“Are we there yet?”
Our shrill voices in unison
Over my father’s shoulder
As he steers the Holden station wagon
Down the Stuart Highway
From Tennant Creek
To The Devils Marbles.
His reply is always the same,
A kind of in-car joke:
“Over the next hill
And round the next bend.”
Were all 70s dads like this?
Laconic, to the point of being comatose?
Or was my dad some sort of ambassador
For this particular form of
Relating to his own children?
My brother and I just played the game:
“Are we there yet?”
“Over the next hill
And round the next bend.”
We watched flat red dirt expanses
Dotted with spinifex clumps
Fly by our window screens
As the hot desert air
Blew in like jet exhaust.
“Are we there yet?”
“Over the next hill
And round the next bend.”
My mum had to hold the radio aerial
Out of the passenger side window
So we could get reception,
The radio playing Daddy Cool,
Fleetwood Mac, and The Eagles.
“Are we there yet?”
“Over the next hill
And round the next bend.”
Suddenly, we were there,
After countless games of I-Spy,
There was this moonscape:
Massive red rock boulders
Scattered over the landscape
In a tone of ochre so blood red
It left Indigenous folk mystified.
“Are we there yet?”
My dad looked out across this vista,
Sunset casting long shadows amongst
These vast rounded rocks
And said: “Over the next hill
And round the next bend.”
© shaun patrick green 2021
