Tennant Creek? More like Wolf Creek!

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  Tennant Creek, Australia
Sunday, July 8, 2007

Tennant Creek....the reprise

I leaned towards Nick unable to hear him over the loud inebriated voices in the pub.
"say that again" I mouthed.
"That guy just told Felix about cattle rustling with his mates, and then asked him to go Roo hunting tomorrow morning." I stood there not quite sure if he was joking or not, when Geordie received a tap on the shoulder by one of the doormen.
"There's a woman outside who says she's your girlfriend" he said. Geordie, evidently surprised at the thought of his ex-girlfriend travelling all the way from Holland to Tennant creek merely to join him at the pub, peered over the doorman's shoulder and through the open front door. Gazing back at him was an Aboriginal woman as wide as she was tall, swaying to and fro like a blade of grass in a summer breeze, her face like a wasp chewing toffee and her eyes pointing home and away.
"Er, that's not my girlfriend" stuttered Geordie, his voice rising gently in panic. "don't let her in on my account........please"


6 hours earlier on the outskirts of town...

Although we acquired a free bottle of wine on our previous stay in Tennant Creek, I was reluctant to rely on lady luck to provide again and so pulled up outside the first bottleshop in town. With hindsight this is both the worst and the best place to be if your car fails to start in a town in Australia.

After three attempts turning the key in the ignition with the same response, nothing, I stepped out of the van. Popping the hood, I gazed nonchalantly under the bonnet in the vain hope I would see two stray cable ends and a little sign saying 'Connect these two wires to make your car work again', but unfortunately only reminded myself that the engine is not situated under the bonnet but under the driver's and passenger's seats. I was staring at the spare tyre. I admitted defeat and having marked the time I officially classed us as 'broken down'.

Looking on the brightside I was pleased we had not broken down 300km from nowhere on one of our many 'wow, look at the road stretching out into the desert' photo stops, and yet the two of us 'poms' sat in a crippled van 12 feet from the busiest off licence in town at 6 p.m. on a friday night. Bloody brilliant.

Within 8 minutes we were the talk of the town.
"Hey have you seen the pommies broken down out there? They've driven 600km from Alice and have conked out 2km short of the caravan park!"
"Bloody pommies eh?, unbelievable". And so it went on, almost reaching fever pitch when they found out  that whilst on the phone to the recovery service I was put on hold for 10 minutes and my phone credit ran out. Not thinking it could get worse, I returned from my 40 minute walk to the nearest shop with credit, only to be told to "please call again later" by a vacuous pre-recorded message from my phone operator. Bastards.

Feeling my patience ebbing away, Jen informed me that the local mechanic was probably in the pub having a couple of jars and would be passing the bottle-o in the next quarter of an hour to pick up some tinnies. Finally our luck was changing, or so I thought.

However, a mechanic arriving on a bicycle was an omen I failed to spot at the time, and I duly informed him of our woes before he spent all of 4 nanoseconds looking at Priscilla before diagnosing the problem as a loose nut on the battery. "she'll be 'right" he confidently exclaimed in Aussie slang, "just tighten her up and you'll get her started", before pedalling off.

Now, we don't carry a toolkit with us for three reasons: firstly, Jen doesn't know how to use one, secondly I don't know how to use one, and thirdly even if we did, neither one of us knows a carburetta from a carbonara, so the simple task of tightening a nut became a not so simple one. Swallowing my pride (which took considerable effort) I asked the bottleshop owner for a spanner. After he had stopped laughing, and alternately insulting the English and for some reason the Kiwi's he delved into the shop returning with an adjustable spanner.

I would be lying if I said I wasn't just a little bit pleased to see his efforts make no difference what-so-ever. Ha, I thought, stuff you and your bicycle mechanic and all your mates mocking us, what good is your toolkit now buddy boy? But of course we were still stuck, and to make matters worse we'd missed beer o'clock.

It was at this point a bolt of lightning flashed in my head, and a strange voice echoed in the darkness "ooooooo there was a time before mobile phones ooooooahhhhhh" (well, sort of) "Of course!" I said, slapping my forehead in an overly theatrical way. "public telephones!". Scanning the street like a Terminator devoid of a phone book, I spotted a kiosk not 50 yards away and headed defiantly for it. Remembering from my youth the intricate procedures required to make a call: lift reciever, insert change, dial number and wait for an answer, I stood transfixed feeling like all the members of the A-team rolled into one using their combined skills to escape the baddie.

As luck would turn out, my call was answered the exact moment a mechanic pulled up to fix the van. It turned out the problem was a loose connection between the ignition and the starter motor (well yeh, of course!. If only I had a toolkit I could have fixed it myself. NOT!!!) Responding in a fairly astute manner, as she often does, Jen asked "what do we do if it happens again?". Pointing to the driver's footwell he replied "just under there there's a little black box with wires, it's pretty obvious, just give it a tap and it'll work."

Little did I know but in 24 hours that piece of information would fail to start our car....

(apologies, that awful, awful line is taken from a Dan Brown novel. It is awful, I mean really bad. He should be ashamed. Ughhhh)

With the engine running we rushed to the campsite, checked in and immediately started preparing our dinner. It was here we met Felix; a Dutch chef (herdy-ferdy-gerdy), Geordie; a dutch ex-army dude who looks liked the guy from prison break(gilders gilders), and Nick; a quiet English barber no taller than Jen with a rich Bristol accent "awlroight mate" . We ventured onto the main strip for a few bevvies, and headed to the nearest bar to get a round in, ahhhhhh, the universal language of beer, who needs phrase books?

Disapponted to be chucked out at 9.30, we crossed the street towards the Tennant Creek Hotel. Outside there was enough noise to make you think that a pub brawl was in progress, with people about to fly horizonally through the windows 'Dukes of Hazzard style', and maybe they would've had it not been for the steel bars on the windows. 'Country' and 'Pub' were two words far from my mind as we settled in for an evening that could loosely be described as 'rough around the edges' (who would believe you could urinate AND throw up into a urinal, all at the same time!).

And this folks, is where we meet the beginning of this tale with a cattle rustler, bragging about his exploits. All five of us left Tennant Creek the following morning, safe in the knowledge we had made it out in one piece and pleased we had met one another, yet with an image burned firmly into our brains. Tennant Creek - a fatty drop of sweat in the armpit of Australia.

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