The horizon has been defeated

The horizon has been defeated
By the pirates of the new age
Alien casinos
Well maybe it's just time to say
Things can go bad
And make you want to run away
But as we grow older
The trouble just seems to stay...
- Jack Johnson, 2003

So, that was that. Needs must, and all that shit. I went against every Holden-branded fibre in my being - then again I’ve always supported Holden the same way I barrack for South Sydney, i.e. pragmatically; I’ll back them in competition but that doesn’t mean I’m obliged to live in Redfern or drive a Barina - and gave my verbal handshake on the swap deal with Dr Cletus, my Magna for his ute. He was thrilled - the all wheel drive, ABS and four airbags of the thing would make Eloise think he was the most responsible husband alive. Meanwhile, I’d just agreed to drive a V8 Falcon ute around in public for the foreseeable future. Starting tomorrow. What the hell had I just agreed to?

Well, I’d agreed to meet the good Doctor at the Cleveland ferry terminal at eleven tomorrow morning and hand over the keys - the Magna was still on the mainland of course, given I didn't have the bottle to be seen in it over here - which meant either getting an early start on the R 80 G/S, or catching the bus at half-nine in time to get the half-ten JetCat. Because I’m about as well-organised as a tail-ender’s batting technique, I managed to do neither. I slept in until half-nine, stuffed around making coffee until ten past ten and was left with one option: riding the R 80 G/S to Dunwich, down the main road, at speed, in broad daylight. I guess there was the other option of calling Dr Cletus and telling him I’d be a bit late, but that sounded like loser talk to me. Even if Option A was overstepping brave and getting into dumb-arse territory. Saturday morning, nice sunny day, London to a brick that old mate would be out on the straight stretch pointing his hairdryer at tourists in hire cars…

Ah well. With apologies to Ian Fleming (fuck, man, sorry you’re dead):
You only live twice
Once when you are born
And once when you stare Toogood in the face.

In hindsight, I couldn’t have taken the bike over to the Springwood motor registry that weekend to sort the rego on it anyway. I was still waiting on one or two parts to be delivered to finish off the rebuild - one of which being that replacement speedo cable which I’d ordered weeks ago. Which meant my understanding of what my correct road speed was at any given moment was not necessarily that accurate… officer. Sure, I had a vague idea that X thousand rpm roughly equated to Y kays an hour in top gear, but it was only approximate. As were my chances of making the ferry without being arrested.

I trolled through the bends towards the longest straight bit, around midway between Point Lookout and the Amity turnoff, trailing a silver Mitsu Lancer coupe (mildly sicked-up with alloys, wings and stupid exhaust, as all standard-tune 1.5 litre Lancer coupes seem to be) to use as my marker for legal road-speed. Squinting into the distance, I could just see a white shape hidden behind a thick clump of acacias on the roadside; it looked less boxy than Toogood’s Rodeo, probably one of the station’s squad cars. Maybe he’d learned his lesson from being blown off by Phil’s turbo Skyline and wasn’t bringing a housebrick to a knife fight anymore.

OK. Here we go.

Sitting bolt upright, knees together, not game to move a muscle. Like I’m riding a Vespa, or sitting on the toilet. Not sure there’s a lot of difference really. Revs look fine, not making any sudden movements, not gaining on the Lancer, not attracting attention, not paying any attention to the jackbooted tosser and his chequered taxi hiding in the shrubbery…

Who’s just floored it out of the shrubbery, and is fishtailing onto the East Coast Road in his late-model Commodore, across the path of oncoming traffic, to get up to speed and onto my tail. I lift off, but not soon enough: lights and sirens rip through the heat of the morning like a chainsaw through corrugated iron. In my mirrors he’s maybe one-fifty yards, one-twenty, one hundred yards and closing.

With the panic came clarity, and regret. He’d have to have seen me on the bike at some stage during the past week, surely. Even though he was keeping a low profile, he’d have to have known it was me. There was no neat, simple ‘out’ this time. Sure, there were mining roads and firetrails which criss-crossed the island, and I could probably bail from here, flog it into the bush and lose him for a bit - that Commodore of his wouldn’t cope too well at all with some of the rougher tracks - enough to escape for a little while, maybe get back home. But if he couldn’t remember the rego off the R 80’s back plate, punch it into the COPS database and find out it was (a) expired and (b) last assigned to Me of My House, My Street, Point Lookout, then he really was a complete supermotard. I knew if I did cut and run, he’d be at my door with a warrant in no time at all, and the worst of it would be, it’d be totally legitimate.

Sagging, I glanced over my shoulder at the onrushing rozzermobile, cut the throttle and scanned the roadside ahead for a place to pull over. At which point the Dunnydoor weaved violently out of my slipstream and surged past, half in my lane, almost blowing me off the bike as he punched a 140km/h Holden-shaped hole in the air I was trying to ride through, the harsh intake road of the V6 wailing in disharmony with the sirens. It was just as well I was in attack-readiness mode, preparing to react; I gripped the ‘bars firmly as the Commodore’s wake washed over me and its foul unleaded breath poisoned the air. Ahead, the Lancer driver had clocked the light and sound spectacular which had been newly installed on his rear wing, and knew the score straight away: three points, at least, and a couple of hundred bucks. As the two of them eased to a halt on the gravel shoulder, I rode past as gingerly as a learner on training wheels. And away into the distance, free again.

Note to self: if you need to use another car to gauge your speed against, try not to use a lowered, deep-dish-alloyed, big-intercooler-bonnet-scooped, even-bigger-fuck-off-rear-winged wannabe-Evo as that car.

Note to Toogood: if you’re still looking for that silver Jap-tuner doofmobile with the big rear wing which blew you off last weekend, which seems to be what you’re still obsessed by, I’d suggest trying about 300 kays south of here.

Note to Phil: next time you’re in town, for Christ’s sake, hire something from Avis instead…

So I made the handover (after hiding my bike around the back of the caravan park and reaching the Stradbroke Flyer terminal on foot) and there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth as Dr Cletus was finally forced to relinquish his hold on the keys to his beloved XR8 ute. Then, after a steak and chips and a beer at the local bowling club (XXXX Gold for him, Cascade Light for me) he and my nice green Magna, my responsible grown-up’s car, took flight back to Chapel Hill to look after Eloise and Matty, like a responsible grown-up would and should.

Meanwhile Kelvinator (a.k.a. the Whitegoods on Wheels) and I were left to get to know one other, like an arranged marriage on wedding night. The interior was horrible hose-out plastic, just like every taxi I’d ever been in - wasn’t the XR8 supposed to be less budget than the rest? It even had a bench seat, making me suddenly wonder whether this wasn’t just a base model shitbox V8 ute with a dodgy body kit and glued-on XR8 badges - it’d explain a lot, the interior, the dash, the way the body kit looked a slightly shabbier shade of ceiling white to the rest of the thing. The stiffened, heavy-duty suspension graunched and groaned over bumps like a nursing home bed. The thing squeaked and rattled and groaned like it’d been assembled with the care and attention of an Airfix kit. It was a shitbox. I had buyer's remorse you could carve with a sharpened twig. But, then again, if you just gave that throttle a bit of a tickle, as per every set of lights I came across in Cleveland… yeah, that’s the shit. That rumble forgave a lot of sins. At a pinch, it sounded better than my old Monaro - not as powerful, but maybe a little more sonorous, a bit better bass response even if it didn't have the throttle response. I was actually starting to like this idea. I was also starting to admit that despite the last five years of dedicated effort, I was still about as much of a responsible grown-up as I was a fluent speaker of Mandarin. Angus Young for PM in 2011.

On the mainland, SuperCheap Auto in Cleveland sold me a couple of tie-down straps; Clark Rubber some nonspecific foam padding and Bunnings some old planks of wood to use as a ramp. Granted, I’m not that special; they probably would have sold them to anyone. I threw the lot under the tonneau cover - reminding myself that I’d need to get one of those lockable fibreglass jobs one day if I every wanted to keep anything of value in there - and motored back to the barge terminal. Back on the island, I returned to the spot where I’d left the R 80 G/S and… it wasn’t there. Jesus Christ. It wasn’t there!

Of course it wasn’t there. Or here. Because here wasn’t where I’d left it. I’d left it over there. By that tree. Idiot.

Momentary panic gave way to a lot of bloody hard work trying to wrestle a big, heavy bike up a makeshift plank-ramp and onto the back of a ute. Why noone tried to stop me stealing this poor defenceless bike, as it must have looked like I was doing, I have no idea - presumably this was the least dodgiest thing to happen in the depths of the bayside caravan park for some time (and in hindsight, how the thing wasn’t stolen to hock for weed money in my couple of hours’ absence, I have no idea either). Finally, after a good half an hour (or rather a thoroughly shit half an hour), the bike was on its side on top of the rubber, restrained with the tie-down straps, and covered loosely with the partially-unhitched black tonneau cover. Not the most ideal way to transport a bike - Mad Mick would have been most unimpressed, he reckoned you should never lay a bike on its side, which was a bit rich coming from him given the number of bikes he’d done exactly that to on the Mount Glorious Road and elsewhere - but it’d have to do.

And it did. Kelvinator, the R 80 G/S and myself all made it home safely without incident. Served as a decent ‘dry run’ for my planned trip out to Springwood next week, work commitments permitting. I propped the bike back up on its stand to let the fluids drain back to where they should have been, gave the ute a bit of a washdown - not really sure why, it wasn’t actually dirty, it’s just something I do with new cars when I get them, sort of a ‘getting-to-know-you’ process - and retired to the balcony with a beer (back on the Boags lights again) and the owners’ manual. Again, not really sure why, not even sure why Ford bother publishing an owners’ manual for Falcon utes. It’s not as if anyone who chooses to buy a Falcon ute can read anyway, and even if they could, there was nothing in there that was relevant to the operation of the vehicle in its normal working environment, such as instructions on doing circlework in the paddock at your local B&S Ball. Circlework, the courtship ritual of choice of rural Australia.

Was I running a call centre here? It would appear so. Then again, it wasn’t my money. It was Lena’s, this time anyway.

“Hey, what’s happening?”

“I’m cranky,” she said.

“Hello Cranky,” I replied sweetly, “I’m Andrew. Pleased to meet you.”

“Shut up. What the hell are you doing giving Mike fucking Cross all these juicy quotes?” she demanded. “What happened to looking after your mates? I thought I’d get first refusal on the good stuff?”

“Maybe you and him should work together,” I suggested. “It’d work brilliantly. He’s Cross and you’re Cranky...”

“You think this is funny, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” I chortled.

“You’ve seen the article, I take it?”

“You might very well take it, but that’s your business and I don’t really see how that’s relevant…” I relented on my golden stream of comedic genius. They don’t call it ‘taking the piss’ for nothing. “No, I’ve not seen the article. This is in the weekend Fairfax papers I guess?

“Saturday’s SMH is where I’m seeing it,” she said. “I’ll email you the link from their website. You’re on broadband yeah?”

“Yeah, steam-driven bloody broadband that falls over more often than a pissed amputee on a unicycle…”

“Oh, that’s wrong... Is that one of…”

“Super Dave’s?” I guessed. “Nah, it’s Uncle Doug Martin’s, originally. Originally as a description of Mad Mick’s riding style...”

I carried the cordless over to my prematurely-aging Dell desktop - never buy Dell, their after sales support is (a) shithouse and (b) entirely based in India - and logged onto the internerd.

Lena’s email, subject line ‘Judas!!1!’, contained the link, a brief comment about what a great and loyal friend I was, and her work signature. I realised she was probably calling me from work - what she was doing at work at six-fifty Australian Eastern Daylight Summer Time on a Saturday evening, I didn’t really want to know. Poor overworked pet. That was one of the single major advantages of being a teacher: mid-afternoon was knock-off time, leaving plenty of daylight hours for playtime, and not just for the kids.

The article was a series of music news in briefs; thank Christ the photo at the top of the page wasn’t Mike Cross in briefs. I’d already been unfortunate enough to fleetingly witness him doing a nude run with a lit roll of paper somewhere intimate (the infamous Dance of the Flaming Arseholes), egged on by our smarmy Intercom A&R guy Simon, while all involved were off-chops on a coke bender backstage at some random festival somewhere sometime in early 2003. Or late 2002. Me, I was most definitely not involved in any of that sort of immoral, unprofessional garbage; I was trying to chat up the cute, spunky brunette guitarist from the Donnas. Unsuccessfully, I’d have to add - and there you were thinking that with songs like Skin Tight, Take It Off, It’s So Hard and Take Me To The Backseat they’d all be rampantly gagging for it. Well, they might well be, but not for me apparently.

Come to think of it - yes folks it’s a Random Aside, patent pending - I generally had next to no luck whatsover with girls in bands we played with. On our Absessive Compulsive tour of mid ‘02 we were supported by all-girl Swedish rock band the Sahara Hotnights, who are pretty much four of the most gorgeous women in Scandinavia (made all the more gorgeous by the fact that they absolutely ROCK) - particularly Maria, the lead singer/guitarist, who is an absolute babe (if not for the fact that she writes angry breakup songs about her exes; caveat emptor, gents). Almost four weeks living together, in close quarters, lots of late nights, lots of alcohol, staying true to the philosophy of ‘what happens on tour stays on tour’… and yet were any of them interested in this little black duck? Not a sausage. Not my sausage, anyway. Even the fact I drove a Volvo station wagon at the time didn’t seem to help. No angry breakup song immortality for me. I’d always wanted to be the subject of some hot rock chick’s angry breakup song - didn’t look like the chances of that happening were up to much these days.

What the hell was I on about just now? Ah yeah. Mike Cross with the news in briefs. Not Mike Cross with the news in his briefs. Thank Christ.

‘No McCarthy, no Gasket’ declares Young
Former Flange Gasket singer/guitarist Andy Young [he generally refused to call me ‘Angus’ in print, he said it was both derivative and confusing] has ruled out a reunion of the band, stating bluntly that without former frontman Sam McCarthy on board, it wasn’t seriously worth considering...

And so on for the rest of the paragraph. He’d quoted me pretty much in context - other than the use of language quite a bit more scathing about the possibility of Breece Rude (thanks W.M. Lawry) playing for a reborn Gasket than I recalled actually using, but then again, the Gasket-deusexmachina feud had always provided him with good material, why stop inflaming things now?

“You really said Reid Burton wasn’t worthy of playing Gasket riffs, and you were astonished Marty was letting him play his?”

“Not quite,” I said. “I said I was surprised he was playing for Marty, given the stylistic differences,” I clarified. Then added with a chuckle, “What I meant was that regardless of how much of a cunt McCarthy turned out to be, Bruce Reid isn’t McCarthy’s jockstrap, and the idea of him playing our songs would make me projectile vomit. So your man wasn’t too far away from the intent.”

“And that line about teaching kids to read being more worthwhile than writing songs about chicks with big tits?”

“That’s all mine,” I replied. “I’m rather happy about it, what did you think?”

“I thought it was the typical sort of sanctimonious wank-filled bullshit that he always comes up with, to be honest.”

I laughed. “So there’s no hope for Cross and Cranky then? I hate to quote Super Dave, but you two should really just fuck and get it over with. I’ll even pay for the carpet cleaning…”

She exhaled furiously.

“Here’s a newsflash for you, boyo,” she said through gritted teeth. I didn’t know she was Welsh. “We have, OK?”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Two years ago, after Even's Christmas gig with You Am I. Ended up back at his place after too many drinks. Doesn’t really seem to have helped much, now does it?”

“Oh,” I said again.

“Oh is right,” she replied defiantly.

I didn’t know what else to say.

“…So who paid for the carpet cleaning then?”

She tried to stay cranky with me. She couldn’t. She started giggling.

“Fuck you,” she declared. “You cardigan wearing, Magna-driving, decrepit, stagnant old bowls lady...”

“I’m afraid it’s much worse than that,” I responded.

“How so?”

And so I told her about my latest acquisition, in place of the cardigan on wheels: a V8-powered Kelvinator with GT stripes. And she laughed and laughed and called me the redneck hillbilly fuck to end all redneck hillbilly fucks and it was just as well I didn’t have a sister or she’d need to be an Olympic sprinter to keep her cherry intact and it was no surprise I was such a good guitarist with all those extra fingers.

“So you think I’m a good guitarist then?”

“As a guitarist,” she said, and I could picture the triumphant, ironic smile that the words accompanied, “you make a great schoolteacher.”

Phil had a problem. Insert joke here. It was half past Thursday; I should have been at work, but there wasn’t any work to go to, as had been the case for the week to date since the previous scene, so I had a problem too, but a different one to Phil. Phil’s problem was that his band had disappeared. Mine had too but that had happened about five years ago and I hadn’t really considered that as a problem for a long time. Unfortunately for Phil, his band was supposed to be playing a gig in nine days at the Point Lookout SLSC to mark the official start of Schoolies Week, which as the name suggests, goes for a fortnight, and started at least three days earlier than that. And he’d only just found out why that weekend, and pretty much every weekend after it for the rest of the year, had been left blank on the band’s calendar.

Well, actually, he hadn’t just found out. He’d found out pretty much straight after Kretin had fielded Scotty’s call on the Monday after Phil’s weekend up here, booked the gig for November 22 – now just the week-and-a-bit distant, for those keeping score at home – and had informed the band of the arrangements. Whereupon Jen had forcefully reminded Kretin that she’d long since declared she wouldn’t be performing with the band after her third trimester of pregnancy began, which was that week; Jack White pointed out he’d organised to be in Sydney that weekend for a HSC English examiners’ meeting, since he’d agreed to mark exams this year given Jen (and hence the band) was out of action; and Jeff just declared the both of them (Kretin and Phil) were a pair of very stupid stupidheads because everyone in the band had been crystal clear they were basically going to be on hiatus from mid November through to their next set of dates after Christmas, when they were going to try playing as a three-piece until Jen was ready to come back, so how the fuck had the pair of them, and Kretin in particular, managed to balls that up? Phil he could understand, on the basis that it wasn’t Phil’s job to organise this shit, and on the basis that he was Phil. But Kretin, for God’s sake man. Jesus H. Christ on an inflatable ocean-going tricycle, etc.

Apparently he’d gone right off, which wasn’t really my little bro’s go at all, but he’d never been that thrilled by incompetence and obviously Kretin’s unmatched ability to blend huge amounts of incompetence with equal volumes of arrogance was getting on his tits, as it had mine ten years before. Though my tits were bigger than his, as Jeff continually reminded me. There was also the issue of practicality - it would have been a massively expensive exercise getting everyone transported up there, fed, watered and housed - there was no way everyone could have stayed at my place, he figured - and just for one gig which wasn’t going to pay that well, courtesy Phil’s dodgy builders’ estimate which Kretin had been obliged to honour. It was all dumb, dumb, dumb, and it suggested that even after two years together they were still about as professional and well-organised as the team at Dodgy Brothers Quality Used Cars and Auto Wreckers Pty Ltd.

So Phil hadn’t just found out, he’d found out over a week ago. He’d just not been able to figure out a way to fix it, whether by drafting ring-ins or by some other crafty scheme.

If he was calling me, he really was out of ideas.

“So, you’ve got Jeff, right? And you’ve got you, presumably…” I set my analytical scientific brain to work. Stop sniggering. “Seems pretty simple to me. You’ve got Brown Stripes Mark Two right there.”

“Yeah?” he replied. “You’d come out of retirement?”

“No,” I said, trying to be patient. “Unblock your ears - it’s no place to be storing your emergency weed anyway mate. You and Jeff, drum and guitar. Do I have to draw you a diagram? He can play a big ugly riff as well as the next bastard. Less people to split the proceeds with. How can that not be a winner?”

“I dunno,” he said. “That two-piece thing’s a bit over-with these days.” He was right - with the White Stripes and the Black Keys putting out fairly shitbox albums recently (now that I’d heard them, largely courtesy Lena) the only decent things which came in two-piece units these days was KFC chicken and Annalise’s swimsuits.

“So you need a bass player,” I reasoned. “Your fucking manager is a bass player, ain’t he? Kretin got you into this mess, Kretin can get you out. He can make his big comeback, finally prove he’s not just all mouth and no trousers when it comes to live music after 25 years or whatever... Not sure I’d let him bust out the Velvet Curtains sequinned jumpsuit with the arse out of it, though. Then he really would be all mouth and no trousers.”

“You know what?” declared Phil earnestly. “That’s a bloody good idea!”

“That’s why they pay me the big bucks,” I replied. Which couldn’t have been less factual in any way. They weren’t paying me the big bucks, or any bucks at all, and if they had, it wouldn’t have been for that. It had just been one of those weeks when work was scarce, for some reason - not a single day’s teaching since the weekend before, when I’d prised Dr Cletus away from his prized Falcon ute. There was a rather bitter irony in the fact that in the week before, when I’d had to ride that unregistered R 80 G/S to work, I’d worked four days out of five and could have worked the Monday as well if I’d been around, whereas since I’d bought the Falcon and could legally drive around the place to my heart’s content, I hadn’t even left the house. At this rate, this month’s mortgage repayment was going to require a trip to the bank. With a balaclava and a sawn-off shotgun.

I was beginning to recognise, and more reluctantly accept, that all the signs were pointing the same direction.

Away.

The message was crystallising: Pack up, sell up, and get out of here. It’s time to go… Angus. You can’t afford to live in a million-dollar beach house on a casual teacher’s salary. You don’t belong in this town, or on this island. The locals are either total yokels or rich, cliquey tossers, predominantly smug God-bothering ones at that. The local cop has it in for you. The local realo is building-out your southward sightlines with a monstrosity that wouldn’t get planning permission on the Vegas strip. You have no permanent employment. And you’ve been dodging your fiancee ever since she emailed you to say she wants to talk, because you know she’s going to say that she’s leaving you, and you’ve always been busted-arse fuckin’ useless at dealing with rejection.

Wow, self-analysis. Not something I did a lot of. But I had a lot of time on my hands, what with the phone continuing to not ring, and not a lot else to think about. The score re Bethany was that she’d sent that message about ‘needing to talk’ on Monday, two weeks ago; I’d played call-back chicken for the rest of that week, neither of us apparently willing to give in and dial the other’s number. I’d won, apparently, as she’d been the one to get in touch again. She’d emailed from her folks’ on the following Monday, almost exactly the same time as the previous week. Given I’d only had one email in the interim, it was fairly easy to compare.

No more games, let’s be adults. Coffee Friday, ten-thirty. [She named a place in Dunwich which she knew I hated.] I know you’re around.

Of course you do, sweetheart. Your fucking brother has been following me around like he’s trying out for the motherfucking KGB.

I hadn’t wanted to reply - I didn’t relish the prospect of what we were inevitably going to talk about, unless it covered her explaining what the fuck she was playing at - but I did. Next morning. When I knew she’d be at work. I said I’d love to catch up, I was a bit snowed under this week but maybe we could get a coffee on Friday morning? I figured she probably had most of Friday morning free, she’d had a year 12 double period at that time each week earlier in the year but those hapless suckers were currently either cramming for their exams, or were already eyeballs-deep in them trying not to fail. I also figured there was a decent chance I’d get some work and could cancel, because Fridays and Mondays were usually peak times for casual teaching opportunities on account on the increased likelihood of staff chucking sickies to get themselves long weekends.

But the rest of the week had passed, and not a sniff of work with it. I sat by the phone from eight-thirty on Friday morning, on edge, waiting for a late call-up. Nine passed, so did nine-thirty. Nine-forty-five. Ten. Ten-fifteen… and time was up. I was expected in Dunwich at half-ten, the time she’d specified, and although I fully intended to turn up a suitably don’t-care ten minutes late, I really had to leave now.

I walked to the garage. Kelvinator sat there, dormant. I wasn’t sure I wanted to turn up in that - if she hadn’t made up her mind to leave me before, seeing me in that thing would surely seal the deal. I glanced across and there stood the R 80 G/S on its stand, my motocross helmet parked on the tank. Still with no speedo cable, hence still unregistered. What the hell, if I was going to have an unpleasant conversation with one Toogood, I might as well double the order. And pretend like they might that they don’t, every girl likes a guy on a bike. Even a shabby old ‘91 BMW enduro bike. I topped off the tank with the jerry can I kept out in the garden shed for the purpose of not having to refuel the thing in public or pay exorbidant Point Lookout fuel prices; sure, it was a monumental fire risk, but my house insurers didn’t need to know that. Then I pulled on my motocross helmet, goggles and jacket, climbed on board and fired the thing up. I rolled to the end of my driveway, pressed the remote for the garage door, slipped it into my pocket, and reflected on what a bloody gorgeous day it was.

Without thinking, I ended up winding along the 4WD access trail behind the township onto Main Beach, a few kays south of town, rather than down the street and onto the East Coast Road - probably out of sheer self-preservatory habit from my previous week’s commute, via the ‘back way’ to town. I had about ten kays of hard, flat beach ahead of me before the turnoff to the short access track which led over the dunes to the end of the east-west trans-island road, locally known as Mining Company Road. Usually there were a couple of 4WDs in sight along the near-endless expanse of Main Beach, stretching some 80 kays or so right down to the fast-flowing Jumpinpin Channel which separates North and South Stradbroke Islands ever since it broke them apart in a massive storm over a hundred years ago. But no traffic today; all I could see was that long, empty, curving stretch of sand, reaching for the horizon where sky-blue met sea-green on this brilliant late-Spring morning. Tempting. Very tempting. I’d ridden over a lot of the tracks and trails on the north part of the island, both in the R 80 G/S’ first life, and now again after its rebirth, But I’d never been down to the channel. I’d flown over it on planes out of Brisbane Airport, but I’d never seen it first hand. And I wouldn’t get a better day than this to do so.

I missed the turnoff.

Might have been because I was going a good eighty to ninety kays - hard to tell without a speedo, as we’ve discussed - might have been because I wasn’t looking for it, transfixed by the horizon. And, of course, it might have been because the last place I wanted to be today was watching my fiancee poking sharp implements into the still-twitching corpse of our relationship. But, by the time I recognised that I no longer recognised the scenery which was blurring past me, and realised why, I was miles beyond the turnoff. With the throttle still wide open, the R 80 G/S surfing the undulations of the sand like it was designed for it. Which it was, of course. The sun, the surf, the speed, the horizon rushing towards me, the thrill of manhandling the bike as it squirmed and weaved over patches of firmer and softer sand, a hundred tiny loses-and-catches a minute. This was being alive. This was the reason why bikes like this existed, and why a day like today had been invented. To chase the horizon.

To paraphrase Jack Johnson, the horizon was defeated before half-eleven. The sun stood tall and proud sentinel over a cloudless blue sky, the sea surging through the channel between islands north and south. Hot and sweaty, I pulled off my jacket, gloves and helmet, wishing I had thought to bring something to drink on this ad-hoc, half-arsed mission. I was dry, but I was buzzing: this was exactly why I’d bought the bike in the first place, years ago. To stand in places I’d never been before. I was utterly, completely alone. The nearest settlement, sandmining operations aside, was at least an hour-twenty’s ride away.

As the crow flew, come to think of it, I wondered if the nearest settlement was actually Couran Cove or Tangalooma, the highly exclusive resort complexes on South Straddie. Couran Cove was seriously something else, an eco-tourism resort which had to be seen to be believed. Intercom put us up there (plus all our hangers-on) for a week’s ‘intensive concept workshop session’ (most would call it ‘trying to write new songs’) when we were struggling through the early stages of work on what became the abortive Thirty Bucks Dumbarse career-ender. Safe to conclude we spent all time sitting around the lagoon draining the resort’s supply of alcohol rather than actually writing anything worth listening to, though I hazily recall writing American Beer Is Piss in about five minutes on the back of a nasty run-in with a 12-ounce of Bud which I’d left in the poolside sun too long. It didn’t take long to write because it was just the chord progression from Gutted Ewok from our last album(s), transposed to another key and played in reverse. But then that would presume American Beer Is Piss was worth listening to.

Even more hazily, I remember a brief but rather epic erotic liaison with one of the bar staff - about all I remember, other than that she was blonde and superhot, was that she was Icelandic, and I still have no idea whatsoever what she was doing this far from home. Other than that she was doing me, and superbly well too. What was her name again? Anouk? Anika? Something starting with A that sounded like that resort in Coffs Harbour. More to the point, what the hell did she see in me? Other than wit, charm, looks, intellect, and a prodigiously large and dextrous dodger, of course.

Even more to the point, how the hell did I get from there to here? From seducing Icelandic snow-maidens with my wit, charm, looks et al (back when I had them - OK, so I’ve still got the dodger, but it’s getting very low mileage at present, not even getting used by a little old lady on Sundays) to standing up my fiancee in a tacky coffee shop in Dunwich, because I just couldn’t face breaking up with her? And instead riding flat out along a beach in the opposite direction until running out of beach to ride along? What did that say about me, as a responsible grown-up?

If I’d come here to think, at least I’d have solitude to do it in. Look deep inside yourself, young Jedi. Look into your heart. It’s up the back there behind the lungs and ribs and shit. No, not that, that’s the liver, you tool.

I didn’t want to face Bethany, because… no. Go back a step. I didn’t want to meet Bethany, because I wanted to see what this end of the island looked like, let’s be fair. And because I didn’t want to face her. I didn’t want to do that, because… for whatever reason, whether she thinks I’ve cheated on her or just has cold feet, she wants out.

Let’s set aside all the other peripheral bullshit here - the little vendettas which her father and brother are acting out - and just focus on Bethany. She wants out. She’s got her anger out, having trashed my house, and now she wants a short, sharp, official end to everything.

Alternately, she wants to apologise, throw herself on my mercy, and initiate some hot sticky make-up sex in the back seat of her Beetle…

Come on, son. That’s not plausible, in any way. For starters, the back seat of that rehashed Hitler’s Revenge is so cramped, she’d be lucky to be able to have sex with herself in there, let alone with anyone else…

That mental picture was just coming into focus now. Hold that thought. Keep holding. Pause for archiving… and we’re done.

So she wants to end it. She wants to end it, take back her stuff, hand back the ring - if she hasn’t sold it on eBay already - and draw a line under the last two years. Is that what’s distressing here? Do you still love her? Do you even know her, given that her raging and rampaging her way through your house was such a fucking jawdropper?

Or…

…Is it because you turned your back on Icelandic snow-maidens, endearingly clueless pop starlets, future faces of fashion week, ludicrously hot and wonderfully immoral TV newsreader chicks (I’m still not telling you who it was) and all the rest of it - free drinks, getting paid to play guitar, seeing the world and elsewhere (or bits thereof, briefly, because whoever planned our tours, be it Kretin or our Intercom minders, were a bunch of tightarses and we never actually got to see any of the countryside) for nowt… in order to try and be a responsible grown-up? To find someone to settle down with, get married, start a family, like people my age were supposed to do? To get a steady job that didn’t require nocturnal hours, industrial strength earplugs and a religious dedication to alcohol, casual sex and most other forms of modern hedonism? Or a house that wasn’t full of drunk mates crashing on couches, and dishevelled morning-after babes with bedroom eyes and bedroom hair eyeing you with an intoxicating mixture of shame, gratitude and awe? Or a car that wasn’t a gunmetal-black Monaro V8 with serious fuck-off alloys, didn’t shake shopfronts thundering down the high street and didn’t attract La Polizia like an inverted superconductor? Though the latter was now as big a problem with that allegedly responsible Magna as it had been with the Munro.

Then again, it wasn’t fair to say that I turned my back on that life. The easy way out is to say I didn’t leave it; it left me. The truth lies somewhere in between. This is a part of the story I haven’t been looking forward to telling; I haven’t been able to figure out a way not to tell it, because it’s probably necessary to put everything else in its proper context. So here we go.

The fracture point.