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Hopping through Texas
(by Guy 'Guido' Allen, July 2022)
Of
Valkyries and kangaroos
It was one of those journeys.
Ms A jnr and I were bumbling along through another
3600km Melbourne to Brisbane round trip, circa 2002 on
Mac the Valk, to visit assorted rellos and friends.
A challenge on these mile-fests
is finding ways to keep your pillion happy and amused.
Happy includes good riding gear and, though my stuff was
looking pretty tatty, we got her the latest (if not
greatest) – which was a good move as we hit some
spectacularly foul weather on day one.
A warm and dry pillion will,
even during a downpour, agree to go an hour further up
the road at the blunt end of the day, so long as they
feel warm, dry and safe. The several hundred bucks on
the pillion gear was money well spent. Now we're all
happy.
And amused?
Well Mac the Valk has a stereo,
but even that loses its appeal before long, and what
I've found really works is two things: 1. Think of a
target or goal that tickles the passenger; 2. Give them
some control over the plot.
In this case, since I wanted to
take the Newell Highway and knew Ms A liked
locally-produced movie The Dish, it was easy to promise a
stop-over at the real dish, or space observatory, just
north of Parkes. Okay, I'll admit I wanted to see it too
– it had been years since I last scoped the place.
So we pulled in, a
1000-something kays later, for a late lunch, and dorked
about for a while.
We also made an unplanned stop
at a dodgy military museum (her call) and pulled up that
night to go over the maps.
If you know the Newell
Melb-to-Briz route, you'll understand there are a number
of ways to get to Queensland's capitol city once you
near the New South Wales/Queensland border. Via
Goondoowindi is one, but there are several others. So,
which way, Ms A?
She picked via the town of
Texas, mostly because she had spent six months in
the real Texas and wanted a pic to send back to her host
family in the States. It meant an extra half day in the
saddle, but so what? (Come to think of it, I'd never
seen Texas, Queensland, in all these years, and was
curious.)
We got lost on a 'shortcut' that didn't work
out, eventually found the town and shot the pic, and
then wandered on to the Texas-Stanthorpe road at dusk.
It's a fantastic, twisty, and
interesting bit of tar.
But the last time I saw that
many kangaroos was on the Silver City Highway to Broken
Hill at dawn some years ago, and, now I think of it,
that experience pales by comparison.
Mac has a lot of road presence
and you don't expect even something as dumb as a 'roo to
get in its way. They do.
It backed up my theory that the
two most stupid species on the planet - kangaroos and
galahs – share the same brain. They wait until you get
close, so they get a really good fright, then, when
presented with the choice of running/flying away or
right across your bows, they do the latter.
One of the great, furry,
hopping sods, having narrowly missed spearing under the
front tyre, persistently bounded alongside and Ms A
swears she had to smack the thing in the face to prevent
Skippy from joining her in the rear throne. After that
encounter, she spent another 40 kays waving her fists at
the wildlife.
We emailed the Texans the pic,
but they'll never understand what we went through to get
it...
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