Losing It

March 11, 2002-Lock Up
(photos:Gallows,
Prison art)


How can a day that started out so well unravel, dissolve, & then come together in a tidy package as if it was planned that way? Maybe it was. We woke up to a gloriously sunny 75-degree day in Fremantle. We stayed at the Esplanade Hotel situated across from a park of the same name & overlooking the harbor. It was a premier palace of a grand old hotel & nearly encompassed a city block. Its porches embraced its bulk giving it an aura of being lighter than air. We found a funky bakery, had a luscious breakfast with to-die-for million-grain bread, & hit the streets to tour.

We really liked Fremantle. The reason it has such a youthful presence is that Notre Dame University is there. We shopped, took lots of photos of the colorfully painted, dramatic, & gloriously restored Victoriana, & headed for jail. The Fremantle Prison is a brooding granite & sandstone hulk built by, you guessed it, early convicts. The 10,000 transportees from Britain started construction in 1840 & the first prisoners moved in ten years later. Over the years, more serious prisoners from the local population replaced the early convicts. Some of the cells have amazing artwork done by them. We were given the option of seeing the gallows & took it. They explained how the condemned was weighed & measured to insure the rope did its job. They were left hanging for thirty minutes before the doctor certified them. One of the more famous escapees was an Irishman named O’Reilly. He & six others were political prisoners. He ended up in Boston & established the Boston Globe. His family still runs it today. He funded the escape of the six others all of whom went to the U.S. & made their fortunes legally. There was a massive riot in 1988, but the place didn’t shut its doors until 1991.

Nightmare Begins

Our first clue that things were coming apart was when we got to see Perth from the North, South, & East. Blessedly, we missed the view form the West. We were trying to get to the Swan Valley wine region & couldn’t find the right highway. I was working from three maps. The roads were either indicated by name or highway number, but there was no way to match the names or the numbers with any of the signage. We knew we had to head for the airport, but there were no signs in the vicinity of downtown Perth to indicate where that might be. When we finally blundered our way to Swan Valley, the first winery we wanted to go to was closed. The second one had less than satisfying products, & we gave up on the third. We decided to head for the tranquility of the monastery at New Norcia. We would either stay at the mission or in the hotel both of which were run by the Benedictine monks. The monastery, the only one in Australia, boasted a marvelous art collection & a first class museum.

Our route took us down roads lined with termite mounds & ghostlike white gum trees with their shaggy bark strewn on the ground like the feathers of molting birds. Kelly green parrots with yellow ringed necks were vying with gray & pink galahs for the last scraps of the day. The pastoral ambiance was enhanced when a man on a dune buggy herded a flock of sheep across the road. The sheep dog was placidly watching the activity from his perch next to the buggy driver.

Things began to unwind when there was no room to be had in New Norcia. I recall that there was another Jewish family who was turned away at the inn & I’m sure we will not be the last. I’m also sure we will not make the kind of history the other family did. Our innkeeper was less helpful than the one of old. Ours didn’t even offer us a stable. He just callously sent us thirty-five miles down the road to Moora.

Moora is a town waiting to die. It may even be dead, but hasn’t gotten the message yet. The skuzzy motel was fully booked. The hotel had a room, but the bath was down the hall. In desperation, I went to look at the room. Through the partially opened door I glimpsed layers of paint peeling off the walls, a poorly made-up bed with graying sheets, & a stained spread. A mangy man was about to enter the only common bathroom on the floor when I handed the key to the clerk & left. I’d decided I would rather sleep in the car.

My Knight

Distraught is a good word to use here. On the verge of tears is another. I was paralyzed. That’s when my knight in shining armor sprang into action. David called a motel in the town we wanted to be in the next night & booked a room. At this point I was grateful that Ron & Karen left their granola bars with us when they could’t take them into New Zealand. They were a lifesaver.

It was 7 PM, the sun was down, & we had a two-hour drive through the outback. We were about to risk life, limb, & car. We were also about to go contrary to the extremely strong advice given by the car rental company. We were entering kangaroo country at night. David was so tense that his hands cramped as he gripped the steering wheel. His eyes dried out because he was afraid to take them off the road long enough to blink. We imagined that large flying bugs were leaping roos as they flashed in our peripheral vision & hit our windshield with a repulsive pit-a-pat. Shadows, fallen limbs, & shrubs became sinister road hazards in the dark. The two-three trailer long road train trucks seemed to dominate the narrow roadway as they thundered past confidently knowing that any kangaroos they met would be no match.

And then we saw them. There were two of them. They always seem to come in pairs. They must have been the largest roos we’d seen anywhere. David thought they were twenty feet tall, but I figure they were only a bit over five feet. They were standing in the middle of the road oblivious to the headlights bearing down on them. They were facing each other as if trying to decide where to go for dinner or perhaps they were old friends just catching up on gossip. It’s a really good thing that kangaroos have white bellies & are easily visible in the dark. It was a far better thing that David had his high beams on & has good reflexes. He didn’t jam on the brakes, but he did vigorously apply them. The roos took the hint without a beep of our horn. They ambled off the road at their clumsy slow gait looking like a pair of wounded warriors using their tails as crutches.

An hour & a half later we emerged into civilization. There was a filling station ahead. During the entire drive we were mindful that even as our gas gauge was falling, the one station that we passed was closed. We re-fueled & continued onto the dark desolate night highway. There was light at the end of our nightmare tunnel & a pot of gold at the end of our bleak rainbow. There were no windmills to welcome us & no half-crazed knight to do our bidding, but we’d arrived in Cervantes. The sign of our motel was a literal beacon as was the sound of glasses clinking at the patio bar. David said he was going to fall apart when we got into the room. He didn’t live up to that promise. He went to the closed restaurant of the motel to negotiate ice-cream bars, a cookie, & nuts. Bon apetite.

Although we really wanted to wing it for this trip, we booked a room for tomorrow night. It seems that the tourists re out in force. It’s not school holiday time, but it is wildflower season. The hills are supposedly alive with their riotous colors & hordes of rambling tourists.

Toby