Are we there yet?

Going to Rammangaloo always seemed like a huge trip. These days it takes no more than one to two hours. Back then, it was around three hours, seemingly always in the dark, and always at my father’s ridiculously frantic pace.

We had a variety of cars when I was little. My father’s passion was his cars. He and his friends would tinker away weekends, and much needed money, on his cars, preparing them for the car club he would race with one weekend of the month.

The one car I remember most vividly was Danny Datsun. It was a little Datsun 1600 that had been highly modified. The engine was from a more power car. The tyres were racing quality. And we sat in the back seat, in our child-sized racing harnesses, craning our necks around the large steel piping of the roll bars he had installed. Resting your head against those pipes on a long trip would cause your brain to shake from the vibration that rattle through your jaw.

Speed limits were for others, and the frustration, which built to anger, was palpable if he was caught behind slower moving traffic in the tight bending roads of the mountains on these trips to Rammangaloo. And that anger was easily redirected. We learnt quickly to keep quite in the back seat. Arguments were not tolerated. Nor was having too much fun. Toilet breaks were rare, and usually we would be crying in desperation before my mother could convince him to pull over. My sister used to get carsick, so the blue icecream container shared our back seat. The gag reflex in me was hard to suppress once she was sick. Driving with windows down to try and get fresh air had to be tempered with the freezing air outside. And sitting in the back seat, as my father pushed "Danny" to its limits to overtake another car, the headlights heading towards us glaring more and more brightly, and I would shut my eyes, hold my breath, and wait for the moment I would die.

As the car would be wrenched back into the correct lane again, collision avoided, I would allow myself to breathe. Until the next time. And the next time. Dozens of moments I fully expected to be our last. Until we made the familiar turn off towards the low lying sandstone house, with its hedges and gardens, and the sound of gravel under the tyres.