Isn’t that the dream? The everyday world is behind you, there’s a long road ahead, rising and curving to a far destination. Days and night stretch out, diners, service stations, motels, bridges, toilet blocks and a growing litter of wrappers and empty bottles in the back seat.

Hit the play button and let’s get this show on the road!

Hit the road

• On the Road Again – Willie Nelson. On the road again, just can’t wait to get back on the road again, going places that I’ve never been, seeing things that I may never see again. Like a band of gypsies we go down the highway, we’re the best of friends, insisting that the world keep turning our way.
• Holiday Road – Lindsey Buckingham. National Lampoon’s American Vacation. Oh boy. This is the theme to the Griswald family adventure in the American Queen Family Truckster. Watch the movie, do the exact opposite, you’ll be sweet.
• America – Simon and Garfunkel. Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike / They’ve all gone to look for America… Isn’t that what we’re about? Looking for America on the roads, on the roadside, from the scenic viewpoints, in the diners. Everywhere.
• Get your Kicks (on Route 66) – Nat King Cole. There are a million versions of this song, but no Route 66 roadtrip would be worth it without at least one. Just the listing of cities along the route gets the mind racing over the map.
• On the Road Again – Canned Heat. One of my very favourite road songs. Willie Nelson is all very well, but this is a different road the Heat are talking about, one that’s buzzing and bopping. Get your motor running, pump the gas and blast off for adventure!
• Born to be Wild – Steppenwolf. Get your motor running, head out on the highway, looking for adventure and whatever comes our way. Yup!
• Route 66 – David Campbell. Another version, a few gears up from Nat King Cole and his mellow cruising. Campbell is non-stop. Even when he’s spelling it out. S-T-O-P, he says at a million miles an hour.

Destinations

• Let’s Go to San Francisco – The Flower Pot Men. Forget the end of Route 66 at Santa Monica. I don’t particularly like LA. But head on up the coast highway with those amazing views and hit out San Francisco, that delightful, whimsical, colourful, magnificent city by the bay. You want to cross the Golden Gate Bridge and keep going north? The chance is there.
• San Francisco Bay Blues – Eric Clapton. Clapton the Amazing. Just sit me on a vantage point overlooking that fabulous bay, whether it’s sitting on the dock of the bay or on a cable car halfway to the stars, Alcatraz moored out in the blue water, and I’m supremely happy.
• New York, New York – Frank Sinatra. If we’re going to buy an old NYC hack, then we’ve got to think on New York. What a fabulous place it is in those bustling streets at the bottom of ranges of skyscrapers. Hustle on the corners, cheer on the Yankees, look out from the Empire State Building. There’s a bazillion songs, movies and books written about New York, and if America is to be found, here’s a great place to begin looking for it!
• Chicago – Frank Sinatra. Route 66 begins in Chicago. Let’s anchor our trip here, look around that toddlin’ town, see if we can find America in the brash heart of the nation. Set our wheels on the starting point and hit the gas!
• Kansas City – Wilbert Harrison. OK, we aren’t going to Kansas City, but hey, Kansas City, here we come! It’s a state of mind, it’s the land of princesses for the wandering kings of the road, it’s a drink on a street corner, it’s a journey just thinking on it. Besides, I loved Kansas City!
• San Francisco – Nancy Sinatra. San Francisco, open your golden gate! Look. You can’t have too many songs about San Francisco. End of story.
• I Left my Heart in San Francisco – Tony Bennett. This is the ultimate romanticising of that bayside burg. And you know what? It’s all true. Union Park, there’s Tony’s heart standing on a corner, cable cars rattling past, palm trees whispering above. It’s here. Just leave your heart at the door, sir.
• San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in your Hair) – Scott Mckenzie. There’s no great songs about LA. But albums full of anthems for this quirky city full of gentle people. The people make the city. It’s true. They have the most mellow, laid-back lifestyle, bookshops and cafes, hills and sun, parks and frisbees, bay windows and lagoons. This is California. This is a place to love and be happy.
• Graceland – Paul Simon. No, we’re not hitting Memphis, not without a long diversion way down through Missouri. But this is all about going somewhere. A pilgrimage through songs and memories, ghosts and empty sockets. But let’s just bop along, falling, flying, tumbling, bouncing into Graceland. Looking for love, looking for America in every roadside attraction, every Big Blue Whale, every hokey motel, every tourist trap with a slushie and rack of hats.

In the zone

• Runnin’ Down a Dream – Tom Petty
• King of the Road – David Campbell. I love David Campbell’s upbeat cover of this classic song. We might not be jumping the rattler, but we’ll be kings of the road, just for a week or so. Wave at the kids, grab a burger, straighten your paper crown and jingle the souvenir key ring jewels. Nobody telling us what to do, we’re kings!
• Road to Nowhere – Talking Heads. We know where we’re going, but we don’t know where we’ve been. We’re somewhere in the middle, just belting along. Maybe Paradise ahead, here we go, here we go!
• Mustang Sally – The Commitments. Maybe we won’t drive an old Yellow Cab. Maybe we’ll drive a Mustang down Route 66. That’s the dream. All you want to do is ride around, Sally. Ride, Sally, Ride!
• Truckin’ – The Grateful Dead. It’s all the same. Together, more or less in line, just keep truckin’ on! Arrows of neon and flashing marquees on the main street. Chicago, New York, Detroit, it’s all the same street. What a long strange trip it’s been!
• America the Beautiful – Barbra Streisand. We may not find America on the road amongst the eighteen-wheelers and Winnebagos, but we can find her soul in a song. Purple mountain majesty above the fruited plain, from sea to shining sea! Listen to the emotion in her voice. she loves this place, its lands, its peoples, its ideals. Here it is.

Resources

• The thousand best roadtrip songs.
• An American roadtrip playlist.
• Roadtrip America’s roadtunes.

Foursquare on the iPhone

We’ve got a new game, my day driver and I. A game where cabbies shine.

IPhones each, we share apps. Sometimes they are classics. Shazam is just a brilliant piece of software. You want to know who sings the song on the radio? Just Shazam it for a few seconds and it comes back with the title, the artist, a link to the lyrics and a download button from iTunes. There are currency converters, weather forecasters, games a-million.

And now Foursquare, funking off the iPhone’s GPS and social networking. It’s a scavenger hunt, it’s a map of your day, it’s a point-scoring exercise, it’s gathering facts and sharing info.

Once you download the app, create a new account with all the regular rigmarole of user name, password, icon picture etc., Foursquare checks your location, finds nearby places of interest, and asks if you want to check in. Meaning do you want the world to know that you are currently at that location.

It might be a bar or a restaurant. A museum or a supermarkt, a statue or a cab rank. If where you are isn’t listed, just add it. And then check in.

You get points for checking in. And for adding new locations. And for doing all sorts of stuff, such as checking into a location with “bar” in its title on a school night.

And for adding tips. Yeah, I know all cabbies love tips, but these are information tips. Drinks are half price on Thursdays. Ask for the Megaburger with Rickie’s special sauce. The receptionist has four breasts – she’s got a double-decker bust.

Interesting, useful titbits of trivia and advice. Invaluable as a handy guide to the traveller.

If you check-in at a place more times than any other place, you become Mayor of that place. My co-driver is Mayor of the Canberra Airport Taxi Rank. If you are Mayor of a bar, and that barkeep knows his savvy, you get a discount on your drinks. Sometimes the office of Mayor changes several times in an evening, depending on who has the quickest fingers on their iPhone!

Cabbies are good at this game, because we go lots of places and have time to check in while we are waiting for the next fare. To another place.

My Foursquare is here: Skyring.
M co-driver is here: PeskiePete.

–PeterMac

Taxi 18 at the Shine Dome

Three young friends got into my cab for a ride into town from one of the Defence bases here. One was full of pride in her job – a cabin attendant on the RAAF VIP transport. She talked to her two friends about how the Prime Minister smiled and greeted her by name, was kind and considerate to her and all the other staff. She might not agree with all his policies, she said, but he was a nice man.

She had no kind words for another senior Government minister. He was only interested in calling for the most expensive bottles of wine aboard, and downing a couple on the relatively short flight to and from Melbourne. He called the cabin crew, “Hey, you!”, but he knew the onboard wine cellar by name and pedigree.

Tonight

He was wasted. This time on a Saturday morning, the only people over twenty-five in Civic are a few cabbies like me. This bloke was mid-thirties, business suit, tie loose, shambling along the footpath. A mid to senior-level public service manager, by his look.

My cab was next up and he opened the door, falling into the seat beside me. I examined him carefully. He was wrecked, to be sure, and he could be trouble. Trouble like throwing up, falling asleep, talking endless rubbish.

I drove off the rank, but stopped a few car lengths along to get the destination. He named a suburb five minutes away, and when I pressed him further, offered up the street name. This was hard work. He didn’t want to stay conscious. He wanted me to drive him home, and he didn’t care that I didn’t know where he lived.

Two months ago

Two middle-aged women got into the cab. They chatted to themselves in the back seat, and I cocked half an ear at their conversation, in case it included directions to the driver.

One was describing a young female relative, a cabin attendant on the RAAF VIP transport. She was upset and unhappy with her job. The Prime Minister was an arsehole, treating the staff like shit, demanding impossible things of them, swearing at them. The young cabin attendant had put in for a transfer. I wondered if this was the same happy young woman who had been in my cab before the election, when the government changed.

I wondered if she was the same one who had made national headlines a year ago when she had burst into tears when abused by the Prime Minister, causing an official incident report to be filed by the plane’s captain.

Yesterday

“There’s no point sugar-coating this,” the Prime Minister said, admitting that he had demoted a a junior minister for bungling an important program. A program that had cost four young lives, had been scrapped halfway through and had caused huge and unexpected unemployment.

Sugar-coating is what the Prime Minister does. He does it so well. To listen to him, his government is sweet, in control, moving forward, doing important stuff.

The problem is that it isn’t true. The government is under the Prime Minister’s tight control. The Foreign Minister has nothing to do, because the ex-diplomat Prime Minister handles all foreign affairs, making overseas trips on a weekly basis. Every government program is scrutinised at the top. Anything that could embarrass the government is sent back until the media release is phrased just so.

And that’s about it. The government has done nothing much except issue press releases. The Prime Minister has made a few important but symbolic speeches and failed to back them up with action.

Well, no, that’s not strictly true. The government reacted decisively to the global financial crisis by spending the surplus painstakingly saved by the previous administration. Money was handed out to people, impressive programs were dreamed up to make work, including the bungled roof insulation scheme with the four deaths, the surprise scrapping, the sudden unemployment, the ministerial demotion etc.

The previous government’s border protection scheme was abolished, with the predictable result that illegal immigrants boarded leaky old fishing boats for the dangerous crossing to Australia. A new boat crammed with desperate people is reported every week. Some of them don’t make it. Some of them take extreme measures to be “rescued” by the Navy, dying, drowning, burning in their desire to enter Australia.

Tonight

My passenger’s head was nodding. He was asleep. Or something like it. I cranked up the airconditioning and took the corners sharply. Usually this wakes up the dozers, but this chap was sinking fast, burnt out.

We reached his street and with a few jabs on the brakes, he was awake. Or something like it. “This is your street,” I said. “What number are we looking for?”

We cruised up to the end of the street, made a u-turn and stopped.

“Where are we?” he asked.

I gave him the street name and the suburb, double-checking against my GPS.

“This isn’t the right place,” he complained.

He looked at the meter, fumbling with notes to pay the fare. Hell, but I couldn’t let him out unless I was sure he was in the right place. Letting a dozey drunk out on an unfamiliar street long after midnight is a recipe for disaster.

“What number are we looking for?”

He pulled out more money.

“Where do you live? What number is your house?”

This was stupid. I was talking to a public service executive as if he were a five year-old.

“Do you have your address on a drivers licence or something?”

Finally he gave me the house number. It didn’t sound plausible, but we moved along the street, the sidelight picking out house numbers.

“It’s the other side!” he announced. “Turn around!”

We turned around and he directed me into a driveway. Well, the driveway next to the one he lived in, and we had to bump over a bit of grass to get there. He paid the fare, and got out, wobbly on his feet.

“Careful getting out,” I warned him. “Take your time.” As if he was a pensioner, creaky and slow, afraid of falling and breaking a fragile bone.

Drunks have fallen out of the cab before. They can’t stand, they flop out, their legs give way. It’s a worry, and I watch them carefully.

He made it out, staggering up the driveway while I kept the headlights shining for his progress.

That was enough for me. My night was at an end.

Tomorrow

This Prime Minister has wasted a splendid opportunity. For the first time ever, the Commonwealth and all State and Territory governments were under the control of one political party. Constitutional reform, an end to the costly divisions in health and education, new federal co-operation; the golden dream of every government was there for the taking.

And what happened? Nothing. The new Prime Minister made a few speeches, set his public servants working insane hours preparing reports on schemes that would never happen, dismantled some of the programs of the previous government and engaged in the mother of all public relations campaigns, working towards 100% favourable press coverage.

The government’s own list of achievements sounds wonderful, until investigation reveals that they are mostly announcements of schemes. Has the National Broadband Network been achieved? No. The first implementation in a tiny test market is months away.

The clean energy schemes are stalled or scrapped. The immigration policy is a disaster. The response to climate change failed before Copenhagen began. Election pledges on hospitals are broken. An education reporting scheme has had the predictable result of students deserting the schools ranked lowest, starving those schools of enrolment-based resources needed for improvement.

The government has lost control. All the public service research reports in the world, all the glowing media releases, all the fancy speeches cannot hide the fact that things are slipping away. The State and Territory governments are falling steadily, the chance for reform vanishing.

The media, sweet-talked to distraction, is sniffing blood in the water. Hard questions are being asked of waffling ministers. The Rudd gloss is fraying.

My take is that a man who cannot treat the staff with dignity and respect, venting his frustration on those who cannot fight back, smiling in public and snarling in public, sugar-coating disaster after disaster, squandering golden opportunities and promising heaven to come, my take is that such a man is not fit to run the nation, because he will inevitably lose the confidence of the people.

Not that I think the other party is any better. I don’t. The one thing I like about the Opposition Leader is that he’s honest.

Goodnight!

I’m disgusted. I’m a night cabbie, and for the past year or two, ever since the last Commonwealth election, I’ve been driving home public servants, drunk and exhausted. I pick them up from Parliament, from government offices, from hotels. Long after midnight.

Whatever they’ve been working on, it’s not working.

But there’s always time to crank the seat back, reach down for a book, and read a few pages before the next passenger shows up.

Lately the reading material has been a book on changing lives. An inspirational book talking of the beneficial impact of very small loans to the world’s poorest people. Muhammad Yunus, the founder of the Grameen Bank, was once a professor of economics, who looked out of his office window to a small village and wondered how the theories he was teaching related to the residents.

On investigation, he found that the poorest people in the village were very poor indeed, held back by poor access to money offered at usurious interest rates. A woman would work all day weaving intricate crafts for a profit of a few cents, which she spent on feeding her children. If she could gain just a small amount of money to escape the money-lenders who were also her raw material suppliers and the tied buyers of her work, she could prosper and profit.

From a small seed loan came a great organisation, breaking free of money-lenders, private banks and government corruption and ineptitude. Aimed at small loans to the very poorest, Grameen Bank prospered, spinning off programs and organisations across the globe.

His book, Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty, has been my taxicab reading material for the past week.

He struck a chord with me. For too long the great charity organisations have thrived in the developed nations, growing platoons of well-paid executives in modern office towers who plan advertising campaigns for donation drives staffed by unpaid volunteers. The spokesmen for these groups are always immaculately dressed in business suits or tailored adventure kit, posing before the cameras, asking for yet more money. The donations with which they are entrusted are diluted by administration costs and advertising. Delivery is facilitated by payments to government officials. Consultants jet in, stay in business hotels, hire cars and dine in the best restaurants.

I’ve had the opportunity to study one of the more visible charity saints, and I have rarely seen a more horrid, selfish, bigoted and intolerant bastard in my life. Before the cameras he is sympathetic smiles. In private he is ruthless, vicious in eliminating competition and fiercely protective of his public image. Every inch the manipulative politician.

He gets the funds in, sure, but how much good does he do to those who need it most? I wonder.

In contrast, Grameen Bank executives are to be found riding bicycles to remote villages, sleeping on rush mats, sharing bowls of rice and vegetables with their clients, dodging attacks verbal and physical from the established political, financial, social and religious groups who depend on the status quo for their standing.

In particular, Grameen Bank helps women. In the poorest nations, women often carry the greatest load and have the lowest status. A mother will cut her own food short so that her children may grow and when food is very short indeed she will starve, but before that point she suffers the agony of being unable to breastfeed her baby.

Now, I’m not willing to cut back my own comfortable lifestyle too much. I could sell everything I owned, give it to the very poorest, and never make a dent in global poverty.

But I can help. My passengers sometimes give me tips. The businessmen and the government officials so rarely tip that it is a cause for wonder when they do. But those who pay the fare from their own pocket, those who are least able to afford a generous gesture, they are my best tippers.

From now on my tip money goes into microfinance loans. Not a huge strain on the resources, but a gesture that helps others, and makes me happy in the knowledge.

Kiva.org is one of those internet creations that enables people like me to lend money to those in need, with very little administrative costs, no huge organisation, no Business Class Saints. I can choose where my money is to go, and I can see how it is spent, right down to the individual receiving the loan.

Typically loans are small, for a few hundred dollars, repaid over a year or two, and aimed at gaining resources that can be turned to profit. A sewing machine, a second-hand fridge, a new engine for a taxi. Each loan is financed by multiple lenders giving twenty-five dollars each. Loans are often approved and disbursed, and then “backfilled” using the internet money. The borrower commences repayments immediately. Small regular repayments until the total is repaid. And when the money comes back home, it can be re-lent, gifted to Kiva, or withdrawn.

A brother cabbie

Lives are enriched. The world gets ever so slightly better off.

I’m starting small. I’m helping out a cabbie in Azerbaijan. My Kiva lender page is here. I’m feeling very warm and happy and positive about this.

And, for a night cabbie who has occasionally been roused from honest sleep by a collector for one of the glossy charities, and been mistaken by that collector for a snarling attack dog, this is good news indeed!

–Skyring

Bonus video: PBS story on Kiva

It’s hard to imagine Canberra without Lake Burley Griffin. It was the main feature of the winning entry in the competition for the design of the new capital city, but it took fifty years for it to become reality. For most of its existence, Canberra was a sleepy little country town with a provisional Parliament House in a sheep paddock, and roads leading down to wooden bridges spanning the slow-moving Molonglo River.

Depression, World War Two and the fact that most of the public service remained in Melbourne and Sydney kept Canberra small, until the Sixties when rapid growth really began. New suburbs were laid out, the National Library and the Royal Australian Mint were built and the place just mushroomed.

In keeping with the modern buildings and their fresh architecture, money was poured into landscaping and parkland. The shores of the future lake were defined and built up, high level bridges over the Molonglo erected to complete the geometry of the Parliamentary Triangle, and Scrivener Dam raised in a narrow part of the river valley down past Government House.

Came the big day when the dam was complete, the band played, the Minister for Territories pressed the button, the floodgates were lowered and the crowd rushed to the side to peer over.

Trouble was that it had been a severe drought for months, the Molonglo was just a trickle and absolutely nothing happened. Not that day, not the next, nor the week after. In fact, for months on, there was no lake. Just a dusty expanse.

Then there came a flood, just as the organisers of the long-scheduled inaugural Canberra Regatta were wringing their hands and tearing their hair out. Overnight the lake filled and has been that way ever since.

It completed Canberra. Made it into a showcase of parks and great buildings reflected in the water. An almost symmetrical body of water in an almost symmetrical city. The even-sided cone of Mount Ainslie rising over the long land axis stretching down from Parliament House.

On and exit ramps came looping off the two big bridges. Bowen Drive curls around under the Kings Avenue Bridge, following the shoreline east, gracefully curving off towards Kingston. Here is a little area of grassland, a toilet block, a carpark and a few barbecues. A place for weekend picnics and fishing. Swans gather to be fed, Cyclists whiz past on their exercise runs and lovers stroll hand in hand.

View Larger Map

The encounter

As a Canberra night cabbie, the locations of all the late night food vans are well known to me. Two in Philip, one each in Tuggeranong, Woden and Belconnen, and Civic has one that only ever operates during Summernats when the big yellow double decker bus permanently parked on Girrawheen Street comes to life.

I’ll sometimes pull in at the end of a shift feeling peckish for a half bag of chips and gravy. A sinful treat of fat and salt. Passengers coming back from a night out direct me in, ordering burgers or chiko rolls. Junk food and coke.

So when I saw the red van in Bowen Park, lit up late one Friday night, I pulled in. There were a crowd of people lined up, and I studied the menu as I waited. Seemed a little sparse, and when I got to the front, I ordered “Just chips and gravy, please!”

Brodburger red van in Bowen park

“We don’t do gravy.”

“Oh. Um.”

“We do aioli. Homemade.”

“Aioli?”

“It’s a sauce, made of garlic and egg and olive oil.”

The aioli and chips was okay, I guess, but it wasn’t that salty, greasy gravy that instantly ruins a white shirt if you drip it.

Over the months, the little red burger van gained a devoted following. There would always be a long queue and a crowd. Not what a cabbie in a hurry needs for fast food.

The burger

My second meal at Brodburger came recently. That stage of the evening when the afternoon rush has died down and I’m thinking of dinner. Usually something quick and healthy. Subway, a burrito, a kebab. Maybe a curry on Friday, when it’s late night shopping in Civic.

But I was on the way to Kingston, I glanced across, and when I saw only a couple of diners lined up for their food, I hung a U-turn and drew into the car park.

As it happened, about a month previously I’d driven Joelle Bou-jaoude to the van after she’d made an emergency dash home for more change. My cabbie heart went out to her – so many times I was down to just a few big notes and small coins, and one more fifty-dollar note would wipe me out!

She looks every bit as good in the flesh as she does in the logo, I’m here to say! She smiled as she told me they’d just introduced a new product: a Brod steakburger. “Best steak. Really popular!”

So, as I lined up at the window, I knew exactly what I wanted.

“Steakburger, please!”

“How do you want it?” The chap serving was Sascha Brodbeck himself. Gourmet chef running a little red food van.

Joelle Bou-Jaoude

“Ummm, medium, I guess.”

There was a snort of derision from inside the van. Well, I like my meat a bit brown on the outside, okay?

“What cheese would you like on it?”

“What are the choices?”

“Swiss,” Sascha began. “Brie…”

Brie! On a burger! Oh wow!

“…or blue vein.”

By now I was swooning. “Blue, please!” I stammered.

Sascha warned it would take a while, so I wandered off for a look around. The van was connected to the electricity and water via a temporary arrangement at the rear. Beside it was the concrete toilet block. A few metres away a flock of swans gathered on the water, grey cygnets floating warily between hungry parents. I resolved not to eat at the water’s edge, lest a long swan neck reach up and grab my meal!

A pricey snack at $12.50, or $9.00 for a normal beef patty burger. But when I got mine, it was well worth it. Easily worth a couple of Whoppers.

Several slabs of steak, beautifully cooked tender and tasty, dripping with melted blue cheese and aioli. A generous allowance of rocket, tomato slice, red Spanish onions, chunky tomato relish. All on a soft golden bread roll.

No plate, no tables. Just a paper bag and a liner. I photographed the burger on the cab bonnet, and settled down in the front seat to consume my handy feast.

Some burgers rely on quantity for their value. Or the variety of ingredients. Much as I like pineapple, bacon, cheese, pickles, tomato and egg piled high for a huge calorie fix, my Brodburger was exactly right on the quantity and variety. Not too heavy, not too unwieldy.

Just right. The perfect mix of homemade ingredients, freshly prepared and simply presented. I was licking the last juices from my happy fingers when my next radio job came in, and I was on the road again.

I’ll be back.

The rage

Canberra is a city of public servants. All the government departments moved their central offices into purpose-built headquarter buildings during the Sixties and Seventies. In the decades since, the increasing power and centralisation of the federal government has seen a massive increase in population and government jobs.

Canberra is also a city of politicians. Initially administered by public servants, the place prospered. It was intended as a planned, garden city showcase, and when I arrived in the mid-Eighties, it was a true wonder. The world’s ultimate suburbia, the houses were all on big blocks, freeways connected the satellite towns, there were generous stretches of parkland and nature reserve, each suburb had schools, shops, churches and apartment blocks in the centre.

People complained it was all very sterile, but I was enchanted. I had found a beautiful city full of educated, cultured people that wasn’t crowded and busy. Peak hour, people said, lasted a minute. The government built the infrastructure first, before the residents of a new suburb moved in. My father-in-law, a civic engineer, was amazed at the high standards. “The cycle paths,” he exclaimed, “are built to the same specifications as one of our highways. They will never wear out!”

It was a grand place to live. Then the politicians decided that the city would be best served by self-government. Instead of various federal departments running the territory, the residents would elect politicians to a Legislative Assembly, raise taxes and pay for all the services.

Twice the residents rejected a referendum on self-government. The place worked fine just as it was. Why should we pay for a bunch of politicians, their staffs and a whole new layer of government?

But the feds forced it on us. The first few elections were shambles, with the No Self-Government Party attracting a lot of support. Sadly, not enough support to form a government. The Sun-Ripened Warm Tomato Party was also popular.

The predictable result has been a top-heavy administration. A State government to run a city. A smallish city of 350 000 inhabitants today after two decades of growth since self-government. Standards have fallen, money is wasted, taxes have risen.

The all powerful National Capital Development Commission has vanished, replaced by the local government planners. The essential federal lands of the Parliamentary Triangle are run by a rump: the National Capital Authority, which is more like three men and a dog seeking relevance.

Right. So when Sasha Brodberg wanted to set up a gourmet restaurant on wheels, he applied to the local government and was granted a hawker’s licence, like those given to the other semi-permanent food vans. These vans might shift their location once a decade.

He settled on the otherwise empty Bowen Drive. A heavy flow of passing traffic, a pleasant park by the lake, access to amenities. A good site, and the steady increase in customers was testament to his wisdom.

One day the National Capital Authority woke up to the fact that he was effectively permanently camped on land they controlled, and his little red food van wasn’t quite the structure they wanted to see there. They served him notice to decamp.

Technically speaking, they were in the right. The cinder-block public convenience beside the van was fine. It had been planned and built to a solid, if unimaginative, standard. The van itself, if it was to be a permanent fixture, wasn’t suitable for the national capital infrastructure.

But the Brodburger van is a finer fixture than any of the other six late-night food vans. It’s neater and cleaner, a gourmet food outlet serving the nearby yuppies.

It’s far more useful and sightly than the so-called Aboriginal Tent Embassy, a nearby eyesore in the heart of the Parliamentary Triangle denying a solid slab of prime parkland to the general community for the past twenty years. But that’s political, and no government body wants to evict a bunch of squatters.

Far easier to attack the popular and useful little red food van. Notice was served, and the final eviction will be mid 2010.

Community outrage against the bureaucrats has been strong and heartwarming. Everybody loves the Brodburger van and wants it to remain precisely where it is. A petition with about a bazillion signatures is available for signing, there have been letters to the editor, debates on community forums. Even the Chief Minister, scenting the public mood for an upcoming election, has lent his support.

I’ll update this post in due course. Will the bureaucrats triumph? Or will common sense prevail to keep the best burgers in the Australian Capital Territory available to an adoring public?

–PeterMac

Resources

• The official Brodburger site
• Canberra talking Brodburger on the RiotACT site
• The Brodburger FaceBook page
• Burgerator.com review
• The Canberra Times article
• National Capital Authority (silent on Brodburger)

The idea is that, knowing there’s a savage penalty in store, drivers will fall into line, obey the road regulations in every respect, and the problem vanishes.

As ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope said, announcing tougher laws, “We are sending a clear message to the community that Canberra’s culture of dangerous driving will not be tolerated.”

Government is out of touch. The accidents have been fatal. The crime of being stupid on the roads is one that is punishable by death. Drivers know this, so what possible notice are they going to take of any lesser penalty? A hefty fine for going around a corner too fast and sliding into a tree is nothing when you compare it to having a branch speared through your trunk.

Sending messages to the community and paying for advertising campaigns doesn’t work. Jon Stanhope could be sitting beside some of the morons on the road, reading out the regulations, and they are still going to slug down a six-pack and whip out on wet roads for a pack of fags.

When self-policing obviously isn’t working, you need to get real actual burly police out there on the roads doing the policing.

The point for the government is that police are expensive and fatal car crashes are free. Apart from replacing the odd light pole it’s a user pays situation.

Well, Chief Minister Stanhope, I’m about fed up with some of these public artworks you’ve been scattering round interchanges and motorways. A pile of painted rocks and twisted metal girders may be art in your book, and well worth a couple of hundred thousand dollars to the “artist”, but it’s another useless roadside obstacle for drivers to run into if they lose control on a wet road, and it’s the cost of a car full of policemen patrolling the streets to catch the lunatics driving dangerously.

And there are lunatics out there. I’m a cabbie. I see them every day and night. They don’t care about the death penalty, and they aren’t going to care if you ratchet the dangerous driving fine up to a million bucks. It’s not going to happen to them so why should they worry?

Well, make it happen. Get a couple of coppers in an unmarked car appearing out of nowhere when they least expect it. That’ll send a message.

The Himalayan Mountains have moved to Canberra. Yup. Speed humps at Canberra Airport. In particular the last one when exiting the airport.

For the life of me I can’t understand why they built that thing so friggin high. My taxi full of passengers and luggage has absolutely no way of clearing this obstacle without scraping the bottom of the car out. Once again it is quite obvious that Steve Byron does not have a clue. Yes the speed hump is necessary. But no it is not necessary to have the thing so high that it is nigh on impossible to clear it without scraping.

I suspect a few cabs are scraping that particular speed-hump. It’s common for four people to share a cab from the airport to a hotel or two, filling the boot with luggage. Add in a cab-driver (and some cabdrivers are fairly large characters in their own right), some of the older cabs down on their springs are going to have a tough time.

But even if you shave the speedbumps, the whole airport road system is a mess. Yeah, I know it’s the same at Perth and Sydney, but honestly, I’ve been driving cabs for three years now, and it seems the roads in and around the airport have been in flux for the whole of that time.

“Every day’s a new adventure out here,” I tell the passengers, and the frequent flyers nod their heads.

Here’s what’s wrong:

• Layout. The arrangement of access roads changes constantly and bears little relation to efficiency. Loops and multiple corners. The word “maze” is one that I hear a lot. For we cabbies, after we drop a fare at the terminal entrance, we’d like to get to the taxi rank quickly. In the old days, you could just roll forward a few car lengths, and you’d be on the pickup rank. Nowadays, you have to negotiate the maze, which involves about a kilometre of ever-changing, poorly surfaced roads crowded with desperate motorists. It’s inefficient.
• Surface. These are hastily and poorly constructed roads. The current arrangement involves a lot of travel over what used to be the car park, and there are drains and uneven cambers to contend with. One drain is so deep that you could damage your suspension if you hit it wrong. Other surfaces are just tarmac sprayed onto gravel and they wear away quickly. A bit of rain and potholes of immense proportions develop. Gravel sprays around.
• Obstacles. There are bollards and barriers and speedhumps and posts and signs and fences everywhere. It’s confusing and dangerous.
• Artwork. Lanes are occasionally marked. In places the surface is several layers of previous markings for car parks and vanished intersections, painted over and scrubbed out, but still faintly visible. Late at night and especially in the rain, these ghost markings come back to life.
• Legals. The constantly-changing arrangement bears only the faintest resemblance to the gazetted public roads. The main access traverses what used to be the cabyard. It’s not a public road in the eyes of the law, so what status do the pedestrian crossings and traffic signs have? There’s one speed limit sign that is mounted in the coach parking area. Frequently it is obscured by (surprise, surprise) a coach parked beside it. In any case, the cabs take a different route. One could argue that the speed limit for cabs is the default limit for Canberra, which is 50 kilometres an hour.
• Drivers. We cabbies quickly get used to the changes. (And just when we do, they change it again.) But for Canberra residents picking Granny up at the airport, their last visit may have been months or years ago, and they are totally bewildered. They stop at intersections, they go the wrong way, they reverse into oncoming traffic, they change direction suddenly. I can’t blame them at all, but they present a significant hazard.
• Passengers. There are pedestrian crossings marked, but they are often in inconvenient locations. Pedestrians, encumbered by children and luggage, walk across the busy roads at random locations, directions and speeds.
• The pick-up/drop-off area. It’s tiny. At peak hours, it is full and vehicles begin to double park, further slowing traffic. The official parking is so inconvenient and expensive that people ignore the signs prohibiting pick-up (and what legal status do they have anyway?) to pull into the drop-off area where they wait for family or friends and then load them and their bags into their vehicle, getting in the way of more considerate drivers.

Trust me, I’m barely scraping the surface here. The airport parking and traffic arrangements are a shambles. They are confusing and dangerous.

Yes, I know that there’s a clear vision for a new terminal. I’m impressed. It will be start of the art, it will be convenient, it will have pick-up and drop-off areas separated, it will have an undercover taxi rank so passengers don’t have to line up in piercing cold or blazing sun.

But in the meantime, the situation sucks. I’m reminded of a stadium that was designed to have a wonderful, ingenious cantilevered roof. It looked flimsy, but it was soundly designed to cope with winds and stresses and weight of snow or hail. Only trouble was that the construction sequence hadn’t been planned well, and there was one intermediate stage where the ingenious roof was inadequately supported and a gust of wind blew the whole thing down.

That’s Canberra Airport’s road system.

The way we were

Here’s Google Maps view (including Streetview) of Canberra International Airport, as of three years ago. It bears only the most tenuous relationship to the current situation. None of the roundabouts visible on the photograph exist. The ordered carparks are vanished. It’s a wilderness of construction. It is all but impossible to reconcile my video with the Google view.

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Run-in

I once had a road-rage encounter with a driver here. Clearly he wasn’t au fait with the traffic arrangements. He began by changing lanes from the highway to the access road at the last possible moment. Without indicating. Thereby cutting me off in my own smooth entry. He moved slowly through the maze, driving carefully down the middle of the two marked lanes. He then came to an intersection where he had right of way, stopped in the middle of it and peered at the signs. I was trying to move around the obstruction when he jerked into motion and headed for the carpark. Of course it took him forever to negotiate the entrance. The notice explaining the system of operation (A: Press button. B: Boom gate opens. C: Drive through and park) was taxing his resources.

After we parked, he approached me belligerently, accusing me of driving like a lunatic. Me, in an environment where I knew every lane, every turn, every sign. And he didn’t. I calmly pointed out his many errors.

Like hell I did. He was a lot smaller than me, so I punched him hard in the face and kicked him savagely in the nuts. My army training wasn’t wasted.

The truth lies somewhere in between, but it wasn’t pretty. (And there was no bloodshed.)

With an eye to illustrating this blog post, I got my camera out to video the construction zone that the exit road has become, complete with speed humps, bollards. I finished by focussing on the “End Roadworks” sign.

Then I remembered that I really wanted to go around to the cab rank to pick up a fare from the dozens of passengers patiently waiting. I’d missed the turn and it was a long way to where I could make even an illegal u-turn.

I couldn’t even do that, because there was this galoot beside me, blocking any lane-change, flashing his lights etc.

I thought back to me progress along the exit road. I’d been at the speed limit, I hadn’t held anyone up, my video work hadn’t involved any dangerous manoeuvres, or even a lack of due care and attention. But obviously this bloke disagreed.

The lights were red, we both stopped, he got out. Uh-oh. Mindful of the earlier encounter, I hit the central locking.

Somewhat warily, I wound the window down. The other driver didn’t look enraged or upset. Quite the opposite.

He introduced himself as “Stephen Byron, from Canberra Airport” and wanted to know if the video was for my own private use. I told him it was for a blog post, and that seemed to satisfy him.

Now I’ve actually got a lot of respect for Steve. He cops a lot of flak, he has done a great job in transforming the airport into a world-class facility (or will be when the thing’s finished) and most of all, he has been relentless in pointing out the folly of a land developer who wants to build directly under the flightpath.

It’s an airport close to the city, it has clear open land under the three main landing/take-off paths, it should stay that way. Only Reagan National in Washington DC comes anywhere close to being as conveniently located to a major city, and even then there’s a constant flow of aircraft along the Potomac and over the Washington Monument.

Canberra International Airport should stay where it is, it should remain unobstructed in operation, and it should cater for the demand. It’s a valid diversion airport for Sydney, and as a frequent international traveller myself, I’d like to see some actual international flights.

I just happen to think that the way the airport roads have been handled really sucks.
–Skyring

Saturday is the day when I go out there and give 1.10 percent.

After a long week of long shifts, Saturday is my day for not caring. I do random stuff, maybe go shopping with my wife, a little housework, a lot of napping, reading the papers, drinking tea and just winding waaaaay down.

Sunday I might have my energy levels back up again, but Saturday is me winding down and enjoying family life.

Actually, I was out and about at 1030, fresh and shaven and making passable conversation with folk from the School of Practical Philosophy. This is the mob I stop work for every Wednesday night for two hours or so, and they have gotten me thinking some deep thoughts. Today was a Saturday session. Tea and cake and philosophy at the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture as we learnt about the founder of the school and discussed some of his teachings.

I staid awake long enough to do some serious thinking. Odd that philosophy would help a cabbie, but there it is. I find the stress just eases away. I keep my mind focused on the job in hand, concentrate on the driving, do my very best to keep the passenger happy, finish the fare with smiles all round.

Happy passenger equals happy cabbie. That’s my philosophy.

In odd moments, I registered yet another domain name and did some housework to set up a new site. Not sure how it will pan out yet, but it will involve me, my co-driver, Twitter and a Taxi and it may lead to a series of grand adventures.

Stay tuned!

–Skyring

Bonus video

My life

Twice a night I get to chat with one of the late night service station console operators. I go in at midnight to fill up and again at the end of a shift to top up the tank and clean the car. Usually it’s just a few words as I run the card through the machine and grab the docket.

“How’s your night going? Wet out there! Time to go home!” Just a few words.

Poor old operators. They have to keep the shop tidy and stocked up, hose down the forecourt, keep the windscreen wash buckets full and fresh, coil up the vacuum hose neatly, empty the litter bins and about a million other things.

Oh yeah. And serve the customers coming in for gas and late night snacks. They rarely get a moment to scratch themselves, even in the wee small hours.

Occasionally I’ll pull in and one of the operators will be sitting down outside, well away from the bowsers, having a quiet fag. His moment of rest and he’s got to get up and turn the pump on for me.

I get out and go over to him and chat until he’s finished his smoke. A minute out of my night mostly spent waiting for things to happen is nothing compared to the sweet indulgence of an unbroken cigarette for a console jockey.

We were sitting there, just enjoying the still, when a man comes running in from the darkness, smack into the automatic door, which of course was locked while the operator was outside. He looked around, and my companion sighed, got up, handed me the cigarette.

“He wants a packet of smokes,” I smiled. These late night cravings hit the nicotine addict hard.

I watched as the customer was served and made a quick exit, running away into the night.

“That was quick,” I said, as the console guy retrieved his smoke. “He needed his tobacco, yeah?”

“Nah, condoms.”

January. Midsummer in Canberra. Hot, dry. T-shirt, short pants and sandals. Relief comes in the long daylight saving evenings when the sun slides down behind the Brindabellas and the shadows of the gum trees lengthen out across the valley.

My wife’s sister arrived at the door with a bottle of champagne. I looked at it and at her. Blank.

“Ah, happy birthday?”

“Don’t be silly. It’s for Kerri.”

Oh yes. My wife. She was off to America in a couple of days. Some government conference. Every three months she was abroad. Stockholm, Berlin, Paris…

I fetched flutes, poured the chilled wine, and we sat outside on the deck, talking in the warm mellowing evening.

“I’d love to be going with her,” I said. Washington DC. Kerri had two conferences to attend, and would be spending a week there, all expenses paid, courtesy of the Australian taxpayer and the UN. I thought about Washington – the Smithsonians, the galleries, the grand buildings, the White House. Arlington and JFK. The heart of America.

But I’d never travelled far. We’d gone to New Zealand on our honeymoon twenty years earlier, and then again for a second holiday, two teenagers in the back seat. That was it. I’d travel further one day. One day…

“Well, why don’t you?”

I thought about this. We were doing okay financially, I’d be able to share the hotel room, the internet bookselling business could go hang for a week, the kids were old enough to look after themselves. But international travel! That was a big step.

I excused myself, went inside, a little bubbly as I checked the computer. Canberra to Washington and back was expensive, but not out of the question. Only trouble was that it was too late to book online.

So next morning I was there at Flight Centre, telling a travel agent, “I’d like to fly to Washington. Tomorrow.”

And it was so. That “one day” was on me.

The song

America! The nation dominated the news and the world of my childhood. Still does. The British Empire had crumbled, the Communists didn’t have the media coverage, the Europeans spoke a bunch of incomprehensible, but the Americans were pumping out cool stuff faster and cooler as they launched satellites and boosted communications and finally invented the internet and my life will never be the same.

Americans had the best music, the brightest films, the fastest cars, the sharpest planes…

And the space program. During the Sixties the Soviets lost their early lead as America pushed up rocket after rocket until that memorable black and white day they landed on the moon. The Russians couldn’t compete after that.

As it turned out, neither could the Americans, and space exploration fizzled off into seeing how bored astronauts could get as they went umpty-zillion times around the world in cobbled-together space stations.

Still, it was America that seized my growing imagination, and when in Sunnybank State High School we studied Simon and Garfunkel, I was struck by the poignancy and accuracy of this song.

…I don’t know a soul who’s not been battered
I don’t have a friend who feels at ease
I don’t know a dream that’s not been shattered
or driven to its knees
But it’s all right, it’s all right
For we’ve lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the road
we’re traveling on
I wonder what went wrong
I can’t help it, I wonder what went wrong

And I dreamed I was dying
And I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly
And looking back down at me
Smiled reassuringly
And I dreamed I was flying
And high up above my eyes could clearly see
The Statue of Liberty
Sailing away to sea

For we come on the ship they call the Mayflower
We come on the ship that sailed the moon
We come in the age’s most uncertain hours
and sing an American tune…

Isn’t that America all over? Written just shy of the bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence, post Vietnam, Paul Simon – Rhymin’ Simon – had summed up his nation in a few lines. Two hundred years old, creaky at the joints, forgetting stuff, making odd decisions, but still pumping out the hits. A nation founded on some solid notions. Liberty, the pursuit of happiness, equality. It might not always have turned out as it should, but America had a heart of gold, and you could be sure that Uncle Sam would get there in the end.

The place

I’ve been in some magical places in my time. A New Zealand cave with a galaxy of glow-worms lighting our upturned faces drifting in a boat down an underground river. Kissing my wife on top of the Eiffel Tower. Seeing sperm whales off Kaikoura. Standing before Sagrada Familia in awe. The laser light show over Hong Kong Harbour.

Cold in the capital

But there I was, one wondrous week in Washington DC, the fresh snow deep and white down the Mall. I all but had the city to myself, just a few hardy tourists and the odd yellow schoolbus full of interstate kids braving the snow.

Quite frankly, I’d never been so cold in my life. I walked across from Arlington, and the Potomac was frozen over. I’d never seen a frozen river. I’d never seen much in the way of snow, neither. But here were great drifts of it, with homeless people shivering in corners.

Coming from midsummer Australia to frozen America in January, it was a shock in so many ways. But I pulled on my gloves, bought a beanie from a souvenir stand selling off leftovers from the second Bush inauguration, and high-stepped through the snow, enjoying the atmosphere, enjoying the grand buildings, enjoying the emptiness.

I could see that the National Archives were set up for thousands of visitors. But there was just me and a dozen others in the Rotunda for the Charters of Freedom. I could gaze on the Declaration of Liberty and the US Constitution for as long as I wished.

And I did. In many ways, the United States of America is Australia’s big brother. Americans fought the battles of a firstborn, hardwon freedoms that younger siblings gained with ease. Australia’s independence came with ink, not blood. It is only proper to pay some measure of homage to those who went first.

And what a prize they won! The world’s first great modern democracy. The model for the modern age. The shining example, exemplified by the Statue of Liberty holding the torch of freedom high.

Inspiring stuff, and I glowed as I walked out into the snow again. Lofty thoughts were in my head, and it seemed only right that I turn towards the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, where dreams were high as the sky itself.

Another place where the lines stretched around the block in summer. Another place that was just me and a few tourists. I touched a piece of the sky on the way in. A slice of moon rock. For a moment I was magic.

Such amazing aircraft. Here were the highlights of a century of flight, hanging from the ceiling, resting on simulated runways, just a thin wire separating me from the Wright Brothers canvas and string Flyer of 1903.

The Spirit of Saint Louis is there, one of the first planes to fly the Atlantic. One man, one engine, New York to Paris non-stop. The feat fired imaginations around the world.

Its streamlined shape is echoed and refined by that of the Bell X-1 Glamorous Glennis, which the legendary Chuck Yeager piloted to become the first human to exceed the speed of sound. Built like a bullet, this rocket powered craft broke the sound barrier in 1947 and hangs in a corner of the main hall, its needle nose spearing the air.

There are planes and rockets and spacecraft galore. A Boeing 747. John Glenn’s Mercury capsule. A simulated USN aircraft carrier holding naval aircraft on a portion of flight deck. Craft from all eras, from the biplanes of WW1 to the world’s first private spaceship.

A place for kids of all ages. The awe on the face of a five-year old is matched by the sparkle in his grandfather’s eye.

For me, the most magical place of all was there in a corner of the great hall, standing before the very ship that sailed the moon. This was science fiction made true in metal and perspex. This was mankind’s greatest feat. This was a marvel of technology. This wasn’t two guys in a garage, this was a mighty national effort – a triumph of organisation, teamwork, science and sweat.

I never tire of the story of Apollo. It might have seemed routine in the terse phrases of the mission controllers, the endless acronyms of LEM and CSM and MOCR, the flag-waving and the speeches. But it was new and dangerous in the Sixties. The three men who had lived in this tiny gumdrop of a craft for ten days had truly gone where no man had gone before. In space, in time, in history.

They and their comrades were the heroes of my youth. And they still are.

The meal

I ate lunch in the Smithsonian Air and Space. In many ways, it was as quintessentially American as a plate of ribs. Or hog jowls and cornpone. It was fitting.

America on a plate - without the plate

It wasn’t a meal to write home about, unless it was to say in wonder, “Hey, they have McDonalds here in America too!”

It wasn’t a unique experience. Small details of packaging aside, it was exactly the same meal I could have had in the Canberra Centre. Or Kowloon. Or on the Boulevard St Michel. Or off Trafalgar Square.

But it was perfect for the setting. Remember how I mentioned that the grand museums were set up for thousands of visitors? They were, with chains and poles set up to guide lines of tourists zig zag from the street to the entrance, from the door to the counter, past the notable exhibits in an orderly fashion. In the land of the free, this was the home of the queue.

In the basements, in the cafeterias, fast food chains took care of the crowds. Subway, Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried and McDonalds. Thousands could be fed fast, rather than fed up slowly.

I felt odd indeed, walking straight up to the counter, getting my Big Mac meal in a matter of seconds, and then taking my pick from the hundreds of tables in the vast refectory area. I chose one by the window, where the new Museum of the American Indian challenged the classic columns and porticos lining the Mall.

Perhaps it is fitting that I cannot remember any details of the food. Just the setting. But my readers have had the same meal. The same exact taste and texture. I don’t need to describe the crisp salt taste of the chips, the thrill of the cola going down as the ice cubes clinkle, the tart pickle and sauce on the grilled patties, and the sesame seeds of the buns finding the crevices in our teeth. We know it all too well.

It is not good food. It is fat and carbohydrates, sugar and salt. But it is precisely what I needed on this freezing day before I ventured back outside. A calorie hit of junk food.

And, for the millions of visitors to the various Smithsonians, it is homely food. Familiar in price and taste. There’s no flight into the unknown, no agonising over a decision between (say) the Apollo Sandwich and the Lindbergh Lunch. Instant decision, instant service, instant satisfaction, next please!

The key

Champagne and a Big Mac. I’ve kept the label from the bottle, page one of the scrapbook I made for the trip. It was a HUGE step for me to go to Washington, but once I’d made it, I never stopped. Every year since then I’ve been around the world once or twice.

Sometimes I smile at the young man in his late forties who looked with awe down at the frozen river, the crisp snow, the flame burning over a fallen president. So many stars in his eyes! Every airport was new and exciting. LAX was an adventure where people walked on the wrong side and black men in uniform called you “Sir” as they patted you down for a random security check.

My life has changed beyond imagining. That trip with my wife to Washington DC set me travelling. Usually alone, sometimes with a merry companion or two. On average, I take a flight every ten days, often long-haul. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve flown in and out of Kingsford-Smith. Or Heathrow. Or DFW.

But I can’t lose the excitement of a new city, a new place, a new set of memories. A new meal. I’ve barely tasted America in my five years of travel. I shall return.

Resources

• Blog post about the song, looking back.
• The Big Mac on Wikipedia
• The Big Mac Index in The Economist
• The Smithsonian Air and Space Museum
• Apollo 11 mission in photographs

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