Road Trip - a lesson relearned

[Outdated]

So I decided to hire a car and go on a road trip, visiting places I hadn't seen since I was a kid. And to play with my camera.

I picked up the car, went back home and packed some bedding and food, and the camera, and off I went. I bought the almost obligatory carton of beer for the trip, although I could only drink 2 and stay legal. That was also a memory from my teenage years. My first stop was over on the Eyre Peninsula, a little town called Ardrossan where we used to go and stay often when we were kids.

https://www.google.com.au/maps/@-34.4224887,137.9197775,1538m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en

That whole peninsula, and in fact most of the arable parts of South Australia, are wheat country. We produce a lot.

 

[Outdated]

I got there in the late afternoon, the tide was most of the way in and no beach as such to walk along. I drove around the town a bit remembering different things and noticing the changes. It was also nowhere near as familiar and friendly as I remembered it being.

I also forgot to take my sunglasses so by the time I got there my eyes were incredibly tired from driving in the bright sunlight. I just slept in the jetty car park that night, I fell asleep quite early too, after a couple more beers.

I got up early in the morning, got a coffee, and waited for the dawn. Those cliffs face east so I thought I'd get a really nice dawn picture, and afterwards some pics of the early dawn sunlight reflecting off the cliffs and highlighting the colour. Unfortunately the weather had other ideas, The dawn started off looking like it was going to be spectacular but then it flopped, and there was too much cloud to get the bright light on the cliffs.

 

[Outdated]

So then I set off up north, stopping here and there to reminisce or to think of old friends. All the wheat is just starting to sprout and the countryside is greening up and starting to look pretty. This is a hot temperate climate, in summer everything looks dead and brown, it's winter that is the growing season.

You have to drive for 250 Km north of Adelaide before you begin to see the end of the wheat fields, right the way up and past the Goyder Line. Goyder was a scientist and a surveyor, he mapped out lines across the country, south of the line it is possible to grow wheat and sheep, north of there it isn't.

 

[Outdated]

I wasn't really enjoying my trip. I was visiting many places from my childhood but they no longer seemed as wonderful or enjoyable as I remembered. It was all turning in to a disappointment, except for the actual driving itself. Driving in the quiet and solitude gave me a lot of time to just think, and I thought about a lot of things.

As you get north of the Goyder Line the countryside really dries out, sparse stubby grasses and salt bush. The land is very flat except for many strange and sharp looking ridges of tall hills. From a distance they look like mountains but that's only because of the flatness of the surrounding countryside. They really are only large hills.

 

[Outdated]

As I drove through the town of Quorn I realised that nothing was exciting me at all. I was seeing a lot of places that were bringing back a lot of memories but they weren't what I needed. Then I thought to myself about how it would be much more enjoyable if I was showing these places to someone else instead of being by myself.

https://www.google.com.au/maps/@-32.3470998,138.0425205,2361m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en
As I headed further north towards the town of Hawker I realised that this trip wasn't what I wanted at all. I was only about 20 Km shy of Hawker when I decided "Bugger this for a joke.", I turned around and headed home again.

https://www.google.com.au/maps/@-31.8904873,138.4267083,3555m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en
I learnt a lesson, or relearned one I thought I had learnt many years ago:

You can never go back home. It isn't there any more.

I also realised how little relevance all those childhood memories have in my life today. The past holds nothing for me any more. It's the future I have my mind set on now.

 

[Mr. Stevens]

Thank you for these posts, Outdated. You reminded me of something I read in a memoir, by the French writer Annie Ernaux. She said that when we think of meeting someone from our past, we expect to see them unchanged, even though we know that's impossible. Instead, we basically meet an alien person. I'd say places are much the same.

 

[Atrapa Almas]

You can never go back home. It isn't there any more.

I also realised how little relevance all those childhood memories have in my life today. The past holds nothing for me any more. It's the future I have my mind set on now.

This sounds really healthy. You seem to have found yourself in your travel.

 

[Ken]

Thanks for the pics! And the life lesson.

I have made such a trip myself a few years ago. Indeed, it is all gone. My childhood home has burned down and the surrounding land is not even recognizable. All my favorite secluded havens no longer exists. I spent much of my childhood at an abandoned gravel quarry. There was a creek in a deep valley and I would sit there for most of days with all my friends; raccoons, opossums, rabbits, armadillos, even cows. They would all come to see me and we would just hang out.

What I have learned is that childhood and all life history are a series of stepping stones. Like the steps of a staircase. Each step is a "big deal". As you ascend the stairs your life progresses and you move further away from all the step below you. Still each new step is a "bid deal". When you have a lot of steps behind you, looking back down at those early steps, it all seems so small and insignificant - yet during the time of each steps it was a "big deal". I guess that's what life is all about.

 

[Gerald Wilgus]

I enjoy road trips as ways to rediscover oneself. I go, free from expectations, to experience what the world throws at me. And, to feed my interests. I recognized many moons ago that going back home is impossible, plus, I do not want to be resurrecting those ghosts.

In July I will be taking my MR 2, first to my nation's capitol and visit a couple of the Smithsonian Museums. From there I will head to Shenandoah National Park, Skyline Drive, and continue on the Blue Ridge Parkway to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Twisty roads, waterfalls, local crafts, Appalachian music, and more.

Edit: I enjoy road trips as a means of connecting with the landscape, understanding its geology. So, I stop at outcrops to suss out geological history. I will stop at river crossings to "read" the water as if I would run that section in my canoe. I also enjoy looking at a place's cultural history to understand how people choose to live. Road trips are wonderful.

 

[Knower of nothing]

It's a shame that your enjoyment of these wonderful places was diminished by expectations and longing. It's not your childhood that made these places nice the first time around, it's the fact that back then you were simply enjoying them for what they were.
Look not find, find not look.

 

[Outdated]

It's a shame that your enjoyment of these wonderful places....

Thank you for your concern, but I'm happy with the way things turned out, really happy. I have a bright future ahead of me and I'm going to grasp it with both hands. I will revisit these regions again, but it will be when I'm showing them to someone else and then they will once again have relevance to my world.