I constantly hear people talk of the good old days in relation to Telstra and the [delivery of phone and postal services by a government department], but those good old days really didn't exist. The telecommunications in this country is better than it ever was.
John Howard, on Adelaide Radio 5DN on Wednesday
The Prime Minister is right. For anyone who hasn't been to the outback in the past few years, there are a few surprises. The idea of isolated and remote regions, with inaccessible towns joined by four-wheel drive horror roads, rough pubs serving mutton and boiled potatoes, nasty bore water, and very bad telephones -- all this is truly a thing of the past.
This winter, I went on a trip following the trail of Burke and Wills (which I have since discovered is de rigueur); Cooper Creek, Birdsville, Boulia, over the Selwyn Range to their most northerly camp, number CXIX, near Normanton in the gulf country. What started as an adventure of discovery -- GPS, CB radio, four-wheel drive, rugged tyres, extra water, food -- turned out to be something like a Disneyfied theme-park holiday. Well almost.
Don't get the wrong idea. Australia really still has the space, the uncluttered boldness of landscape, and we should be grateful that, as citizens, we own it all. The grey nomads, who invade the tropical top end in winter in their mobile homes think it's bloody paradise. So what's changed?
Well, technology has changed almost everything.
For a start, most of the roads are excellent.
Remember the Birdsville Track? Nowadays, it is a highway plied by luxury coaches full of oldies that stop at the famous Birdsville pub for a toilet break. Forget the four-wheel drive. Any delicate, inner-suburban European car would do the trick. Forget the food.
Every outback town has a well-stocked supermarket with smoked salmon, hummus, Asian spices and fresh bread. Forget the water. Water in every tap from Broken Hill to Karumba is as clear and as good as any Melbourne drop.
Petrol and excellent, trained mechanics are everywhere. Every service is as predictable and reliable as in any outer suburb of Sydney or Melbourne.
And the outback pubs. They have become theme-park pubs of the outback, with walls lined with memorabilia of another age, postmodern corrugated iron featurism, chalkboard menus and fun bumper stickers ("The only wilderness is between a greenies ears", and so on), with museum rooms full of what should be considered your grandfather's farming junk.
Even the ordinary non-theme pubs have changed. With prosperity come the obligatory aluminium window frames (usually faux Tudor), the new beer-resistant pile carpet, the outside facade completely covered with Fourex signs, and painted vulgar colours, the inside plastered with wall-to-wall TV monitors beaming in up-to-the-minute horse and dog races from around the country. Isolated? Hardly.
Makes you wonder about the rumpus with Telstra. I don't think I have seen so many Telstra phone booths in my life; in every single town and, it seemed, on every single corner. In the remotest, most unlikely places, the familiar phone booth, with microwave link and solar power, a fully automatic and autonomous phone, complete with instant dial tone, infallibly works as reliably and as clearly as my phone in the city. And when you phone home, looking directly out on gibber desert, that's bloody impressive.
I then noticed the radio masts sticking up everywhere in the empty landscape. They deliver untimed local calls to every homestead around.
I even discovered that you can run teleconferences from Birdsville and that they are giving away the hardware for high-speed internet services in the remote areas. And the cockies get it at a cut rate. Having a look at some of the house prices up around Barky (Barcaldine) and Longy (Longreach), I realised they certainly don't pay the same as the city for their real estate.
I haven't even got on to the cars they drive, let alone airconditioning, refrigeration and air transport. On entering a pub in the outback NSW town of Tibooburra, I took surprise at the menu which announced fresh oysters. I exclaimed rather too loudly, "Fresh oysters?" The immovable publican's wife, with hands firmly planted on her hips, glared at me and bluntly added: "What do you bloody think they are, stewed socks?"
Let me tell you, the outback has changed. Whatever hardships are endured there -- one would not for a moment want to diminish the extraordinary and exceptional hardship brought on by the present drought -- they are, overall, certainly more existential than material.
Burke and Wills would have died for Telstra Home Link when they needed it.
No comments:
Post a Comment