interstate

The Lizard and I meet at the airport, gate lounge 3. There are no lounges, just bum-polished cheap fabric seats. Urgent calls for passengers and other people’s flights interrupt every thought, every attempt at conversation. The Virgin crew summon us bang on schedule to our Brisbane flight.

We park ourselves in row 4, behind the Perspex partition and silly metallic rope that separates us from four business class seats. Wankers.

The flight lifts off and touches down on time, the promised turbulence on take-off and landing never eventuates. Night descends on Brisbane in the time it takes to make our way from the plane to the baggage carousel. We cross the airbridge to the rental cars. Two of us can drive, one can navigate. As in Newcastle The Lizard drives. She’s good at U-turns.

The dark, lack of a decent map, and this foreign place confound my sense of direction. We find our way onto the Gateway Motorway, four lanes of light Sunday night traffic winding vaguely south-west. We negotiate ourselves onto the Pacific Highway, heading vaguely south-east and disappear off the edge of our inadequate map. It’s wits only from here on.

We dismiss exits to Eagleby, Shailer Park and Jacobs Well. We’re hunting the exotically named Beenleigh Yatala Motor Inn. Lost after a series of roundabouts with up to seven exit points we pull into a side road to do a u-ey. And find ourselves in the driveway of the motel, all motley-coloured bricks and Martian architecture.

The motel is a triangular island: the Gold Coast railway belts along one side, the M1 Motorway booms past the back door, a major arterial road forms the third side. It’s the Bermuda Triangle for unsuspecting interstate travellers: you arrive without knowing how you got there, then there’s no escape.

The option of a short walk after dinner is short indeed; any further than fifty metres in any direction will get you pasted across the front of a B-double or an express train.

Rock on.