Roadhouse Roustabouts

I'm now at the Overlander Roadhouse which is staffed by characters from a Carl Hiassen novel. The Overlander is a famous local stopover point between Geraldton and Carnarvon, at the turn-off to Shark Bay. There's a fuel shop & truckie cafe out front, some "motel" units, two rows of staff "dongers" (dogboxes) and a row of guest dongers. We all share a portable amenities block & laundry. Behind the buildings is the bush, and some camping areas for caravans. In the heart of the buildings is an open space with a picnic shelter, water tanks, gennies, a knee-high rock wall you can't see in the dark, and Boof, the old dog.

I arrive in the afternoon; Duncan is still on his way from Perth. Craig, the cook, and Raelene, the assistant manager, have just knocked off from the morning shift and invite me over to have a Jack Daniels or two. Craig soon has me watching conspiracy theory clips from You Tube ("We're all freakin' slaves to the alien experiment!") and reveals a huge tattoo on his forearm ("F--k the New World Order"), and when I reveal that I have heard of David Icke tries to enlist me as a site moderator for some insane hackster protest network. "No more chemtrails! No more HAARP! We're gonna bring em down!" Seeing as how it takes him twenty minutes to find a CD from among layers of underwear, conspiracy magazines and dozens of empty Coke cans I'm pretty sure we are not in any imminent danger of an organised global uprising.

Raelene is a ripper, a cheery practical woman about my age who's worked at heaps of roadhouses, preferring an itinerant life on the road now that her six kids are grown up. She has a truckie boyfriend stashed in one of her trailers south of Perth, and one or two more whose whereabouts is unclear.

Eight hours and several bottles of scotch later we are peering blurrily at the sky as Craig points out sinister cloud formations which could be HAARP rays, chemtrails, or, as I point out, nature. Russell, the manager, comes out just in time to stop us from starting a small bonfire using old railway sleepers and a blowtorch (could he be one of the reptile alien master race, using the pretense of insurance regulations to crush our human spirit as part of the grand plan to obliterate all independent thought?).  With the scotch supply exhausted, I use my last three functioning brain cells to extricate the bottles of vodka from under the bus bed. When I wake up in the morning, I discover that at this point I must also have made some peanut butter and jam sandwiches using a spatula, a tin opener and a teatowel.

Duncan arrives to find me happily blotto, singing cowboy tunes in my camp chair; with much sentimental blithering on both sides he manages to get me to our dogbox where I insist he teach me how to do the two-step and for some reason we decide to practice ice-skating moves in our socks on the tiled floor. The poor fellow camping behind us looks shellshocked the next morning.

Crippled by alcohol poisoning, I wake up to discover that I have a job whenever I am sober enough to put my shoes on the correct feet, as Craig's girlfriend has suddenly quit and driven off to Carnarvon in a temper. In the shop, I order breakfast from the sullen acne-ravaged boy whose name no one can remember, then get to work. First duty of the day is cleaning out the amenities block, which turns out to be handy when my breakfast decides to part ways with me half an hour later. Eight years of tertiary education and look at the pinnacles of achievement one can aspire to!