Walcha slipped behind us. There was petrol to be had in Uralla on the New England Highway, 40 kilometres up the road. We were warmer now with the extra layer of outer clothing and the fortification of the port. I was anxious to get to Mum's before 12 o'clock, but we still cruised at (only just over) the legal limit. There was no traffic on this country road. Well, almost no traffic. One car came from the other direction, failed to dip its lights, and when I flashed mine to remind him he finally dipped too and drove past.
And then I saw in my mirrors the blue and red lights which signal a coming encounter with The Force. In reflection I could see the cop yuck a chewy, lights still a-flashing. I immediately pulled on the brake, not to slow down but for a very important other reason.
I lifted my visor. "Shit!" I said to Juliette.
"What?"
"Rollers."
"No."
"Yep."
"Shit," she said, and looked over her shoulder.
I pulled up, keeping the brake on until I killed the engine.
"Good evening."
"Good evening, sir. Did you know you have no tail-lights?"
"No tail-lights?" I said. I looked at Juliette. "No tail-lights, eh?"
I pulled the handbrake and switched on the ignition, in that order. The headlight sprang to life, and a bright red glow came from the back of the bike.
"Yes," said the more senior of the two. "It comes on when you hold the brake on, but you've got no tail-light."
"No tail-light?" These cops were more perceptive than most. I let go the brake lever and the light went out. "Humm," I said. "No tail-light!"
I made a little show of getting the bike properly on its stand, got one of the cops to hold up the hinged bike seat to reveal the fuses, got the other cop to hold a torch, asked if he'd come around to the other side of the bike, removed the fusebox cover, and fiddled.
Nothing happened to the tail dark.
"Fuses look alright," I said.
"Yes."
This was the moment of truth. Would they now take out their pen and ask for my licence? Fortunately I remember what address that shows, even though I can only dimly remember how long ago it was that I lived there. It's always good policy to remember what address your licence says.
Or would they...
"How far are you going," said the senior.
"To my mum's place, with my daughter here, for New Year's Eve, we haven't been there in a long time, just up the road from here, really, cos we've come so far today, up and down the Great Dividing Range, we went through the Barrington Tops, boy what a rough road, it shakes the bike, those Italian electrics, all I need is a service station, is there one open in Uralla?" I had run out of breath.
Yes, there was one in Uralla. I tried to look relieved that there was one
in Uralla.
"Would it be open?"
"Yes, it's a 24 hour one." They gave me the directions for where to turn when I hit the highway.
"Thanks," I said.
There was that micro-second of a pause which I should have filled, but it was too late.
"Have you had anything to drink tonight, sir," senior asked.
Safe ground! All I'd had was a butcher (5 ounces, the smallest glass a pub carries) of port at Walcha. I told them I'd had one drink at Walcha.
"Well would you mind blowing into this?" senior asked, as he took out his blood alcohol breath tester.
No worries! I'd blow in a bag a thousand times rather than show my licence just once.
I blew until he said stop. "You're half the legal limit, sir," he said, and showed me the tester.
Now there was no pretence. "I can't believe it," I said. "Fair dinkum, I had a butcher of port. I wouldn't have believed it would be that high." It was well under the limit, of course, but I was astonished that one more tiny glass would have got me into trouble.
But it could have been different. As we'd been leaving the Walcha pub, Juliette hadn't finished her glass, and she'd asked me if I wanted it. "No," I had told her, "I'd better not." When she'd then pushed her glass away I said, "Wait a minute, aren't you going to drink it? Bullshit! Give it to me then."
"No, it's alright." And she'd reached back across and drank it herself.
Lucky, lucky, lucky.
We wished the cops Happy New Year. I rode on to the service station, bought new bulbs, and put them in right there. I should have done that when Juliette had earlier this day first pointed out to me that while my brake light worked, the normal tail-lights did not. I'd even wiped the mud off the lens then but that hadn't helped. Now I was changing the globes in the driveway, with the countdown to midnight getting closer. But I didn't complain, and I didn't push my luck.
Then it was up the New England Highway for 22 kilometres to Armidale, legal speed all the way. Once in Armidale I rode around increasingly frustrated for 10 long minutes trying to find the road which leads west to Black Mountain and thence to my Mum's at Warrane.
After two laps of the university ring-road, I called my brother Will on my mobile. I hadn't charged the phone batteries in two days and it was beeping at me.
Will answered. He was seeing the New Year in at a luxury apartment on the Sunshine Coast at Noosa. He was on the balcony when I called. I could hear the surf crashing in the background above the noise of a party.
"Will," I said, "I haven't got much battery. How do you get to Mum's place?"
He started giving me directions. I interrupted. "I know all that. I'm fucking around in the university."
"Keep the uni to your right," said Will, and the phone went dead.
No problem. I was in the university grounds somewhere. All I had to do was to get out of this, turn right when I hit the next intersection, and keep the uni to my right. I'd recognise the right road immediately.
Another dead end and I gave up. I turned around and went back to a Shell service station I'd seen on the way into town.
There was a car in the driveway. "G'day," I said. "Could you please tell me how to get to Black Mountain?"
"Black Mountain...? Well, go back into town, keep following the New England Highway north for about 30 kilometres, and you'll see a sign on your left ..."
"No, no, no! Not that one. There's another road somewhere around here."
"Ah, the back road!" he said. As opposed to the road back, obviously.
"I actually want to get to Warrane," I explained. This is a sheep station where my mother lives in a former worker's cottage, on the very lesser road to Black Mountain.
"Ah Warrane." He knew it. He explained the way to go, simply and comprehensibly. Then he asked who I was visiting there. "My mother," I said. (I don't mind giving out her address, because I know she can never remember mine, so I can't be traced that way.)
"Ah, Maryke!" And he introduced himself as the manager of Warrane, said he'd heard all about me ("Christ!," I thought to myself) from my mother, and to wait and follow him; he was just heading home.
"I'd love to," I said, "but we're in a bit of a hurry." It was 15 minutes to midnight.
We followed his directions, found the right road to Black Mountain, kept the uni to our right, and then I searched for the turnoff to Warrane. His car came behind me, flashed its lights, and we followed him into the turnoff. Five kilometres from Eversleigh Cottage, a cool summer night, a moon above, stars, a bush road winding... perfect.
I looked at my watch. It was midnight. I turned around to Juliette. "It's midnight," I shouted. She lifted her visor. "Happy New Year," she beamed, and I hugged her leg and she threw her arms around me and squeezed.
"Happy New Year, Button," and we laughed. We'd seen the New year in, on the back of the motorbike, riding. I've never done that before. And I'll never forget it.
A few minutes later we pulled up at Eversleigh Cottage. I got the fire going, quickly and brightly. We lit the candles, pulled off our heavy bike gear, opened the Drambuie.
Proost! we said. And Proost! we did.
We drank some more, looked around the cottage where I hadn't been in too many years, and then, after a little while, celebrated New Year again for 12 o'clock South Australian time, and half an hour later again for Brisbane time. Three New Years Eves!
The phone rang, first Gillian, then Will. From Tasmania, my mate Al Waugh rang, as he always does on New Year's Eve, and left a message on my out-of-range mobile. Then my mother arrived home - she'd been to a party nearby, a combined birthday-New Year's Eve party, but she knew we were waiting for her at home and had left the party early. We opened the Gloucester sparkling wine, had hot showers, lots of cups of coffee and tea and lots of Drambuie, and when the first sun of 2001 came shining through the window, my mum and I were still sitting talking quietly in front of the fire, Juliette outstretched and cosy in a doona on a mattress between clean sheets on the floor behind us.
Proost! I said to my mum. Proost! she said. And we clinked glasses again, and shambled off to bed ourselves, happy, content, and a little bit pissed.
*************
Mid-morning, January 1, and we were all up. Juliette and I borrowed my mum's car and took a five minute drive up the road to a little creek and a ford, and we sat a spell in the shade and looked around.
There were she-oaks, whose needles whistle in the wind. A sound of Australia. And a few flies, also Australian. And a willy wagtail, scouting for insects flying above the water.
And where does this little creek go? Does it flow west? If it did it would join the Gwydir River, flow through Moree, join the Barwon River at Collarenebri, then through Walgett. (I've been to Collarenebri and Walgett on my opal-mining, emu-eating expedition. A Volkswagen Microbus with my Pappa en Mamma and brothers Lillepot and Plooi and sister Mung. I've still got the photos.) Then it would go through Bourke as the Darling River, and past Tailem Bend as the Murray.
The next creek over does, but this one, by a few kilometres, does not. This particular creek flows into the sea at Kempsey, 460 kilometres north of Sydney on the New South Wales Pacific coast. Yes it's true that Armidale is on the New England Tableland, and yes it's true that if one was to ride from the coast (or from Gloucester, as we knew!) one would appear to crest the Great Dividing Range before we got to Armidale... but! There are shallow depressions in this tableland, some with creeks in 'em, and some of those creeks find other depressions, and some of those depressions lead not into the Murray-Darling system but fall instead over the eastern escarpment of the Range, tumbling down in magnificent waterfalls. In the nearby Oxley Wild Rivers National Park (92 000 ha) are 13 major waterfalls, including the Apsley Falls . This open forest, gorge woodland, dry rainforest and shrublands is sliced by rugged gorges, and it was here that the aborigines of New England and the coast took their last refuge in flight from white encroachment.
This is what happens to the creek which flows through Warrane: it is the very, very, very headwaters of the Macleay River, it flows south of the city of Armidale, and then called Salisbury Waters drops 120 metres in an instant at the Dangars Falls, which is where we were going for a picnic.
We left the little creek, got into the car again, picked up mum and picnic hamper, and my mum rode shotgun on Dangarsleigh Road, where we stopped and looked at an unusual World War One memorial privately erected by the Perrot family for their son killed at Passchendale Ridge. Mum had got together some smoked trout, nice bread, cheese, we had some wine, salad, and... well, it was all very satisfying. We had a nice walk, learnt about peregrine falcons and DDT weakening their eggs, and if Juliette had been enrolled in New England University's Batchelor of Natural Resources degree, she might have done an optional short course in biological conservation which is held here. At twilight it was an easy drive back home to a delicious dinner - Babi ketchup, an Indonesian dish. It was nice to have mum's Indonesian cooking again with ladles of rice. Yum (or jam! jam! jam!, as they say in Nederland).
And finally, one after another, to sleep. What a day. What a first day of the year. How good it was to be here.
We didn't get to see much of this graceful city itself. New England Regional Art Gallery was closed so I couldn't show Juliette its impressive collection of Australian paintings from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including Tom Roberts, Norman Lindsay and Arthur Streeton, or its sculptures by Kandinsky and Rodin. And my aversion to magisterial proceedings meant I didn't take her to the 1860's courthouse with its half-fluted entrance columns, vented pediment, cedar joinery, and message. It was written by the Clerk of Petty Sessions in 1870, and placed under the floorboards when the courthouse was being renovated. One hundred and one years later, in 1971, it was found, rolled up in a cognac bottle. It reads in part: 'My friends...rest assured that the world has wagged before your time as it will after your time, and that nothing is certain but death. For and behalf of my numerous creditors. Sydney Blythe.'
Late in the morning of the 3rd of January, 2001, we'd had our last smoke and cup of tea, taken the last of the photographs, helmeted, waved, and with a triple blast of the air horns we rode away light of heart and leaving a little of ourselves behind at Eversleigh, behind with my mother.
But ahead of us we had more ranges, Dorrigo, and beyond:
Oh you never know where you go until you get there
You never know where you go until you do
And when you reach the end
There'll be another bend
Oh you never know where you go until you do.
Armidale first, to a bike shop. A visor screw for my helmet - 20 cents they charged. Bargain. A 10mm nut for the exhaust flange - no problem. 10 cents. Directions free.
Then east out of Armidale, to ride through the ranges and back down to the coast.