do a little interview with me and this way you can practise your listening

skills, maybe learn some new vocabulary, and also perhaps learn a bit more about

Australia, because Mum has travelled a lot more around Australia than I have.)

And a long time ago.

(Yes, when things were quite different.)

(Okay, so you grew up in Sydney. You were born and bred in Sydney.)

I was.

(And then when you were in your twenties, you decided to go on a little trip.)

Yes. A little trip that turned into a very long trip.

Yes, and I think it was... Before I got back to Sydney it was um...

10, 12 years.

(Oh, it was that long?) It was that long.

(Wow. Okay. And you were... It was in the 60s, right?)

It was in the 60s, yeah.

(You can do the math for her age. She looks very good. Hopefully it's...)

Aren't you lucky?

(Hopefully it's in the genes.

But back then it was quite a big deal as well, right?

To go across the country.) Oh yes, it was. You know, I think

when you're young, you don't think it's a big deal. You just think, "Oh well, you know,

we'll book the train, we'll book the bus, whatever. Pack our stuff and we'll go.

But it was a bit of a big deal and we had to... And... You didn't say to yourself,

"Okay, when I get there, when I get to Perth, we'll just go out and buy all new

stuff, like new saucepans and new towels and sheets." No, you didn't do that.

You took it all with you. And fortunately my girlfriend and I had two trunks and we

packed all that sort of thing into the trunks and we had a couple of

suitcases. Um...

(You had suitcases. 'Cos I was joking with Mum before... about the sui-...

I said, "Oh, you had trunks. So you didn't have suitcases yet?")

We had suitcases. They just weren't on wheels. They didn't have wheels.

You had to carry them. It was those sort of suitcases. Some people still have them.

But that's... it's hard going when you have to carry your suitcases.

Ah yes, so we left Sydney on a bus. I think we left on the bus.

(You went on a bus? Ah yeah...)

First.

('Cos I thought you did the whole thing by train.)

No, no. We... we went by bus.

(Gosh, that would've been so long.)

Yeah, it was. It was... from Sydney to Perth... is um... it's a long way.

And we had to go via Melbourne, and then

we intended to say in Adelaide for a while. So we... we got that far,

and that was... that was all by bus, and then from...

After we'd stayed in Adelaide for a while we went on to Perth by train.

So that was, yeah, that was easier, because

we were on the train for I think three nights. That's quite a... quite a

distance across the Nullarbor.

(And what did you do in Adelaide?)

In Adelaide... We... Well, the first thing... I don't remember how we got the hotel,

but we ended up staying in a cheapish hotel. And to save on money

we opened the trunk and got our little heater out.

We had a little two-bar heater. We stood it on its back so

that the bars were facing up and we cooked our toast on there, hoping that

no one could smell it, because we weren't supposed to cook in the room. And that

was... we had things to put on there for breakfast...

(And that way you didn't have to pay for breakfast.)

That way we didn't have to pay. In those days they

didn't actually... I don't know if they gave you breakfast free in the hotel. I don't think

they did. So that was, yeah, so we could save a bit of money.

(The type of thing I would've done in my twenties too.)

Yeah. We... But the main reason we left Adelaide is we... It wasn't easy to get jobs,

but we managed to get jobs waitressing in a... in a restaurant. It was a newly opened

Italian restaurant. The trouble was it was so far away, we... and we didn't have a

car... We had to get a taxi there and a taxi back again, and by the end of the

week, we had hardly any money left. So that didn't last very long. We didn't

stay in those jobs very long. And then we took the train. We booked the Indian Pacific,

which now goes... You could get it all the way across. In those days, I think

we could only pick it up in Adelaide. And we went from Adelaide to Perth by train.

(And what was the story with the puppy?)

Oh we... We were so young and stupid. We... Oh we fell in love with this

lovely little puppy. Oh we can't leave it here, we'll have to take it with us.

I don't know how we ended up... I don't even know how we got it in the first place.

But we took the puppy on the train with us, so we had to keep it hidden

in our compartment and we had to put newspaper all over the floor,

so it, you know, if it did something we

could get rid of that and put some more newspaper down.

(You weren't we-... hoping that it would hold on?)

No, we weren't hoping that it would... can hold on for three days.

Um, yeah, so that was... that was, yeah, one of the sillier things... sillier things that

we did. And then crossing the Nullarbor... It's basically desert for about...

What did I say about?

(About three days?)

Three days, and it's about five... well, then it was about 500 miles.

So that would've been... What did we say? (About 800 kilometres, 900 kilometres?)

Kilometres... Something like that.

And so you... At night when you went to bed, you'd close your curtain, but when you

looked out the window, it looked... (It was basically the same?)

It was the same as when you got up in the morning. It was no different.

(That's travelling long distances in Australia.)

It just was... It was... And they call it desert, but it wasn't sand dunes like

you'd imagine in the Sahara. It was just like rock and a few bushes, and

you hardly ever saw an animal.

Except for one morning when we got up, raised the blind,

getting dressed... There's no reason not to raise the blind. There's no one out there.

So we thought. And in the middle of getting dressed when we had our underwear on,

the train slowed down and there were some workmen standing out there.

And we thought, "Oh no. Close the blind very quickly."

(I'm sure you made their day.)

I'm sure we did.

(Or their week.)

Or their week.

I wonder how many other people had their blinds open.

Yeah, so we eventually got to Perth,

and I found a job in a bar. That was easy for me, 'cos bar work

you can pick up and drop. And my friend found a secretarial job after

about a week. And we stayed there for...

I was there off and on for about three years or more.

(Off and on because you went to some other places?) Because I went north,

I went up to Derby and worked there, which was...

There's a very good expression: a one-horse town.

Well, this was a two-pub town. Oh it's even bigger than a one-horse town.

We worked in one - I was with another friend at that stage. We worked in one pub and

the only place to go when you had time off was to the other pub. There was

nothing else. But if there was a party... If somebody... I remember somebody

who worked at a bank had their 21st birthday party. So they just simply made

an announcement: "Hey we're having a party! Come on over."

And everybody who wanted to go went.

It was really good.

(You said you got paid well, though. Sorry.)

Got paid well. And everything was covered. ('Cos there was nothing to do.)

No, you got... Well, they had to give you accommodation in places like that.

And they have to feed you. And we had... We had a cook that um...

Well, she had a bit of a temper, and sometimes people in the dining room would say,

"Oh, could I have um... Could you ask the cook to make me a medium rare steak?"

And the cook, in a very loud voice, would say, "The steak will come any way I cook it!"

(But you said there were quite a few interesting characters in those small towns.)

Oh, there were. There was... And I was there in October... let me see...

September, October, November. And in No-... November was what they called

suicide month. Because of the conditions - the weather conditions.

And you find a lot of men go there to work -

do mine work and work on oil rigs and things like that.

And it could be very lonely at times for people like that.

And sometimes they'd just, as the expression goes, go bush.

They'd just wander off into the... into the bush and people had to...

someone had to go look for them. And they did find... I can remember

one fellow that wandered off into the bush, and they think they found him about

three days later, and he was still alive. Still alive. They brought him back to town

and he said, "The police found me after one day and had me tied to a tree for two."

I don't... I knew the police, and I don't think they'd do things like that.

(But what... With the weather conditions...

Was it because it was the rainy season? So it was grey and hot?)

Well, it was what... That time of the year is what they call the build-up to

the rainy season. So almost every day

it was very humid - very hot and humid - then every afternoon you'd get grey clouds...

black... And then they'd turn to black. And you'd get thunder and lightning,

and you wouldn't get any rain. You'd just get thunder and lightning.

And it was... Ohh, it was really oppressive.

And that would happen day, after day, after day.

Until eventually it rained.

(Okay. And then you said you went to the Northern Territory.)

Then we went to the Northern Territory.

(And getting there was a bit tricky.)

I was actually working with another friend - another girlfriend - and

she had a boyfriend that worked on an oil rig. And she had moved to Derby

because he was on an oil rig that was just outside Derby. By the time

she got there, they'd moved him on to another oil rig. So she stayed there for,

you know, six months, and then she moved... followed him to another place.

And by the time she got there, they'd moved him to another oil rig.

Eventually she caught up with him in Darwin. But it was...

It just happens in places like that. You don't have much control over it.

(And um... You had to drive to Darwin? I mean, to get into

the Northern Territory there weren't any buses or trains or anything?)

No, by that time I'd gone back to... actually gone back to Perth.

And then from Perth we drove. And that was... yeah, it's...

And there were places where, once again, there's no sealed roads.

You know, for... I mean hundreds of kilometres there's no sealed roads.

And places where there were just what... what they call... They call it bulldust.

It looks like sand, but it's reddish colour.

And it's actually dust. And there was one patch where it's um...

(And it's not compacted, it's...)

No, it's not. And they say... It was about... I think there was about 80 kilometres of it.

And they said, "Whatever you do when you're driving across it,

don't stop. 'Cos if you stop, you might not get going again. You might end up

buried in the sand." So we... You know, there were times when it was difficult.

There was... Oh yes, and then you know, there's a lot of feral camels out in the west.

(Yeah. We have a lot of camels in Australia.)

Believe it or not.

(More than a million feral camels. So... wild camels.)

Yeah. Not very nice sometimes. You know, they...

It could be a little bit frightening, you know, if you're surrounded by feral camels.

They were brought to Australia in the nineteen...What did I say?

(19th century.)

19th century, yeah. 19th century.

The ah... A lot of Afghanis came to Australia. They brought camels with them,

and they worked as... They were traders.

And they did a lot of work in outback Australia. There were no roads, there

was no railway and goods needed to be taken for one place to another. Mail had

to be delivered. They did all those sort of things. And... But the camels from time

to time, you know... They'd lose a camel. Here and there there'd be a camel gone.

And that eventually built up and built up, until we had... now have over a million

camels in Australia. And they actually now get exported to Saudi.

Yeah, so that's for breeding stock and for meat - camel meat.

But it's interesting that there's so many of them out there.

And I'll tell you the one place I met a friendly (so-called friendly) camel,

was a small place. You know, as I said you had to wait... You had to be very