This is the way to Amarillo

You won’t find Heavy Traffic Way on a conventional map, but it is the road on which Siri Google instructs us to drive as we exit Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Heavy Traffic Way is, of course, a recommendation for trucks and overflow and it indicates a sort of service road parallel to the highway.

Post rush hour, the Tulsa roads are fairly quiet so far as traffic is concerned on this cool Thursday morning. But for wheels, they’re noisy. We rattle forth past mini storage facilities, lawyer’s advertisements, casino signs and the usual run of commerce and out into the countryside.

Oh, look, oil wells. Three in one field. Aren’t they little things.

Vultures are circling in the sky. We’re passing low woodlands and pastures now. The trees have assumed the soft hues of autumn - luscious limes, soft glows of orange and beams of yellow. It is just lovely.

The traffic is pretty solid in both directions, moving with the determination of the long-haul traveller. Trucks and grey nomad caravans. Serene cattle graze in the fields, oblivious to the steady rumble of passing humans.

Oh, another oil well chugging up and down. This one painted bright orange and black. They don’t want us to miss it.

The other sort of drilling is out there, too. Water wells. And wooden telegraph poles stretch out over the landscape. It is really quite busy out there.

Uh-oh. Here comes a toll booth. $4 please. Beside the tool booth a huge sign bids us to Remember Our Troops.

We are entering the Sac and Fox Indian Reservation.

Another sign: What is Killing Our Soldiers?

Skimming along the highway now, past exits to Stroud and Drumright.

And signs announcing the Infant Jesus of Prague National Shrine.

Prague. Next right.

What? My head spins. My mother adored the Infant Jesus of Prague and I have her treasured, time-battered statue. What on earth is the connection with Oklahoma?

I summon Professor Google and discover that Prague is a place is Oklahoma. Since 1949 it has had a shrine to the Infant Jesus of Prague. A Carmelite sanctuary where special services are held and people come to pray in peace. It has a fantastic gift shop, says Google.

I’d love to go and investigate but we are already way down the road and Bruce does not share my sentiments.

He is more interested in the sudden change in vegetation.

The landscape has become drier, the vegetation twiggier.

There goes Walkingstick Ranch. Wonderful name. It is a registered breeder of Angus Bulls.

A huge, huge, huge sign. Gross, really. It advertises Kickapoo Casino coming up at Exit 158. Oh, the irony of the next sign: Don’t Trash Oklahoma. Yeah, with big casino signs.

The landscape continues quite bucolic. Grazing cattle. Fields dotted with hay bales. Oh, and a dairy factory.

We are now entering Kickapoo Nation.

We scoot under a large overpass which is strikingly, nay, beautifully and very surprisingly adorned with colourful Native American motifs.

Lowland lakes and green pastures whiz past beside us. Another oil well out there pumping away - and a sign saying God Bless America.

We overtake a husband and wife moving-house convoy. Two big rental trucks, one towing a sports car loaded to the brim with what obviously couldn’t fit in the trucks. We wonder where they are coming from, where they are going and why. People do a lot of moving in this vast and varied country. Labor mobility has always been one of America’s strengths.

Another change in the landscape. Shrublands.

It is a low, lovely mixed forest of pinion pines, junipers, ponderosa pines, elms, cedars… The colours and textures of the different trees is very pleasing. The hints of autumn colours soft and pretty.

Exits point to Wichita and Oklahoma city. We go straight on, suddenly amid overpasses in all directions. Phew. Daunting. Busy.

And another toll station. Exact Change! $1.15 this one.

Refreshment signs prompt us to turn off for a caffeine and loo break.

We’re in the outskirt burbs of Oklahoma City.

A beautiful big Barnes & Noble beckons.

Ooh, it is all scented with pumpkin spice. We order what they called Doppio Macchiatos, Starbucks answer to macchiato. The children’s book section is en route to the nice clean loo.

It is so vivid and busy and inviting. As for the loo, America is brilliant for high standard rest rooms, so very many of them equipped with seat covers. Yes, paper covers for reassuring hygiene. I love it. I wish to hell Australia could pick up on it. I wish Australia was more civilized about loos generally.

Back on Route 40, which is still much recalled and celebrated as Route 66, we pass more dormitory suburbs of Oklahoma city, expanses of grey rooftops, fields, oil wells, scruffy crops.

Exits to Yukon and Bethany.

More grey rooftops.

Speed limit: maximim 70 mph. minimum 50 mph.

The biggest mini storage facility ever. Mega mini. Racks of storage units large and small. Even ones for RVs.

Oklahoma City lies ahead. It is a flat, broad city.

We don’t go in. We swing off on a wide, rough highway to Amarillo.

Amarillo is our destination for tonight. I sing the Neil Sedaka song Is This The Way to Amarillo. Bruce does not know it. I am a dreadful singer. He still does not know it.

There’s a sparkling strip of accommodation and food. The usual suspects.

A sign says Yukon.

A wooden fort structure looking like something from a rustic theme park advertises it self as The Dental Depot - Get Braces Here Saturday.

We’re in Cheyenne and Arapaho country now. These two tribes are unified. Much of Oklahoma is Indian-owned, explains Bruce.

The landscape now is flattening out - way, way, way out.

This is the wide open plains. And it is not oil wells we are seeing. It is wind farms. Vast wind farms.

There are green crops out there. A shallow lake. Cattle. And huge, slowly spinning windmills.

Roadside ads bellow the imminence of a Cherokee products Trading Station. One after another. Beads, baskets, caps, blankets, pipes they promise in one huge sign after another.

We go on past Calumet, past motor homes, past groves of fat pines…

A gusty wind buffets the car. The temperature outside is only 66degF

Here is Roman Nose State Park. We smile. With Bruce’s little pug nose, they’d never let him in.

The landscape of sparse trees and green fields turns back into lovely broad flat plains. Big sky.

Let’s Go to Clinton, says a sign.

We pass Weatherford. There’s an Air and Space Museum out there. Wow. Who would have thought it.

It is more wind farms we see.

More and more wind farms!

In both directions. As far as the eye can see. Great big arms steadily rolling.

Who would believe that this used to be oil country, remarks Bruce incredulously. Who would believe the transformation. Who knew the scale of the wind industry in Oklahoma?

The prairie continues, undulating grass.

And exit to Custer City.

Oh, and here is the Cherokee Trading Post of all those signs. We don’t stop.

The signs are now inviting us to Clinton. Let’s Go to Clinton they say. Clinton: Unique Destination. Picture of little happy family in a car. We’re here, says another sign. And so we are.

We pull in for late lunch at a Braum’s. I have a bowl of chili and a green salad and then we do the naughty thing we have craved at this fabulous family diary business. We buy ice cream. I have cherry amaretto which has huge, succulent chunks of cherry and a cherry almond flavour, oh smooth and rich and wicked. Seriously, seriously good. Bruce goes for the healthy alternative. His peanut butter and chocolate ice cream has no sugar. Hmm.

And off we go, back among the trucks and heavy transports which cross the USA day and night in vast numbers

. Oh, and the grey nomads. Mobile homes towing cars or boats are the truckers; nightmare. Ours, too, sometimes.

We pass Canute. We also pass a huge truck whence a Sikh driver beams down upon us with glinting white teeth. His truck is carrying Punjabi goods.

Ah, and just to think this road most famously was The Great Western Cattle Trail.

Another massive empire of wind farms appears. Beautiful. I love the aesthetic of them. They adorn the great prairie with wheeling white grace. Right over the horizon.

The prairie itself is prettying up with yellow wildflowers.

Amarillo is Spanish for yellow, says Bruce. The town was named for the yellow flowers. And it used to pronounced in the Spanish style, Amariyo.

Natural gas wells turn up in the prairie roadside.

This is helium country, announced Bruce. It is mixed in the natural gas.

Once this was the only source of helium in the world, he says. It shouldn’t be wasted on balloons. It is rare. It is a finite resource. The national helium reserve is around here somewhere. Helium is very important for many things - for scientific and technological things like medical imaging and super-conducting magnets. It should not be wasted in toy balloons. Bruce frowns.

Good farmland out there. A huge snack-food factory out there in the fields. Hmm. Mini storage. A big, colourful derrick. Groups of cheap housing. Sports fields. Sheds. Open land. Prairie grass.

The city of Magnum comes - and goes. Magnum looks mini.

Farmland and cultivated red soil.

More natural gas.

There is enough natural gas here to last 500 years, says Bruce.

Sayre appears with its university campus. Out of town a huge sewage plant.

Speed limit: maximum 70mph, minimum 40mph

Washita Battlefield. More of Sayre. It’s quite a spread-out town.

Now a town called Erick.

Small farms. Cotton crop.

The sky is big and light and bright with tufts of cloud.

The yellow wildflowers are appearing again. Prettiness.

And amid the landscape a vast chunk of heavy land clearance. Heavens, about 30 people are wandering about out there in the ploughed field.They look as if they are looking for something.

Oh, look. There’s a road runner on the verge. I saw a road runner! I saw a road runner!

Fields of cattle. Now cotton crops. Big cotton crops.

And the Texas State line.

We are entering the panhandle of north Texas.

Only 104 more miles to Amarillo.

We pass a redneck truck with a sign Hillary For Prisoner 2016 on the side window.

Black Angus cattle, stockyards, cattle…

Shamrock municipal airport…dry, sparse lands

George Bush country, this, says Bruce.

Turnoffs to Wheeler and Wellington.

This is the Texas that looks like Australia, reflects Bruce.

Cattle.

Bluegreen ground cover that looks like saltbush now covers the land. There are horses in pens.

A town called McLean - out on the plain. Does the rain in McLean fall mainly on the plain? An oil well, grey rolls of neglected hay, cotton fields, cotton fields, big cotton fields. Town of Alanreed, sadly over there, bypassed by the road.

Route 66 signs. The glory days of Route 66 were destroyed by the building of 1-40. Many towns lost their traffic.

There’s a State Wind Farm. It is huge. And stationary.

But a fantastic vista of rock-pitted landscape opens up. A rest stop beside a rise in the road offers a spectacular overlook of it all. It is packed with parked trucks, the truckies all resting with the view. Nice.

Those dry steam beds are called arroyos here, says Bruce, of the twisted gullies snaking over the landscape.

And onwards we forge - an array of dead turbines, eerie to see all those still windmills, like a forest of spiky statues.

But there are moving ones on the horizon.

Here we go again. Vast, vast wind farms. Renewable energy is the new oil of Texas and Oklahoma, eh? Who knew?

Fields of sorghum. Cotton. Silos.

Wind farms. Cattle sprinkled out among the turbines.

Hay fields. Cotton. Irrigation sprinklers spread across the land.

It is really quite spectacular.

The linear shapes, the sharp white lines of the turbines, the sprinklers, the bright blue sky…

Turbines to the edge of

the world and miles of cotton beneath them.

Miles and miles.

Farms come and go. Turbines. Cotton.

Prairie.

Horsemen riding along out there. Oh, Texas. Picturebook.

Traffic intensifies as we head toward Amarillo. Silos. Trains. Cement median strip.

Sign: 2752 deaths on Texan roads this year.

The Route 66 Saloon.

And here comes Amarillo. At last. Hello Marriott Residence Inn. Phew. Good to stretch the legs.

Sa does Dallas

We have a few days here at the Crowne Plaza where we've been assigned a gorgeous airy king suite. First day is a housekeeping day, reassembling luggage, posting things back to Australia, doing laundry, writing…chores needed on a six-month road trip.

Day 2 we have booked a tour of Dallas. This time, by serendipity, we have secured an exclusive, private tour with Dallas’s preeminent guide, Rebecca of Discover Dallas Tours. We are to meet her on the steps of the Old Red, the stately courthouse now a museum and visitor centre opposite Dealey Plaza. As we stand there in the bright, warm morning light, we recognise that notorious building on the corner - the Texas Schoolbook Depository. And there, in an upstairs window, is a clear marker showing that it was from there, right there, that assassin Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963.

It seems very immediate. I am not ready for this awful landmark to be right there in front of me. It casts a shadow over the day.

When Rebecca pulls up in her Lexus 4WD, the day takes a dazzling turn. Rebecca is a strong, solid, vivacious, informed and engaging personality and for the next five hours we are her willing captives, her students and her new friends.

She walks us over to the place where it all happened and explains the Xs on the road, where the first bullet hit and the second. She shows us the grassy knoll and places where people stood and watched and filmed and heard on that dreadful day, and where the convoy rushed off to the hospital where Kennedy was pronounced dead

by gunshot and where his killer later also would be pronounced dead by gunshot.

A stray Chinese tourist interrupts Rebecca in her descriptions asking a question about the X on the road. Rebecca gives him a curt answer and when he tries to ask more, she will only say she is on a private tour. We are hers and she is ours. Exclusively. Phew.

A few minutes later she fends off assassination conspiracy theorists who approach us as they are setting up their display. You are not legal, she snaps at them, steering us well away. They undermine the right and honest portrayals of history and they abuse copyrights, she explains. She points to an African American guy who is handing out brochures by Dealey Plaza and pats him on the arm as we pass by. He, on the other hand, is not exactly legal in the tour business but he is a good guy, she says. Ah, the inner politics of the tour world.

She takes us to the Kennedy cenotaph behind Big Red. It was commissioned of architect Philip Johnson, he of the amazing Glass House in Connecticut, by Jackie Kennedy. Rebecca says Jackie loved it. We hate it. Great, impersonal square of white walls and inside, a black marble slab surrounded by a shallow dry gutter.

Oh, no, those Chinese tourists are standing on top of the cenotaph and posing for photos. Rebecca is very upset. It is a shrine. It is consecrated ground. I wave to the tourists and gesture that they should step down. They get the message. With Rebecca I approach them and she tries to explain. They don’t speak English.

Privately, I am thinking that it is a pretty tough call to expect foreign visitors to get the nuances of this ugly and inept shrine. What was Jackie thinking?

We pile into Rebecca’s Lexus and for the next few hours we are driven all over and around Dallas with Rebecca giving us torrents of

insights.

The arts district is just stunning.

The new theatre complex, a silver box which holds the treasures of the stage. Inspired. The opera house. The symphony orchestra’s new digs. All brand new, squillion-dollar structures with adjacent sculpture terrace. Philanthropy rules. Dallas is rich, says Rebecca. It is so rich. It is growing, growing. The population is soaring and the city is expanding. It is fourth largest city in the USA when combined in the metro area with Fort Worth, she enthuses. She loves her city to bits and her passion is infectious.

She also puts the business of showing visitors

the city above the needs of the local people - that is, in terms of traffic. I can’t believe it when she slows the car to a crawl on busy overpasses and seems impervious to tooting drivers as she points out views and vistas and landmarks.

Picking up on my love for the theatre, she delivers us to a theatre designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. It is still in use and it still looks sleek and cutting edge. Oh, yes, just another little Dallas treasure. The theatre company is having a garage sale of its props department. Thrones and statues and all sorts of old bits of set

are up for grabs.

We see millionaire mansions. Oh, my. Opulence, much? Over the top? Dallas rich are absurdly rich. Their wealth does not necessarily buy good taste. Then again, some are graceful replicas of English and European mansions. Many of them are beautifully adorned with pumpkins and lavish decorations for Autumn. Of course, they have staff

to do it all, says Rebecca. Professional arrangers come in with special potplants as well as pumpkins. One immense Tudoresque mansion has me intrigued. Who owns this, I ask. Rebecca does not know, but only for a couple of minutes. She pulls out her phone, pulls up the house address and then, heaven help me, the name and tax returns of the inhabitant. A resourceful, clever

woman is our Rebecca. We pat ourselves on the back for finding her.

She shows us also where the poor used to live and how the new bridge brings gentrification to this old downmarket part of this great city. The new bridge is gorgeous. And people's parks have been created beneath it - just as they have been created in the city and complemented with the food truck fad.

Beautification, urban sculpture, a wealth of commissions for artists is another feature of the modern Dallas. Rebecca loves so many of the public art works and so do I. Wildly varied from zany sculpted people climbing perilously up the side of buildings to austere kinetic works. And, the

jewel in the city's public arts crown, the cowboy cattle roundup - a mob of Texas long-horns galloping over and down a hill, across a watercourse and up to the street. Life-sized bronzes, complete with cowboys on horses. Yep. Too big to photograph, this one takes the breath clean away.

Rebecca rounds up our adventures at the Dallas Farmers’ Market where we have a late lunch at the new food hall. Vietnamese cold noodles for me.

We leave our tour guide with hugs and a strong feeling of warmth for her beloved city.

She drops us at the Texas School Book Depository where we wish to make the Sixth Floor Museum tour. So do a million other people. We join a snake queue to buy tickets. It is not quick. There is another snaked queue of people who have bought tickets. And, eventually, when we get our tickets, we find another massive waiting queue winding right around the outside of the building where it is rather hot. The ticketing girls assure everyone that they will be admitted within half an hour and so we are. Photographs are absolutely prohibited, they warn. Everyone is equipped with headsets which give an extensive narration on the details of the history from the spirit of the Swinging 60s through the 1960s presidential election campaigns through to the fateful day. The commentary is unhurried and it relates to walls of photos and written accounts. People are expected to read as they listen. I wonder at the wisdom of this. There are too many people in the space and they are clogged all over the place. Bruce and I are well informed on most of this so we find out how to jump our headsets and leapfrog some of the jams. And there we find ourselves, standing beside that window… looking down on the road where the motorcade drove. And, even though the trees outside have grown, it is clear that Kennedy was an easy mark. It is closer than ever it looked in any of the films and documentaries we have seen over the years.

It is eerie and profoundly sad.

And we see tourists down there playing chicken in the traffic to stand for photos on the X which marks the spot in the middle of the road where the first shot hit Kennedy.

What can one say?

Exhausted by this fantastic day, we have room service again in our divine room and plan our next day.

Back into Dallas we drive for a culture fest. Firstly we join families and grackles in the new people’s park in the centre of the Dallas highways in the museum district. It’s a charming park set up with tables and chairs so that people can sit and eat from the long rank of food trucks. Oh yes, food trucks are the big culture here, too.

We find a pleasant little table in the shade of a tree. I have a quesadilla of Maine lobster. Bruce has pork, beef and chicken tacos from a Mexican truck. It’s OK food. It is food truck food. I am not a devotee of this cult.

The fabulous art museum wherein Rebecca had recommended seeing the Wendy and Emery Reves collection has free entry. This is uncommon in the US. One only pays for special shows.

It is a magnificent, vast, airy empire of a museum and the Reves collection is its diamond - the best part of a Riviera chateau transplanted into specially-designed replica rooms.

Living room, library, bedroom...as if their occupants had just stepped out for a moment.

Not only a wonderful collection of paintings and decorative art but a window into another time and a luscious expatriate lifestyle. Winston Churchill was one of the Reve’s closest friends and he stayed often with them. The museum has devoted a special room to his typewritten letters to them, his cigars, his paints and his paintings. It is an intimate insight. I’m in seventh heaven.

Bruce’s heaven is down the road at the Perot Science Museum - another impressive new work of prestigious architecture, this one with a light carbon footprint and much external exquisite use of great stone slabs and soft native grasses. We explore the world of outer space and the world of microbes. We see fantastic fossils and fascinating extrapolations on wildlife. We see magnificent minerals from the Smithsonian - gob-smacking great jewels. The Hope Diamond was not there. The Perot is called Perot because Ross Perot initiated the museum and footed the bill for most of it. Of course, Dallas being Dallas, other philanthropists chipped in and the vast place is set to expand, all with private money.

We’ve walked a good 10,000 steps and climbed a zillion stairs by the time we get back to the Crowne - to find the bathroom floor is flooded again. The loo is an odd-looking clear black water puddle.

Expletive!

This happened on the day we arrived. We'd no sooner unpacked than I noticed the bathroom was filling up with odd, flakey water. I called the desk and they rushed a maintenance man up. It took him a while, and not before the whole bathroom had been flooded, but he sorted it out housekeeping buffed up the room - and we relaxed for our Dallas adventure.

This is worse.

Two maintenance men attend this time, bringing a huge, loud pipe vacuuming machine. Do we want to change rooms? Oh, dammit. We are entrenched here. If they can’t get it sorted, yes, we will have to move. Let’s see how they go. We trot down the hallways to use the public rest rooms again. The men work furiously. Nice men. The noisy machine sends out a chemical smell. They think the earlier workman worked on the wrong pipe. There is much testing of pipes downstairs, banging and listening, two-way radios, sucking, pumping, gurgling… It is not looking good. I ask the housekeepers in the hall if the room next door is vacant, perhaps we could just open the connecting door and use its bathroom. It is occupied. Sigh. Moving rooms will be a monster operation.

Then the men say it is fixed. They send in the housekeeping girl to buff the bathroom up again. The room is a bit stinky. I spray madly. We have lost several hours. For the second time. Bruce is sure the hotel will make it up to us one way or another. Maybe comp us a night or a meal. It’s the Crowne.

Sad to say, next morning when I check us out, there is not so much as an apology for the inconvenience. I am extremely surprised. I comment to the receptionist that I thought they may have made a gesture. Sorry about that, she says without a hint of regret. And I am dismissed. Oh, Crowne.

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.