Are We There Yet?

“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