Back in the car...

It’s like a way of life now. We have the packing down to a slick art. We each have our duties. We are never late for checkout. The days are planned. It is all pretty smooth, efficient and agreeable. Several friends raised their eyebrows at the idea of the two of us spending six months shut in a car and one friend made ominous predictions that it could not be done.

Of course we have differences. We could not be more different. But this is an exercise in common purpose and shared experience and it seems to undercut differences to what I’d describe as occasional quibbles.

So today dawns mild and overcast.

We have not had too many of these but chances are the days are going to get a lot cooler.

Our travels have taken us across the top of the country in the height of summer, down the east coast and now, as the weather moves into autumn, across the south where the the idea is that the temperatures will be mild.

The Radisson porter in Austin offers to help Bruce load the car but he has it streamlined now. Not even I am allowed to put a finger in this pie.

My job is the double-checking hotel rooms to assure we leave nothing, leaving tips and sorting out accounts with reception.

And off we go through a quiet morning city.

Onto another great big highway, through another vast urban sprawl, under more towering overpasses. Interestingly, here they have added a veneer of designs upon the great cement struts, an attempt at aesthetic

in the overpass underworld. I like it.

Past restaurant chains - Fudruckers, the Savvy Rooster, Cracker Barrel, In-n-Out.

Mini storrrrrage, sings Bruce as we pass yet more more mini storage facilities. I long have fantasised about doing a coffee table book on American mini storage. The great consumer society. The moveable population.

The traffic thins out as we pass the great strands of car yards which border cities and towns across the land.

Oh, look, a clearance sale of portable homes. I love a bargain. But where would I put it?

Now Rock Springs Behavioural Health Hospital. Interesting. For drug addicts and alcoholics? Obesity?

A scrub-your truck yard. Mini Storrrrage!

Northwards we purr, now our imaginations set alight as we overtake a Crime Scene Unit van. What awful horror is its destination? Don’t listen to Bruce. Decapitations and blood spatter. Gruesome boy.

Chains of trucks are ahead, stuck behind an oversized load. We take our place in the jockeying queue. It’s a bit hairy. Much patience required. Big trucks have to pass bigger trucks. Little cars like ours are tucked in between. The obstacle load turns out to be huge concrete beams, the sort they use for bridges. And there’s the monitor vehicle up front with its flashing lights - and a woman driver.

The road stretches out and out and out ahead.

Lots of trucks.

Bruce’s favourite thing. Road works.

Trucks.

It takes a lot of concentration in heavy truck traffic.

Roadside there are more flags and car yards, power poles, overpasses, mini-storage.

More bloody roadworks.

What a mess of fixing is happening on these interstates, grumbles Bruce.

A town called Temple passes by and near it, another of those mega petrol stations.

The roadworks go on for miles.

It is like threading a needle, driving between the bollards and cement barriers. Not fun.

A spectacular flock of starlings wheels across the field over there.

And here comes another big strip of commerce, signs red and yellow, signs for everything, food, accommodation, fuel - and Waco.

We swing into Waco, that town of which one seems to have heard nothing good. It was the scene of the mad Branch Davidian horror.

Heavens, the Live Oak Classical School looks rather lovely. And what’s that huge tower looming over the town?

Waco seems quite small. Just a tight little main street and not the prettiest burbs. I don’t exactly take to it. In fact, I am ready to leave the moment we drive in.

Oh, a huge Dr Pepper premises. What the..?

Dr Pepper’s world HQ is in Waco. Waco is the home of Dr Pepper. Well, it has to be the home of something.

Off we go, past signs to Lake Waco, past lines of signs, a strip mall, a Pawn & Friends store, mini-storage, a suburb of bland little brown houses, open land, and ploughed fields.

Now driving is easier. Out in flat farmlands, 85 miles from Dallas.

Good grief. Do you see that? What is a carpet store doing out there all alone in the middle of the fields?

A sign announces Bush’s Chickens. We smile.

And another sign bids us Welcome to West Texas.

Desultory farmland surrounds us. But of course there’s some mini storage, too.

Now the farmland is ploughed, signs of green sprouting from some of the fields. Winter wheat, maybe?

Time for food. Tall road signs announce Carl’s Corner. We pull off. It is a petrol station and restaurant pretty much in the middle of farmland nowhere. There are old fellows in denim overalls, complete in their classic hats, filling their trucks. It’s the real Texas thing. We fill up, too. The restaurant is

called The Iron Skillet.

Surprisingly, one finds it by walking through a colourful convenience store and into sweetie and souvenir room where a couple of old gals behind a counter point and tell us through there.

Through there is a large dining room with a huge three-sided buffet counter.

More old chaps in denims look up from their food as we strangers come in.

A very gnarled and skinny old girl

in classic black and white waitress dress welcomes us and takes our drink orders. Coffee for Bruce. Iced tea for me. She has her hair in jeune-fille pigtails. Her voice has the deep rough crackle of a seriously damaged smoker. But she couldn’t be kinder.

As for the buffet. I never saw its brilliant like of fried chicken, fried liver, stews, macaroni cheese, potatoes, and greens. And the huge salad bar which encompasses chopped eggs and olives, cheeses and dried cranberries, beet salad, greek salad, potato salads, and every sort of lettuce and lines of assorted dressings.

And then the huge tureens of soup. Soup and salad special, $6.95? You're kidding. Big iron skillets are supplied on which to pile food. And deep terra cotta bowls for the soups. I have a beef and cabbage soup which is unspeakably delicious. Superb. The old girl comes up and asks if everything is ok. I swoon at the soup. Oh yes, we do good soup, she crackles.

As we leave, paying our tiny tab to the women in the sweetie room, I buy a few of the handmade chocolates at their sweetie counter. They turn out to be chocolates competitive with the best in the world.

Who would ever have imagined such a spectacular sanctuary of welcome and good food out there among the fields of Texas?

Ah, America.

Back on the road among the farmlands. Is that a loo block on the roadside? Odd spot.

Salvage yard in the fields. Hmm.

Cop Buffalo Creek Baptist Church. It is a huge farm barn.

Waxahachi turnoff. Scarborough Fair. Good grief, an English-style village.

A huge, busy antiques junk yard.

We’re on The Purple Heart Trail, says a signpost.

Passing a bland roadside suburb and bumping along into more lousy roads and roadworks.

Corsicana. A huge medical centre stands at a major highway intersection. And a refinery.

Texas.

This is the state where they can openly carry guns.

Funny, I haven’t spotted any gun stores.

Suddenly we are on a neat multilane highway running through very neat shopping strips. This looks very healthy and prosperous. What a transformation.

The usual out-of-town lineup of accommodation appears at the roadside and here come more overpasses, layers of them.

School buses trundling along and, there it is!

Towering buildings ahead of us. Within no time at all, we have scooted right into their midst. Hello, Dallas! What are a neat and handsome city you are.

G'day weird Sis.

Among the claims to fame of Austin, Texas, is that it is the sister city of Adelaide, South Australia.

The music city and the festival city are chosen siblings going back to our Jubilee 150 celebrations. This relationship always piqued my curiosity about Austin.

We roll into town and effortlessly to the door of our Radisson Plaza hotel where, to my delight, we are assigned a gorgeous mini suite with a view across the famous bat

bridge and down the river. It is a good impression of Austin straight away and, looking at the river and its river trail, it does remind me a just a bit of Adelaide and the Torrens. Just a bit.

The first thing I learn and am to hear over and over again is that Austin is proudly weird. It is weird city. It wants to be weird. To stay weird. Keep Austin weird is reiterated as a city motto. I love the idea.

The Austin magazine in our hotel room touts the Museum of the Weird as a symbol of this, a must-see. Look, Bruce. Let’s. Bruce is not keen.

But, since we want an exploratory walk around the city and since 6th Street, upon which it is located, is also touted as a must-see, live-wire part of the city, he agrees and we set off. It is hot. The air is heavy. It is not a brisk-walking day. We are hungry for lunch.

The streets of Austin are quiet. Few pedestrians. A few beggars. But the drivers are impatient. We note that people are very obedient to the walk signs at traffic lights which, by the way, are big white hands.

The food front is a worry.

There are no cafes to be seen along the way. It seems to be just business buildings. Sixth Street presents us with seedy bars most of which are closed. We quickly realise that Sixth Street is a night spot and we are seeing it in the hungover grime of the day. The nightclub and bar scene dies an ugly death in the daylight. Only the homeless are hanging out here, just walking about. They seem quite busy in an odd, purposeless way.

Finally we spot the open door to a dark and cavernous Mexican restaurant and step in. A very large

girl welcomes us and asks if we would prefer downstairs or on the balcony. Oh, balcony please. We mount steep industrial stairs to a broad balcony made leafy and lovely by the treetops around it. Just two other tables of people.We could look down on the life of Sixth Street. Not much happening. A few young

hipster men with manbags going places. Those lovely sheeny black grackle birds hop in and out of the balcony. They have little meetings under the chairs.

The waitress recommends stuffed avocados as she brings our iced tea and complimentary corn chips with two absolutely fabulous, spicy salsas. The avocados are strange - raw but in a cooked breaded shell. There is a spoonful of chicken mash in the centre. I’m not writing home about them.

We’re now just a few doors from the

Museum of the Weird. The really weird thing about it is that it is open when everything else is shut.

Bruce does not want to go in. It’s a Ripley’s rip-off thing, he grumbles. Wrong. It is Austin weird.

Finally I charm him through the door wherein a good spirited, amply-formed, pierced woman in a shop selling souvenirs of weird and hokey things gives us a hearty welcome and explanation of the weird things in the weird museum. I have to charm Bruce quite a bit more but finally, I get him through the door to

the museum itself. Well, it was decidedly weird: Big Foot footprints, stuffed two-headed animals, mummies, a mermaid, shrunken heads.

We are instructed to watch a video about the Minnesota Ice Man which would prepare us for the experience of meeting the Minnesota Ice man.

The story goes that this hairy hominid was bought off eBay by Steve Busti who remembered seeing it in the back of a truck when he was a lad. It had been on the road for years as a carnival freak show attraction and it remained a mystery as to just what or who this frozen creature may be. Now it sits in a special padlocked room at the Museum of the Weird which was built around this major attraction.

One has to wait for the guide to come and escort one to this spooky marvel and photography is strictly prohibited. So there, in the darkened cool room sits a giant coffin wherein this hairy early man lies inside a huge block of ice. He certainly looks like a prehistoric hominid, scraggle-toothed with a huge hand laid across his hirsute body. But he is also a bit hard to see clearly and it would be impossible to say if he was made of flesh or something else. Skeptical Bruce is not fascinated.

The museum is in a tiny tall building and the guide leads one up more stairs saying that Johnny Depp stayed in the apartment upstairs and that the owner still lives onsite. There is another room up there containing a giant King Kong. One is invited to pose with him. And the the guide completes the weird experience by giving a performance. He does some magic tricks. He is a sweet man. I struggle to find cash to tip him.

To have a good look at Austin, we sign up for an Austin Detours tour of the city. Our guide Steve’s night job is as a stand-up comedian. Like most comedians, he is not a funny fellow. He is very earnest and bursting with his patter of day job city information. He takes us inside the Capitol Building. I didn’t know I wanted to go into it until I got there. But, wow. It is simply glorious in its tremendous scale and superb workmanship. Superb painted atrium, formal

portraits of governors all around the great circular walls. Great high doors to all the rooms of the politicians who work in the place. It has a massive underground expansion, gob-smackingly massive! It is a work of incredible engineering skill which is ironic considering that the architect who won the original contract to build the edifice was untrained in both architecture and construction. How did he get the job, one wonders. It makes a good story. His heart was in his mouth throughout the building because he was so nervous of his lack of experience. Because he knew nothing and was afraid it may fall down, he made it absurdly thick.

Outside the gorgeous Capitol Steve points out the Ten Commandments statue. Controversial. It

was not allowed in various official places because of the separation of church and state, but some rich Christian polly showed them who’s boss by buying it and putting it ostentatiously outside the capitol.

We look at some of the quirky residential areas of keep-Austin-weird as well as the university and the music area of this music city.

We also visited a graffiti park wherein the graffiti artists have adorned a vast, tiered derelict site turning it into a vivid gallery of whimsy, madness, cute factor, glamour and political ire.

I'm amused at the Donald Trump iconography.

Steve also takes us to the postcard mural of the city. It is a shopside adornment, a photo of which has become the most popular postcard image of the city. Also, beside it, the Love From Austin has taken off.

We admire and dutifully pose for Steve to take official photographs of us.

Next, we are taken to a food truck to be given little cakes on sticks but the food truck is unattended so we don’t get these Austin treats. We do go to amazing Rainey Street which is all bars converted from down-at-heel houses, very wild and crazy and fun.

It is funny how tired a tour can make one. I suppose it is overload of

information. We have decided they are really good value to give one a potted and efficient familiarisation of a new city, but we are exhausted when we get back to the tourist centre; and still have to hoof it back to our hotel through the hot streets where there are few pedestrians - except for the homeless and beggars, one of whom plays a cardboard washboard and sports a dog with sunglasses. Of course.

Our hotel pool is a drawcard in the mornings. It is very quiet then so I get in some aqua and we are nourished by time in the sun. I run into a fellow journalist called Frances, a writer for Politico who has worked the Washington political

scene. We hit common ground on the political front and stand in the water raving about the election prognosis for ages. We part promising to keep in contact but, of course, we never will.

The bridge over the river outside our hotel turns out to be the top tourist spot in town. It is where the bats hang out. Austin has a population of millions of bats and they are the pride of the city. Truly.

They tell one of how the bats eradicated the mosquito population and how bat towers have been built for them and how much other places covet their bats and try to encourage similar populations. People congregate along the bridge before sunset and also in boats under the bridge to see the bats take off on their night hunting flights. The come out as huge, whirring black clouds. A spectacle. Not that we see them. But everyone, just everyone, tells us about them and there are bat statues and t-shirts and motifs all over the town. Yep, weird city is completely batty.

I discover that the local Zach Theatre company is presenting the Australian musical Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Well, of course one has to see it. Americans doing an Aussie show. In our Sister City. Just try and keep me away.

We park near the theatre and then in our theatre gladrags, we dine in a folksy el-cheapo Mexican joint. The waitress’ T-shirt says “God knows when you don’t tip.” Bruce loves this place. I am a bit unnerved about how very downmarket it is. Definitely not a happy camper when my gumbo is luke-warm and, although it is delicious, as I look at the staff and the grime, I envision nightmares of hygiene in the kitchen and, indeed, I later have a very bad night of indigestion.

The theatre itself is very new and bedecked in the names of its assorted philanthropists. Joe Bloggs’ foyer, Lolly Gobbs’ bar, etc.

The lights no sooner go down than the show has to stop because of a mechanical fault with the curtain. Catastrophic. How embarrassing. Actors scuttling. Stage hands pushing and shoving the obstinate set divider. Announcement. There will be a 15 minute tech delay. It turns into 30 or so. We are on the

aisle in a row of people who can’t stop getting up and going in and out. In and out. Out and in. We finally move into the seats in front of ours to get a rest from standing for them. The grasp of theatre etiquette is a bit odd here.

But the show is a triumph. The cast does it in Aussie accents. Not perfect but pretty bloody good. A lot of the jokes go over the head of

the Americans. Dingo’s got my baby etc. But the audience loves it and stands in wild ovation at the end. We join them. Fabulous show.

Austin is a quaint and interesting city. It is definitely a bit alternative. It has chosen an identify for itself as the music city and the weird place. It works hard at asserting these qualities and they work well for it.

The city is a bit dead during the day with lots of tech industry workers heads-down in offices. We never did find a flourishing retail or commercial centre in it. However, like its famous bats, the people come out at night.

Our sister city is a boozy nocturnal creature.

White knuckles through Texas

Since the windscreen is yukky with sticky insect impact, we make a quick detour to Walmart to buy Windex wipes before heading north for the next leg of jour journey. I buy a notepad and a couple of pairs of knickers. I love Walmart undies. $3.48 a pair versus $16 or more in Australia. My checkout chick is an incredibly gnarled old chook. A hundred if she is a day. I suspect she may make the record for elderly checkout workers. Scraggle-toothed and wispy-haired she is. I find this a good thing. I am so impressed by the workforce of seniors in the US. I’m told that some of them are working because the pension is so inadequate - which is a negative. But the thing that impresses me is that they are in the workforce at all. Imagine this in Australia. Hah. Ageism rules. But here in the US, retail employers are employing older people in droves. From Walmart to upmarket department stores, there they are, seniors working alongside juniors. No sign of ageism here.

Bruce is always eager to get back on the road. Today is only a three-hour drive.

With sparkling windows and fresh mango spears as a snack, we alert Google Siri to our destination and head north out of Galveston.

It is only 46 miles to Houston but it is a bit of a white-knuckle drive. We whoosh over the 8-lane bridge onto the mainland and up through the corridor of refineries. Huge billboards advertise the Space City Dialysis Centre, Texas City Dike Converter, Drive Safe Eat Messy and more insistent invitations to sell your car, sell your car, sell your car.

Then we come to the Sell Car turnoff. This is the exit. We couldn’t see evidence of traffic flooding off the road to sell itself at all. We could see car yards. We could also see an outlet mall and a complex of mini storage.

So, the people who came off the highway to sell their cars could have a splurge at the mall with the money and then, since they didn’t have a car in which to carry their purchases, they could put them into storage.

Or so we fantasised in gales of laughter.

Perhaps after all these months on the road we have a spot of cabin fever?

The furious traffic thickens as we near Houston. It is the third largest city in the USA.

More advertising lines the road. Eye Clinic. Attorney. Mercedes Benz. BMW. Mattresses.

Oh, no, and more Sell Us Your Car.

Bubba’s Restaurant has a huge model dead shark hanging from posts. No thanks.

Houston is close. We approach the lattice of sleek cement sculptures - overpasses and underpasses. Over and under. Upper and lower. Cement cement. A network of tiered roads complete with baffling roadsigns.

There stands Houston in hazy silhouette.

The air is not the best. The sky is pale blue with an iodine brown hue.

We whiz past medical and dental centres, a massive white building which seems to house one gobsmackingly huge law firm.

The traffic has become seriously intense, a big shiny, gleaming moving mass of metal.

All these cars. They show the stupefying scale of things in the US, says Bruce.

More overpasses and more relentless cheek by jowl commerce.

More billboards: Live like people not like bees. God listens to 84.3KSB radio. Need an Attorney?

And we enter the City of Houston in a choke of traffic.

It is a handsome city, if you don’t count the heavy haze.

A picture of children playing with a white rabbit on a Montessori school strikes a note of irony. Not in this air.

The lovely buildings of Houston flirt with the eye. This city has a glory of aesthetic architecture. It also has grackles lined up on its electric wires. Those sleek and interesting birds have gained some sort of extraordinary dominance in the urban landscape.

We’re not staying in Houston, just pausing for lunch and driving around to get a feel for it. It is huge.

We find a Chili's Restaurant. One of my very favourite chains in the USA. Therein we get freshly-brewed coffee and gorgeous, zesty char-grilled chicken breast on rice with broccoli. Light, clean, my cup of healthy lunch. Then menu reveals that it is only 420 calories.

Finally, we are gunning our way out of handsome Houston on the Interstate 10 beltway, when we spot the sign:

Yo Quiero Yo Car.

Ye gods. You must be kidding. Do these people never stop? The sell-us-your-car people have gone bi-lingual.

Eek. Don't look up. Now there are four storeys of overpasses above us.

And an ad about pelvic floor problems.

What an odd country.

An Ikea gives one a flicker of normality. Then again, we are on a 14-lane highway and everyone is speeding.

White knuckles.

Buildings are still big around us. We are in the outer commercial burbs of Houston. Memorial City to be exact. There are massive medical centres, Costco, Best Buy, more high-rise apartments and hotels. Oh, and overpasses of five levels above us. They are very high. Very high indeed. Daunting.

Here's a Texas thing we don't see elsewhere. Boot City which sells those glamorous Texan boots, of course. On a big scale. Of course. Car yards. Siri directs us to Old Katy Road. also known as Route 10.

A electronic sign says Ozone Alert Today.

Why am I not surprised?

Omni, Marriott, Raddison…hotels, hotels. The city goes on and on.

Houston, we have a problem. Space City, we can’t seem to get out of you.

But you are very impressive. Heading northwest, there is the handsome Methodist West Hospital.

Urgent Care, Animal Care. Kohls. Walmart, A Halloween store has a giant pumpkin face strapped on the top of it.

More massive, towering overpasses. Medical plaza, Boot Barn, Dollar Tree, Nail Salon.

This must be Katy. There is a Katy water tower. And Katy Mills.

Oh, we are leaving Young Harris County. Didn’t know we were there. Second time we’ve run into Young Harris. There is another in Georgia.

The roads take us north through wastelands and car yards, past a medical supplies factory which is the size of a city block. Scrub, wasteland, big sky. Igloo Ranch makes eskys. It is massive. We’re on a plain, Hay. Flocks of birds.

Here we are, flat as a pancake Texas, says Bruce.

More hayfields. Low pine scrub.

Open road.

Well, apart from the heavy transport speeding along it.

We ignore the turnoff to San Antonio. We pass Sealy with its big Sealybration billboard.

Nothing much to Sealy that we can see. A caravan yard.

But they are serious.

Another sign says: Looking Forward to Being Home. Exciting to be Here.

Open land. Cattle. Low scrub and grassland.

It is ranch country.

Oh, and Trump/Pence country. Lots of signs.

A feedstock processing plant. A quail farm.

Farm machinery. Vultures aloft. Not the prettiest part of the world.

Siri instructs us to take the Austin turnoff on Texas 71 West.

Cattle sparsely in the fields. Buzzards circling low.

It’s now rough road. 81 miles of it ahead.

Mesquite is appearing in the roadside scrub, indicating a change of climatic conditions.

Smallholdings and big properties. Occasional grandioise ranch gates at the roadside.

Flat land gives way to gentle undulations and thick scrub.

A big gate announces the Bald Eagle Outback Silverado Ranch. It sure is big.

Over the Fayette County line and into Ellinger. Reduce speed.

The town is down at heel.

The lovely scent of fresh-mown grass wafts into the car. They are mowing the verges big time with lots of men and machinery. Prisoners, we wonder?

Hayfields and big sky.

And now the shores of Lake Fayette with towering chimneys and puffing smoke from a big coal plant. High tension wires.

Roadkill. More circling buzzards.

Moving north we find low hills and greener pastures with cottonwood trees showing the courses of streams and creeks in the landscape.

And then, out of the blue, a huge car yard out in the middle of the fields.

Some things are hard to explain. Why is it out there? There is no ostensible crop. Just cars.

We’re on the Texas Independence Trail.

Trump/Pence signs adorn a First Baptist Church. They can’t be too offended by his predatory sexuality exposed, we laugh.

Black cattle. Fancy ranches. One is called LongHorn Frog Ranch. Hmm.

Oh, look, actual long horns out there.

We’re hammering along at 80mph.

The Ladybird Loop invites us to a scenic point. Nah.

It’s only 30 minutes to Austin.

Here's Historic Smithville with open agricultural lands, more vultures aloft, a hotel, a garage, a store. Goodbye Smithville.

Hello Colorado River - the Texas version, Crockett Ranch, Black Tree Ranch…more Trump/Pence signs.

Stark trees where once a fire must have gone through. Scrub. The Hillbilly Sawmill.

We have to lower speed. Traffic congestion. A junction with traffic lights.

Bastrop. And here comes the usual commerce - mattress store, Lowes, TJ Max, mini-storage.

The Bastrop First Baptist Church may be the squattest ugliest church I ever saw. At least it has no Trump sign.

Oh, but here are some, outside a mini storage facility.

A petrol station says $1.79 petrol. That’s 70 Australian cents a litre.

Why are we ripped off for petrol in Australia, laments Bruce.

Aren’t we there yet?

A hoarding asks: Does advertising work? It just did.

A pecan shed. A McDonalds with buzzards overhead and grackles in a row on the telegraph line. Farm land. Hay. Sorghum?

A sign to Circuit of the Americas. A huge motor racing complex. Out of town. For here we are, at Austin’s outskirts. We can see the city on the skyline.

Up over the highest and scariest motorway overpass and here we come, at long last. Adelaide’s sister city, Austin, Texas.