The taxidriving thing has been going downhill for a long time. When I started in October 2006, aiming to gain enough money to feed my travel habit, it was great. There were only a couple of hundred cabbies on the road at any one time, and at peak times we’d be flat out. I worked six nights a week and on Saturday nights the money just poured in.

As time went by, I slowed down a bit. Gave up Saturday nights, then dropped Friday night for Sunday. My two big money-earners gone, but with them most of the drunks, and I got to spend my weekends with my family.

In particular Kerri and I enjoyed our Friday nights, when I’d cook dinner, having it ready for her when she came home at the end of her working week. And the family didn’t have to tiptoe around the house on their days off while I tried to sleep.

Then the Wednesday Philosophy Club came into my life, and I’d stop work about six-thirty of an evening, and be so deep when the class finished at nine-ish that I’d rarely feel like starting up again. Kerri and I would drive back home together, discussing the topics raised in the class. Climbing back into uniform and going out into the quiet streets for a few more fares seemed pretty hard.

On anynight, the late evenings usually consist of sitting around on various deserted ranks, and about two in the morning after being idle for ninety minutes, I’d start to wonder if maybe there was something better I could be doing with my life.

Then I lost my beloved day driver, PeskiePete, to the taxi base.

And above all, there were more drivers on the road, competing for the same business. The government had released another hundred taxi plates. It’s easier and cheaper to do this than to improve public transport, which loses money.

Most of the new drivers were Indians, up from Melbourne, where they were the target of abuse. They quickly became the target of strong criticism here, from the established cabbies, for stealing fares, setting up illegal ranks outside hotels and clubs, passing other taxis en route to a rank. Not to mention the various scams, such as taking the long way to a destination, aiming to hit as many red lights as possible, setting the meter on the night rate during the day, refusing short fares and so on.

Kerri was complaining that I’d crawl coldly into bed in the early morning and do nothing but whinge about the lousy shift I’d had.

It just wasn’t worth it.

The owner wasn’t making any money out of his cab, and he sold it to one of the new Indian “cabfathers”. With it went myself and my day driver Rhys, but when Rhys got up at three in the morning to begin a new week, he found that he was out of a job.

I couldn’t work with people who’d sack good drivers without notice, so I took a regular passenger to the airport, let the peak hour wind down, and drove Betsy back for the last time.

I’ll be a part-time driver now, if anybody wants me, because I really do like cabbing. But I’ve got other things to do now, not least helping to move house and to get back to what I really enjoy – blogging and game design.

It’s been a fun five years, but it’s time to move on.

—Skyring

Canberra’s new airport terminal is world-class. It’s light, airy, spacious, transparent. And half-complete. When the second building, a mirror-image of the first, rises over the rubble of the old shed, it will be a welcome worthy of the nation’s capital. A glass atrium will end the u-shaped two-level drop-off and pick-up rank, allowing arriving passengers to grasp the layout at a glance. Jets and taxis separated by a few sheets of glass.

I embrace my wife, dropping us off on my cabbie patch, and we meet up with the fourth member of our group inside. Twinkles shared high school with my daughter, and has been a frequent visitor to our house, stroking our cats, sharing movie sleepovers, and now adding a smiling welcome to our trip.

We’ll meet our fifth, fellow BookCrosser FutureCat, in San Francisco, where she is hoping for respite from months of aftershocks in Christchurch.

Our bags pile onto the conveyor belt. I’ve got three bags full of stuff, fifty kilos of books and baggage. My son has two small and suspiciously light bags, and the girls are somewhere in between..

I’ve dropped back to Frequent Flyer Gold now, and although I’m allowed one guest in the lounge, I’m not going to leave two out in the cold, so we find a table at Hudsons coffeeshop for the hour or so we have to wait. We’ve missed the morning crush and the terminal is quite pleasant at nine and ten o’clock. A few metres away Virgin Blue operates from what’s left of the old terminal, cramped and narrow, while we Qantas passengers have space and elegance, the tall windows giving a view out over the taxiing jets and the rolling green hills beyond

There are worse places to wait. And worse company to wait with. I’m going to enjoy this trip.

Our flight is called and we file aboard, patting the aluminium hull of our Dash-8 propliner along with my daughter, who is as enthusiastic a traveller as I. My smile needs to squeeze aboard sideways; by the end of this extra long Friday I’ll be in San Francisco, and there are few places in the world I love quite so much.

We’re seated in a block of four, somewhere on the middle on the port side. It’s really a bit of a bus trip, as it’s overcast all the way apart from enough breaks in the clouds to work out where we are. Mostly I read the inflight mag, which has a pocket review of Iori, amongst others.

We land on the cross, taxi in, unload, browse through a chocolate shop – there’s a chocolate Kama Sutra, one of us notices – and find the transfer lounge.

A minute or two and the bus arrives, giving me the chance to shoot a few plane bums.

Three years ago

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.

The place

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)

Quint set down his mugs, sliding one across the counter to Ann. She was looking at him, looking at his cheek. “I got..” he began. “I was… Ah… I hurt myself.”

“So I see,” Ann replied. “Sorry to hear it. And Harley here cut himself shaving, maybe.”

Quint considered the other man in the shop. A taxidriver he’d used previously, bearing a bandaid on his cheek and a mug of coffee in his hand. Odd. He’d left Heartbake just before Quint, carrying two mugs. Where was the other one?

The other man extended his hand. “Harley. Cabbie. Booklover. Careless shaver.”

Quint shook hands briefly. “Am I interrupting anything? You wanted coffee, Ann.”

“Thanks, William. You’re a sweetie. Harley was just telling me about BookCrossing.”

BookCrossing. Giving away perfectly good books to strangers. Quint couldn’t understand it at all, but Ann took a strange amount of fun from the disease, often closing the shop for weeks at a time while she travelled to conventions where fellow-sufferers gathered to discuss their symptoms.

“Not my cup of tea, Ann. You tried to sign me up, remember?”

“You either get it or you don’t.”

Quint nodded. “Like a cold.”

“I caught it off Ann,” Harley said. “Anyway, I was on the airport rank yesterday, and I had a couple of spare seconds, so I whipped out and released a book against one of the pillars. This book.”

He held out a book. Quint took it. A hand-scrawled note stuck onto the dustjacket, the endpapers defaced with numbers and another sticker, more marks on the fore-edge. He winced at the wilful destruction.

“That makes a Very Good book into Fair. Might have been worth maybe three dollars originally, but now you couldn’t give it away.”

“Yeah. Tell me about it. Anyway, last night I got pulled over by the cops, and they asked me about this book, and told me to come in to the main cop shop this morning. Which I did, on top of everything else.”

“They arrested you for littering,” Quint guessed. He didn’t like litterbugs,

“Cops don’t care. I was awake all night worrying about it. And other things. So when I gave my name at the counter, and they took me into a room full of blokes in suits, I was shitting myself.

“They all stood up and had a go at me. They took turns. First cab off the rank was the police commissioner. In full uniform. He said that I was responsible for closing down the airport for two hours, and did I have any idea of the trouble I’d caused?

“Then there was the airport manager, and he really laid into me. He was spraying spit at the end, and he looked like he was going to punch me. Trouble is, everyone else was egging him on. You could see it.

“Anyway, he sat down, and the Qantas bloke stood up and asked if I knew how much it had cost to divert flights. Then the Virgin manager said exactly the same thing. Hundreds of thousands of dollars. I was going to get a bill from them. Then another policeman from bomb disposal blew me up. Said I was putting the lives of his best men at risk. The Urban Services Minister was there too, and he had the hide to tell me I was an idiot. I started to give him a serve about his useless bloody roadworks but the Ambulance manager sat me down again.

“The army guy got up and looked at me and asked if I knew how much it cost to put a helicopter in the air and would I like to apologise to the SAS guys yanked away from their training on a wild goose chase. But I lost it when the construction company boss asked if I knew how much it cost to pull his road crew off.”

“Uh-oh,” Ann groaned. “What did you do?”

“I told him I could arrange a group booking. Then the police chief made this weird noise, told me not to do it again, and to get the hell out of his sight.”

Ann snorted.

“Yeah. Like that except lower.”

Quint wasn’t sure if he liked this taxi driver. But he could see that Ann had made up her mind. And she’d been drinking his coffee, after sending Quint out for a mug.

“All that for you?” she said. “Poor Harley!”

“They were having a security conference,” Quint said. He’d read it in the paper. The airport terminal was being upgraded and it was going to have the most comprehensive security in Australia.

“They didn’t tell me that,” Harley groaned. “I thought it was just for me, and I’d never get out of jail long enough to pay out the fine.”

“How did they know it was you?” Quint asked.

“They have a security camera on the taxi rank. They make sure we pay our two dollars to get through the boomgate out of the cabyard. So they knew it was my cab. And then they put the numberplate into the police computer. They have this high tech camera that looks at numberplates, and if it’s a stolen car or you haven’t paid your rego, they flag you down.”

Quint liked this. Good system.

“At least they gave you the book back,” Ann pointed out. “They could have blown it up”

“I’m going to leave it at the train station next.”

“Train drivers can’t read,” Ann twinkled back. “Not timetables. No way!”

“You could put it on your Official BookCrossing Zone shelf.” Harley said.

“Would you be a sweetie and do that for me?”

“I’m at your command, Ms Ounce!” Harley drained his mug, gave a mock salute and marched out.

Ann gazed after him. Quint set his cup down and pulled over the spreadsheet listing the books he’d bought from Violet Campbell. He had to be careful here.

“I need to talk to that old lady with the books. Have you collected yours yet?”

Ann sighed. “I’ve got a friend with a van. She helped me load them last night. Is there a problem?”

“You might want to check through them for personal items. Bookmarks, photographs. I found a few things last night she might want back.”

Copyright © 2009 Peter Mackay

The taxidriver’s navigation screen was tilted. Quint noticed it as soon as he sat down in the passenger’s seat. He almost reached to straighten it, but instead buckled his seatbelt and put his hands in his lap, sitting quietly.

“Where are we off to?” asked the cabbie, looking at Quint looking at the map screen.

“2A Monash Drive, Campbell 2612.”

“Ohhhh-kay!” The driver put the car in gear, pulling away from the taxi rank into the maze of roadworks surrounding the airport. This was jarring, as the road surfaces were uneven, speed bumps mingled with potholes and abrupt changes in level as the cab sped past construction barriers and signs.

“You know the way?” Quint asked, quite lost already.

“I wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve driven along here!” the cabbie said. He paused. “Oddly enough, that’s how it works out.”

Quint guessed there might be a joke somewhere in that, but he decided that it meant the cabbie knew how to find his home.

The interior of the taxi was cluttered with keypads, screens, mysterious gadgets and notices, and it took time to look at them all. The map screen was canted in two directions, he saw, but he kept his hands in his lap. Soon the jumble of the airport roadworks was behind, they had passed the guns mounted either side of the entrance to the Royal Military College, and Quint saw the name of Monash Drive come up on the tilted screen. He angled his head to read it.

He liked seeing streets and landmarks labelled and presented for his view. Like a living, moving map. From the air, although everything was laid out, especially when the plane was taking off or landing, there were no labels, and you had to guess what things were.

The cab turned into Monash Drive, and the cabbie, looking at the house numbers, said a rude word. But Quint knew where they were. The high end of his street had the high numbers and it was easy to remember. The cabbie couldn’t have been driving around Canberra long.

Here the houses were grand, on big blocks, with views out over the rest of the suburb, across the lake and onto Parliament House. The house price numbers were also high.

As they descended, the houses became smaller and closer together. Grouped around a central oval were the retirement home, school and shops. Newsagent, a small supermarket, restaurant, bakery and bookshop. A cluster of flats formed a red brick block between Monash Drive and Blamey Crescent.

Then a small hill, right in the middle of Campbell, and after that they were going down again, through the ex-government houses. Many of the cheaper sort, the “monocrete” fibro houses, had made way for more modern homes, usually with flat slab sides in pastel colours of mauve and green.

Sometimes the developers had managed to squeeze in two or even three small houses on a single block. The wide lawns and roomy yards replaced by a few square metres of pebbles.

Quint looked at a block enclosed by mesh fencing. Just a tangle of rubble where a home had been. A couple of bare fruit trees forlorn to one side.

The bottom of Monash Drive, where it hit Constitution Avenue, was home. Quint’s block of flats stood four and square on the corner. They were ugly but practical, and they suited him. A companion block on the Blamey Crescent corner had been modernised, and the tall panes of glass, angled like the prows of a fleet of ships, made them look most un-flatlike. Flats should be flat, Quint thought, not tricked out to look like an airport terminal or sports stadium.

The cabbie stopped in the centre of the row of flats. Quint looked at him sharply.

“Number 2A, please. Look, there it is. The number’s on the door.”

The cab moved forward five metres and the meter ticked over five cents to $16.20.

“That’s eighteen-twenty with the two dollar parking fee they stick us with,” the cabbie rattled, indicating a slip of paper. “Ah, just make it eighteen dollars, thanks.”

That seemed very high.

“Have the taxi fares gone up?” he asked.

“Not since the last time.”

Quint looked in his wallet. He had a twenty, two tens and a five. He pulled out the twenty, considered that the cabbie might not have any change, put it back and after some thought, handed over a ten and a five.

“I’ve got the rest in coins. Is that okay?”

“Fine, fine,” the cabbie said, watching Quint count out a fifty-cent piece, eight twenties, four tens and a series of five cent coins.

Quint wasn’t sure he’d gotten it right, and began laying out the coins on the centre console, but the driver scooped them up and jangled them into a bag. There might have been five cents extra, he thought, trying to remember how they had looked on the black vinyl. That wasn’t right.

But it could be a tip if it was extra. He smiled. “Thank you!”

The driver said something, but his words were lost in a great rending sound. Quint looked out to see one of the trees in the parkland across the street crash to the ground. There were men in orange vests with tools and helmets, vehicles with flashing lights, signs and barriers.

“That’s the new ASIO building going up,” the driver said, seeing Quint’s blank face. “Australian Secret Intelligence Organisation. The spy mob. Going to be a huge building. Five stories high.”

“Five stories?” Quint tried to imagine an office block stretching along Constitution Avenue, rising above the oak trees.

“Of course, those five stories will be underground. Security, you see. Just a grassy knoll on top.”

That didn’t sound so bad.

“Mind you,” the driver went on, “it’s going to be chaos here for the next couple of years.”

Chaos opposite Quint’s home. This was not good. He reached out and straightened the driver’s map screen.

Copyright © 2009 Peter Mackay