Hiatus At The Hotel California

To Earn A Living

I spent two days working in Dunedoo, looking out the window while I was on the phone, and became an expert in all things related to the Dunedoo Caravan Park, which was actually a front for a more well-known establishment.

Trucks rumbled through Dunedoo day and night. Sometimes they stopped outside the caravan park to use the $3 showers, sometimes they stopped further up the street to visit the Dunedoo Pie Shop. They made a lot of noise.

"They didn't used to come through here," said our reliable informant the Caravan Park Manager. "They used to go via Narrabri because there was fuel there. Then the 24hour servo opened up here and now it's trucks 24/7."

Smoko break: supervising the traffic on the highway.

In Dunedoo the Hotel California looked suspiciously like a row of dongas with a concrete verandah out the front. Every day two old men sat in camp chairs out the front of Hotel California, drinking coffee which they took turns making in the camp kitchen. As the days wore into evening they segued to stronger stuff from the little bar fridge that sat between them. One of them occasionally took a wander around the park, supervising the tourists and newcomers as they parked their caravans. The other, large hat stop his head, just sat in his chair and there he sat. By lunchtime I struggled to control the urge to go and poke him, just to check for signs of life.

Come nightfall the gang next door lit up their fire pit and rolled up their 'herbal' cigarettes. Down at the camp kitchen two workers settled in to cook their dinner, already wearing their flannelette pyjamas. One of the flannel fellas was high as a kite, bouncing round the kitchen with manic energy talking nineteen to the dozen. The other flannel fella, much calmer, guided him to use his energy washing up rather than annoying everyone else.

Down in caravan corner a grey nomad lamented putting Adblue instead of diesel in his vehicle while visiting the 24-hour servo over the road. Not being capable of digesting Adblue, the car conked out with just enough time for him to roll into the Dunedoo Caravan Park and there he sat waiting for a tow truck to take him home and having nightmares about repair costs.

The arrival of a tow truck large enough to accommodate both 4wd and caravan, and the palavar of loading them on board, provided entertainment for all the inhabitants of the Dunedoo Caravan Park.

By 8pm the Dunedoo Caravan Park was silent: the flannel fellas had gone to bed as had the herbal cigarette crew, everyone having to be at the work site at 6am tomorrow. The grey nomads had tucked themselves into their caravans as soon as the sun set. The Adblue couple had waved off the tow-truck and gotten a lift with their son to Sydney. I had ground through two days work and was looking forward to being back on the bike tomorrow.

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