contrast to the hours between nine and five, the hours after five o’clock from when she left work until she fell asleep seemed to drag on. On her sad days Kylie would drive home in silence and may not utter another word to anyone until arriving at work the following morning. To her, it seemed like she was destined to spend an eternity on planet null and void, population one, sole resident: herself. On leaving work, Kylie would drag her heels to the office exit, sigh, and with a heavy head and a sombre mouth, her limp hand would slap the office lights off. Taking a deep breath, she would pull and lock the door shut behind her, then, her feet would kick at any twigs or rocks on the pathway out to her car which was always the last vehicle left on site. The last person to leave had to lock the front double gates to secure the site. This task fell on her shoulders most days a week, reminding her that everyone else had somewhere better to be and people waiting for them to get home to share a smile, a hot meal and a warm hug.
Each afternoon she would drive just outside the premises, put the car into neutral, pull the handbrake on and kick her heavy unhappy legs out of the vehicle before shutting the door and muffling the forlorn verses of her favourite country music artist of the week, the volume of which was always set at UP. As she walked to the gate, she could smell the potency of fumes. Carbon monoxide fumes. She would think to herself, “Man, those smelly ships in the harbour are an environmental hazard. Those buggers should be ashamed of themselves, pumping out black shit into the earth’s atmosphere, making a big flamin’ hole in the ozone layer!” This was until she realised that the manky, potent, and very lethal smell she was inhaling was coming from her own little white wocket rocket. Her only friend. The only constant she seemed to have in her life that was as reliable as the sunrise each morning.
Kylie felt a bond with her little white wocket – as much as you can have a bond between a person and a personal mode of transport. She knew some people had nicknames for their cars but she would greet her little car each morning and give it a pat on the dashboard before driving off and always thank it for getting her to her destination safely before she got out and locked the door. She honestly believed that her little white wocket knew the sound of her voice, singing or otherwise, and it would reciprocate. Oh, it might not physically talk but it sure would cough and splutter to remind her vocally that she had missed the red warning light for low fuel. Then it would ramp up to attract her attention with a “Hello? Kylie! Hello? I need fuel!” red flashing light every two seconds to remind her again that she had missed the first warning light. If she continued to ignore the flashing light, taking a punt that she could get another five to ten kilometres worth of travel out of the fuel tank, it would start to cough and purge and baulk. That’s when she would finally pull into a petrol station and acknowledge its need for a drink and some ego inflation – or in mechanical terms, she would also put air in the tyres.
Sometimes, on a good day, Kylie would sing the entire time she was in the car or talk back to the radio talkback banter, or she would just offer up her opinion on the actions of dodgy drivers on the road around her. Whatever the chatter, Kylie and her white wocket had a very good partnership. Whenever she was in need of some quick manoeuvring to get out of a shit spot, her white wocket would always power up and follow her direction. It would look after her and keep her safe, each and every time she needed it, without delay. Kylie just felt a connection with this ensemble of bolts, despite its lack of mod cons. Her 1992 Model Nissan Pulsar came equipped with bicep-powered wind-up windows, but was completely lacking beverage holders, and had no CD player, no lift up centre console storage facility, and no dash board gauge showing engine revs. Yet, it did all she needed it to do. It was her personal chariot that whisked her to many a social function, and the only constant companion she had in her pretty lonely little life in Townsville.
On this particular afternoon, Kylie was having a bad case of down-turned mouth. She drove home in silence. She wound down the driver’s side window to get some air on her face and even turned off the music that was playing on the car stereo. It was a tape she had been given by her ex boyfriend a year earlier and she normally sang along with it: George Strait – Greatest Hits. Today the slow and sad songs seemed to have an entirely different effect on her heartstrings when she succumbed to the reality that she was totally alone. Now it was just a continual playlist of misery that reminded her how empty she now felt.
“Oh, you’re going OFF,” Kylie shouted at the stereo as the music began to blare. After turning the cassette player off, she spoke up again, “As a matter of fact, you’re going OUT!” She grabbed the cassette and tossed it out her open window onto the road. “George.... Strait out the window!” Then she continued her pity party in a cranky but empty voice, “Time for a big serve of NUTHIN’, nuthin’ to listen to, nuthin’ to sing about, nuthin’ to do, nuthin’ to look forward to.”
Kylie drove home and parked in what she considered to be pole position, right outside the front gate to her little flat. But instead of bouncing out of the car and bounding up the stairs, she sat in her car and just stared at the gate, afraid to get out in case she tripped over her bottom lip. She wondered if she should even bother to walk up the two sets of eleven stairs, get changed into her comfortable boxer shorts, cook dinner which she would probably burn anyway and then throw out and have to fight with the burnt pot to clean off the black marks. Maybe she should just skip that part and go to bed sad with an empty stomach and empty heart, only to wake up and realise she was ten hours away from it happening all over again. For the next twenty-five minutes Kylie sat in her car, her head tilted to the right and her eyes glazed staring into space, contemplating the advantages of skipping cooking and going straight to bed. The driver’s window was down and the road noise was fierce and unrelenting, her street was a thoroughfare for hoons, drive-byers, cafe frequenters and Strand walkers. It was one of these buggers that finally roused her from her comatose state with a toot of a horn and a signal with the question, “Are you staying or leaving that car park?”
“Stuh,” Kylie coughed, her mouth dry from the sadness that brings on tears. “Staying,” she said out loud.
“Oh, bummer,” the driver signalled back with a snap of their fingers in a ‘darn-it’ motion.
Normally the well-mannered lady in Kylie would say sorry to the other driver, indicating she was sorry she couldn’t help them out. But when she looked over and saw two people in the car, she wasn’t sorry for them because they each had a friend they could look at and talk to after hours. They had someone they could chat and laugh with and get angry at if the other person farted.
Kylie cleared her throat and realised it was nearly quarter to six. She wound up the driver’s side window and got out, locking the car. “Come on Kyle’s, twenty two steps to comfy pants town,” she said softly to herself. With tears about to well in her eyes, she lifted her lead feet up the stairs, step by step. She opened the door to her flat and kicked off her work shoes. Almost tripping over her joggers, she remembered the promise she made to bum face about exercising more regularly and her thoughts drifted to the day when she would have to face her fear and stride out to the water in her outrigging team uniform, made out of her nemesis: 100% Lycra. “Farrrrrrrk!” she bellowed out loud. “I’ve gotta go for a flamin’ waaaaaalk!”
Before she could change her mind, she went to her room and picked up the shorts that were still on the floor from her last walk along with the socks that were lying nearby. Cleaning AND cooking were far from being her number one priorities. Leaving her work polo shirt on, she picked up her hat, strode out to the fridge and grabbed her water bottle, put her house keys in her pocket and headed out the door. It was the quickest departure from concept to actualisation of an idea that Kylie had had in her living existence in Townsville. Without even thinking about it, she had changed her sad situation of self-imprisonment to one of freedom, taking herself back outside into a world where happiness could be waiting, just around the corner.
To avoid all the hustle and bustle on The Strand, Kylie walked on the opposite side of the road past the holiday apartments and motels in a northerly direction towards Cape Pallarenda. At the end of The Strand she turned left and walked until she found the Cook Street turn
