…
Most of the trip continued in that vein.
Geraldton itself was much the same as it ever is; stuck in that borderland between small-town rustic and burgeoning city, seemingly intent on destroying what little charm it has left by whoring up local business and generally “improving” the fuck out of local landmarks. Luckily for them my terrible wroth was narrowly averted by offerings of honey-seared scallops at the Camel Bar, which were so freaking awesome I even forgave them for advertising BECKS ON TAP in ten foot letters on the street-front, which apparently is a very exciting thing to have and means you can charge ten dollars a pint for it. Bastards.
Delicious, delicious bastards.
Local beaches haven’t escaped the ever-vigilant eye of progress but thankfully, so far, only the city-centre marina has truley suffered for the cause. This meant the unmolested dunes and shores of Pages beach were free to host the high point of my trip as I tore up and down the headlands in my car’s first test of its all-wheel drive abilities. To quote Euripides “Aww yeah, that shit be pimpin”. You have no way of knowing he never actually said that, so stop giving me that look.
I have to admit I was sceptical to begin with, the Outback looks like nothing more than a middle-class overture to the off-road realm designed to let soccer-mums mount the curb and not much more, so when we first drove onto the beach I was pretty damn sure I was going to get bogged. Turns out my car is invincible and I am the lord of nature. Who knew? I was so impressed by my vehicles prowess I even let Kate drive in all her licenseless glory along the beach and sand dunes.
Personally, I think I handled myself with remarkable aplomb both when we became airborne and when we mounted the native scrub. Sure, she later described my soothing murmurs of encouragement as “girlish squeals of terror”, but that’s just her way with words.
Aside from that we were mostly just sort of there instead of here. We saw relatives as rife with bitterness and in-fighting as always (all part of their own private charm) and Kate got to reclaim a substantial portion of her missing book collection. Good, because she’s got a lot of good books. Bad because (station-wagon or no) trying to cram a couple of crates of books, two people’s worth of luggage and two people’s worth of dog into the back of a car for a five hour trip isn’t all it’s cracked up to be (not helped by Kate spending most of the trip trying to reach back for her books, all the while cooing softly and stroking them creepily).
So here’s to hometowns! To places we escape, to places we return, to places we never reach. Here’s to you Geraldton, for being better than I remember and for being worse, for being nice, for being idyllic, for defiling my chlidhood, for having that guy in the bar who called my mp3 player “that faggy radio thing”. Hurrah to you Geraldton for just not caring what I do.
Christ that took me a long time to say. I talk alota pretentious wank, don’t I?
Yeah. I do.
I get it, I really do.
The endearing closeness of everything, of people and places and the things in between, a feeling of connectedness that makes holism seem plausible.
The general affability of the natives, not anything so passionate as goodwill but a willingness to tolerate that teeters on acceptance, a sort of benign indifference that’s strangely comforting.
The folksy charm that comes with the conspicuous absence of corporate monoliths, only occasionally marred by encroaching franchises that are still forgivable in their haphazard management.
The way the ageing process is broken down to binary states, graduating people straight from the vigours of youth to the complacency of the well-aged, the sort that suggests they’ll be fifty for the next thirty years.
And everyone looks so damned healthy.
I get it, I really do.
Small towns, country towns, they’re good and wholesome, quaint and lovely, a bastion of traditional values and a simpler way of life. A place where community is a reality and Tönnies’ Gemeinschaft makes sense… so long as you don’t look too closely or stay too long.
Because the thing about small towns, the truth that people like to ignore is… well… they suck.
Hard.
They suck like a piglet (watch Ordeal, and you’ll get that, get it so much you’ll need steel wool afterwards to cleanse your eyes and soul. Belgians should not be allowed to use video cameras). Maybe you feel differently, maybe to you small towns are freedom, isolation, better ways of life or just better communities.
You’re wrong.
Like Lynsey is want to say: ‘You’re welcome to your own opinions, not your own facts’. By which she means you, not me, because my opinion is fact. I mean, obviously. Small towns suck. Fact. I know, I’m from one.
I just want us to be clear on that. “Me thinks he doth protest too much” you say, calling my feeble ranting a sad attempt to distance myself from my country origins. Well what’s that all about, man? I thought we were friends. And what’s with the faux-Chaucer parlance? I don’t have time for this shit. I’ve got things to… you know, and… and places… Screw you. I went to Geraldton for a few days. Yeah, segues are my bitch and I’m their sweet pimpin’ daddy.
Geraldton is my hometown. You probably don’t know it. I was born there and I barely know it. We moved when I was six and I’ve been back a lot since then but I lost the essence of the place a long time ago. The familiarity and feeling of rightness that lets you know you’re home just isn’t there for me. People always say that you can’t escape where you’re from, that somehow it’s in your bones and claims you forever as its own. But honestly, when isn’t sentimental-cliché total pants?
The damnable thing is small towns are nearly always nice to visit. It’s part of their camouflage so you don’t expect them to go all children-of-the-corn on your ass. It doesn’t work though, every time I see a group of blank faced youths a massin’ I get ready to start laying about me with a scythe (which has its own problems because slack-jawed yokel and corn-cult crazy can be hard to tell apart in the heat of the moment). Point being despite my best efforts to the contrary, I actually had a pretty good time.
We drove through Dongara on the way up (an even smaller town 100 km’s south of Geraldton) and after spending the first five minutes driving around town vehemently cursing country drivers and making a spirited attempt to mock every local person and artifice I saw, we stopped at a beach-front called Southerly’s.
Friendly staff, neutral decor, cheap beer and an outdoor area that opened up onto the pristine marina, its general pleasantness antagonised me. It’s like they do it on purpose. Do you know how hard it is to maintain an air of civilised contempt when you’re getting your buzz on and staring literally at a sea of tranquillity? I rallied briefly with a diatribe on the generic pop-electronica but my heart just wasn’t in it, and then the jukebox switched on and played nothing but triple-j hottest 100 albums in what I can describe only as a deliberate and malicious attempt to undermine me.
…
