Petrol Head Dreaming

I wish I'd had a video camera the other night at the pub, although I suspect it still would not have done justice to the wonderfully intense and quietly passionate conversation that went on among the blokes for over two hours. It was like something from a Luis Bunuel film, or a poem, or a dream.

I think Gary started it; he was talking about doing up his old Holden with Adam, and the conversation turned to old cars they'd seen in sheds and at stations around the area. More and more blokes joined in, sitting in the sweating night heat of the beer garden out the back. It started off with local vehicles - "Has Carl still got that old HX round the back of his place?"  "Nah, he traded it to Gubby for that Honda 250. Jeez that was a nice bike" - and then slowly shifted to vehicles outside of town, then to remote stations, then to things seen once by chance in a shed near an abandoned homestead, then to mythical rare cars and bikes rusting in the desert miles from anywhere.

Gary's passion for old bikes and cars knows no limits. His excited, detailed descriptions helped me to see the conversation through his eyes, and while I was very amused it was also strangely fascinating. Part of the poetry of it were the legendary lost bikes of yesteryear, glimpsed briefly by happenstance in some farmer's crumbling shed, forgotten, still working, untouched...and not there anymore, disappeared somehow, sometime, possibly stolen, possibly never having existed. An original 1920 something Indian gleaming in the dim dusty gloom of a barn near Peak Hill; an ancient, pristine Dutch motorcycle suspended from rafters in a chook shed; a rusting BSA cycle inexplicably still standing, alone, in the desert near old Ronnie's cattleyard; a row of big-finned old 1950's American cars reputedly stored in the depths of the old Cue Hotel; cars that have been sitting in the same spot in the middle of nowhere for over forty years; cars that live on only through memories, rumour, and tall tales.

Highly technical bravado mingled with wistful sighs and faraway looks as the blokes talked about what they'd seen, what they'd heard of, what might be "out there". "Dave reckons he met a bloke whose mate saw an original K series through a gap in old Ken's diesel shed once."  "I know two fellas who found a complete 1930's BSA side valve just sitting on the flats outside Nanutarra...or was it Yoolapinna..."

I turned to Gary during a quiet moment. "Imagine all the sheds in the desert across Australia with old bikes in them that people have forgotten about," I said. He looked at me, his eyes glazed and dreamy. "Yeah...all out there...somewhere..."

He already has seven of them in his shed. "One day I'm gonna fix them up..."