes in silence with Alex staring ahead through
the bug-splattered windshield and me gazing off absently through the
passenger window.
“Why don’t they fix it?”
“What?”
“Broken Hill. Why Don’t they fix it?”
Alex gave me another one of his incredulous stares and then we both
burst out laughing at my feeble attempt to make a joke. He just shook
his head at turned his attention back to the road ahead.
We drove some more in silence, eventually turning off the freeway and
down into the bustling streets of the outer metropolis.
“Do you mind?” I asked, holding my finger poised over the controls for
the radio.
“Be my guest.”
The speakers suddenly burst to life, catching a DJ mid-sentence
talking about the traffic. It could have been any FM station in LA
except I didn’t recognize the name of a single street or location he
was speaking about. I settled back in my seat and let the sound of his
voice wash over me, hoping to maybe absorb by osmosis some information
about the city I thought I was going to be spending my first night in.
“It looks like home,” I said, feeling slightly disappointed by the
sight of a McDonalds store.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing,” I mumbled. “Do you know Steve Irwin?”
“Who?”
“You know, that crocodile guy.”
Alex looked at me strangely.
“Nope. Do you?”
I suddenly laughed and realized how silly my question was. “Cracky!” I
immediately wished I hadn’t been so foolish as to attempt the accent
with Alex listening. I thought he was going to run off the road and
crash, he was laughing so hard.
“Y’all gotta say it like CRY-kee.”
“George Bush meets the crocodile hunter!” I laughed at the way Alex
lampooned my own accent to give the correct pronounciation of the
weird word I’d heard so often on television shows about Australia. I
tried to mimic Alex, intoning the syllables just as he’d done, but
still it came out sounding wrong.
We played a few more little linguistic games like this as we sped
further west, heading out of the city, the center of which I caught
occasional glimpses of fading in the distance behind us.
“We’ll be making a stop soon.”
“Good!” I said, genuinely buoyed by the prospect of stretching my legs
and freshening up.
“Why don’t you close your eyes for ten minutes. I’ll wake you when we
get there.”
“Is it that obvious?”
Alex just looked at me and smiled.
I knew what would happen the second I closed my eyes – sleep. Instant,
deeply relaxing sleep. There was a brief struggle between my mind and
my body with one desperate not to miss a single sight and the other
exhausted almost to the point of nausea. My body won easily and not
even the gentle vibrating of the passenger window on the side of my
head was enough to keep me awake once I closed my eyes.
—
ser-en-dip-i-ty (n) The faculty of making fortunate discoveries by
accident.