Road Trip

Scenes from the Highway

Through Queensland on the black top

Low tide at Bowen, North Queensland. © Bronwen Scott

Atherton Tablelands

In the afternoon, I hand back the house keys and drive south. It is the dry season and the days should be warm and sunny, but squalls sweep in across the mountains. They hit without warning, smashing into the windscreen and flooding the road. The drive to the coast is a foxtrot — slow, slow, quick, quick, slow. Ahead of me, two trucks crawl down the range to the Beatrice River. As I get closer to them, I see they are carrying car bodies, each vehicle crushed into a cube. On one carcass, a headlight remains in place, the plastic cover cracked but still attached. It looks like an eye. As soon as I can, I pass the trucks and head to the coast. The rain lightens, but does not stop.

Cardwell

I walk along the foreshore at high tide. The waves sound like thunder as they roll against the rock wall. The sea is calm. Five kilometres across the Channel, the peaks of Hinchinbrook Island are mantled in cloud.

Near the jetty, a copper statue of a tree stands on a concrete plinth. Its branches bear the hand-shaped leaves of a flame tree (Brachychiton acerifolius), a rainforest species that grows along the east coast. At night, gas-fired flames emerge from cups along its branches, but I am not there to…