3071 kms with Norma & Beryl


Last Wednesday, Thursday and Friday I 48hrs with an old
lady whose brain is so severly mangled that I'm surpised she's able to
cope with the normal rigours of live, another lady who hands are so pulverised with arthritis that picking up a cup of coffee was a monumental task and another lady whose hometown of Wollongong I was looking to crash into whilst on approach to Sydney airport last night....but that story another time.

The first person that I speak of is my Aunty. I don't know what goes through that head of hers, or rather, how it manipulates basic information so drastically but I really have to wonder how she gets through each day intact. She can't do basic things, she doesn't understand basic directions and is so scared of everything and everybody that surrounds her that she is just waiting to be attacked, 'ripped off' or duped by every person she speaks to. I could dedicate an entire book to how non-sensical her world is but that would be a waste of energy. Needless to say, she could drive a sane person to suicide if given the right amount of time .....one week or so.

Now, Norma and Beryl are the other two ladies that I speak off. They were our dinner car companions for the continent splitting journey from Darwin to Adelaide. Some may consider the company of two old bats to be far from satisfactory but for this journey they were a God send. For some reason, the class of travel selected for this journey meant that I'd have to cohabitate with a bunch of octogenarians whose idea of fun was having two spoons of sugar in their 'not too' strong tea. Don't get me wrong though, I'm not complaining about the journey itself - that's experience that I won't forget in a hurry BUT, if I had a choice of travelling companions then I'd certainly not choose a bunch of people whose plate of 'life saving' pills was larger then their dessert - albeit as colourful.

Norma and Beryl however were the only shining exceptions to the half warm corpses that inhabited my space. For one, they both had a sense of humour and they even tolerated my Aunt's nonsensical discussions. You may consider it slightly cruel for me to speak harshly of a relative but here's an example of what I mean when it comes to having a discussion with her, you say, "Hey, the Prime Minister is going to be in Germany today, I hope he gets shot'....and she says, 'Germans make great sauerkraut, it's one of my favourite foods'....and then you listen to 30 mins of rubbish about sauerkraut and how she lived in Germany in her teens and blah, blah, blah. So, with the assistance of Norma and Beryl, we managed to blunt my Aunts mindless drivel and actually have some decent conversations.

As for the trip itself, well it was impressive. For a country that is 70% arid , cutting through the driest part of a mostly uninhabitable land was still visually stimulating. The scenery changed constantly and at times dramatically for all of the journey ...and the sunsets were some of the best I've seen. With all that said, I would like to give a warning to anyone who is thinking of spending more than an hour in Adelaide. This is what will happen if you decide to take the challenge.