by Tony Horwitz
The girls, meanwhile, face each other and bounce up and down, as if they’re jumping rope, which is what they probably do when they’re not hanging around Darwin pubs at 1 A.M. on a Monday night.
The week may be just beginning in Darwin, but time is running out for me. I can barely lift my beer glass, much less try to jump rope or open French doors. I make my way to the toilet and splash cold water in my face. The urinal is full of broken glass. Time to move on.
The Diamond Club Casino is still doing a brisk business at 1:30. Apparently, the high rollers—fatcats from Singapore, Saudi sheiks, drug smugglers—are ushered into a back room for the privilege of tossing away their millions in private. I don’t qualify. So I crowd in at a roulette table with the masses, clutching chips and watching a little metal ball spin around a giant, brightly colored wheel. I make short work of the roulette table; or, rather, it makes short work of me. By two o’clock the last of my loot has vanished beneath the croupier’s ugly little chip sweeper.
There are still a few coins in my pocket so I hand them over to the one-armed bandits: obese poker machines with names like Winners Circle, Aristocrat, Dollar King. I feed my last dollar coin to a monster named Dreams and listen to the rumble of money traveling through the pokie’s gut on its way to the casino bank.
Busted. Finis. Done like a dinner. I consider finding Doug for a free drink at the bar, but think better of it. I have no intention of seeing another dawn. The party’s over and I’m glad to see it done.
No one else shares my fatigue. Outside, the street is still busy with drinkers and gamblers, stepping from cabs or stretch limousines. I seem to be the first person to call it a night—at 2 A.M.
Except for one couple, reclining on a wall by a fountain, back to back, fingers intertwined, murmuring to each other over their shoulders. They are well dressed but somewhat disheveled, as if, like me, they’ve just crapped out at the casino. His tie is undone, her high-heeled shoes are off and dangling loosely from one finger.
They murmur for a moment more, kiss once, and climb off the wall. Then he bends over and claps his hands. She jumps onto his back, and they trot off down the street, going clippety-clop into the tropical night.
It is a pleasing, connubial image. In a few hours, when the morning breaks, I too will be headed home, no longer alone.
In a beautiful house
With a beautiful wife
She will come with me next time. We’ll be restless together.
A taxi pulls out of the casino and I leap off the footpath to hail it. The last mile and a half of this odyssey will be done in style. Except that I don’t have a penny left to pay the fare.
“Got room for a hitchhiker?” I ask, flashing the driver my best roadside smile.
“Get stuffed.”
He roars off before I have a chance to return the compliment. My luck, it seems, is finally spent. I fall in behind the couple traveling piggyback and begin the long journey home on foot.
…GLOSSARY
I haven’t explained certain oddities of Australian word usage, such as pubs being called “hotels,” or the fact that “tea” usually refers to dinner.
In alphabetical order, with American equivalents:
Abo: short for “Aborigine,” usually used in a derogatory manner.
aggro: unpleasantly aggressive.
Akubra: a brand of hat, stiff and broad-brimmed, worn in the outback.
Anzac Day: a day of remembrance. Anzacs were WWI soldiers from Australia and New Zealand, many of whom died on this day at Gallipoli.
Baygon: the brand name of a strong insect repellent.
bitumen: road surface, tar.
bonnet: the hood of a car.
boot: the trunk of a car.
bottle shop: a liquor store.
bowser: a pump.
bush balladeers: a group of poets who wrote about rural Australia.
bush tucker: berries, roots, and other foods gathered in the outback.
bustard: a turkey.
chuck a sickie: take a sick day.
cockie: slang phrase for “farmer.”
corroboree: celebratory gathering of Aborigines.
cot: a colloquialism for “bed.”
crook: sick, spoiled, broken.
dag end: the grubby bit of wool around a sheep’s butt. Daggy is also used to describe an unfashionable person.
damper: a cakelike bread, traditionally cooked in campfire ash.
Digger: slang for “veteran,” or, sometimes, simply an Australian.
dingo: a wild dog.
Do the Right Thing: advertising phrase used to discourage littering.
dole: welfare. Dole-bludgers are welfare cheats.
drover: a person who herds and moves stock, feeding it along the way.
dunny: slang for “outhouse” or “toilet.”
egg nishner: rhyming slang for “air-conditioner.”
emu: a flightless, ostrichlike bird.
fair dinkum: genuine, “tru-blu” Australian.
fibro: cheap housing material.
Fourex, or XXXX: a beer brand common in Queensland.
’gins: short for “Aborigines”; derogatory.
geek: freak or hayseed.
goanna: an Australian lizard.
Grace Brothers: a chain of department stores.
greenies: slang for “environmentalists.”
Holden: a line of large Australian cars.
humpie: a lean-to or shack in Aboriginal communities.
Kelly, Ned: an antihero bankrobber of the nineteenth century, like Jesse James.
kip: a nap.
Kombi Van: a large recreational vehicle.
lolly: candy.
Lucky Country: a famous phrase, often used ironically, that refers to Australia’s plentiful minerals and other assets.
Maori: the native people of New Zealand, Polynesian in appearance.
middy: a small glass of beer.
muesli: a breakfast cereal like granola.
mug: a fool or sucker.
mulga: a low shrub common in the outback.
new, old: light and dark types of beer.
ocker: an unsophisticated or redneck Australian; noun or adjective.
pad (as in cattle pad): cowpie or manure.
piss: slang for “beer” or “alcohol.” Pissed as a newt means to be very drunk.
plonk: alcohol, usually cheap stuff.
pokies: slot machines.
quid: slang for “dollar” or “money.”
ratbag: a ranter, dogmatist, proponent of unpopular causes.
road train: a long-distance truck, often with three trailers.
RSL: Returned Services League, a veterans organization.
sandpit: a sandbox. Sandshoes are sneakers.
schooner: a large glass of beer.
scrum: a huddlelike formation in rugby.
Sheep’s back: a phrase denoting Australia’s traditional dependence on wool, as in “Australia is a country that rides on the sheep’s back.”
sheila: a sexist word for a woman, like “bird” or “chick.”
she’ll be jake, or she’ll be right: nothing to worry about. Stay cool.
shout, shouting: buy a round, usually beer, as in “It’s my shout.” Traditionally, if several people go to a pub together, each shouts a round.
singlet: a sleeveless T-shirt.
slog: a strenuous activity or walk, i.e., “a hard slog.”
spinifex: spiky grass common in the outback.
station: a large grazing property or farm.
stinker: an extremely hot day.
stubbies: small bottles of beer; also, men’s shorts.
subeditor: a copy editor.
swagman: a tramp or itinerant laborer. Swag is a bedroll.
ta: an abbreviation for “thank you.”
TAB: the equivalent of off-track betting parlor.
Tasmanian tiger: a doglike marsupial, believed to be extinct.
thongs: flip-flops.
tinnie: a can of beer.
Tobruk: a grueling WWII battle in North Africa.
Tooth’s Old: a brand of dark beer.
Top End: the top of the Northern Territory, taking in Darwin.
troppo: short for “tropical.” It usually refers to the lassitude of Australia’s hot north, or to going crazy or becoming lazy from the heat, as in “go troppo.”
tucker: food.
two-up: a gambling game in which two coins are flipped, popularized by WWI veterans. Now illegal, but widely played on Anzac Day.
ute: short for “utility truck,” such as a pickup truck.
windscreen: a windshield.
wirly-wirly: small, tornadolike gusts of wind.
wogs: immigrants, usually Italian; derogatory.
wombat: large, low-slung marsupial, like a very fat, grounded koala.
wowser: a teetotaler, sometimes aggressively so.
yakka: work, as in “hard yakka.”
yarn: a tale.
yonks: a long time.
… ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author wishes to acknowledge the following sources from which material has been reprinted:
“Folsom Prison Blues” by Johnny Cash.
“The Biggest Disappointment” and “Camooweal” by Slim Dusty.
“The Waste Land” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” from Collected Poems 1909–1962 by T. S. Eliot. Copyright © 1963, 1964 by T. S. Eliot.
“Take It Easy” by Jackson Browne and Glenn Frey. Copyright © by Swallow Turn Music.
“Once in a Lifetime.” Copyright © 1980, 1981 by Bleu Disque Music Co., Inc., Index Music Inc., and E. G. Music Ltd. All rights reserved.
Tony Horwitz is a staff writer for The New Yorker and a former foreign correspondent who has reported from Australia, the Middle East, Africa, and eastern Europe. His awards include the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting and the Overseas Press Club award for best foreign news reporting. He is also the author of two national bestsellers, Baghdad Without a Map and Confederates in the Attic. Horwitz lives in Virginia with his wife and son.
Books by Tony Horwitz
Confederates in the Attic
Baghdad Without a Map
One for the Road
SECOND VINTAGE DEPARTURES EDITION, SEPTEMBER 1999
Copyright © 1987 by Tony Horwitz
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in slightly different form in Australia by Harper & Row Pty Limited, Sydney, in 1987, and in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 1988.
Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Departures and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the first
Vintage Departures edition as follows:
Horwitz, Tony, 1958–
One for the road.
(Vintage Departures)
Reprint. Originally published: Sydney; New York: Harper & Row, 1987.
1. Australia—Description and travel—1981–. 2. Hitchhiking—Australia.
3. Horwitz, Tony, 1958–. I. Title.
DU105.2.H67 1988 919.4′0463 87-40476
eISBN: 978-0-307-76302-0
www.vintagebooks.com
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