Hit the Road

by Tony Wilson

  Dad took a second to comprehend, but then scrambled out of bed.

  ‘Hey!’ he bellowed, as he opened the door. ‘What on earth is going on here!’

  Mum moved fast, too. She was on the motel phone calling the police. ‘We’ve got intruders,’ she said frantically. ‘Car thieves at the Dubbo Motor Inn!’

  Joel stood at the window as the men started running. He got a good look at them. They were young, probably in their early twenties. One wore a Chicago Bulls cap backwards and had studs the whole way down one ear. The other was missing his two front teeth and was wearing tracksuit pants that showed the crack of his backside. ‘Moneybox,’ is what the twins called that look. This man was definitely showing plenty of moneybox.

  Five minutes later, Joel was sharing this description with two policemen. He even told them about the moneybox. ‘We’re very sorry for this,’ the taller cop said. ‘It’s a problem in tourist season. It’s lucky your young fella here heard them.’

  ‘Will you catch them?’ Joel asked. ‘Will they go to jail?’

  ‘We’ll certainly be on the lookout for them now,’ the shorter policeman said. ‘And your descriptions are very helpful, Joel.’

  Dad signed a witness report and the policemen disappeared.

  ‘All right, back to bed,’ Mum said. ‘Excitement’s over.’

  ‘What if they come back?’ whimpered Scott.

  ‘They won’t,’ said Dad. ‘We scared them off properly. They were probably just trying to get easy cash or stereos or CDs.’

  ‘The Game Boys are in the car,’ Troy said. ‘Lucky we didn’t lose them! One of them isn’t even ours.’

  ‘Lucky Joel heard them, hey?’ said Dad. ‘Well done, Joely. You did absolutely the right thing.’

  Joel grinned. ‘Guess my hearing’s not so bad, then?’

  ‘Yeah, okay,’ Troy conceded. ‘You did well, Joel. Your hearing probably isn’t your kryptonite.’

  ‘Although your rhinoceros hearing might be,’ Adam joked. ‘I still wouldn’t go camping in a tent on the plains of Africa if I were you. You’d be a sitting duck.’

  SEVEN

  It was a glorious dawn. The sky was huge and blushed pink. The parched earth of central New South Wales had a reddish outback tinge that glowed in the morning light. Joel was wide awake, staring out the window as the kilometres slid away — farms, truck stops and road signs.

  ‘Wee Waa, that way!’ Troy said as they passed through Narrabri. Dad said no to a second photo with a Wee signpost. The answer was also no for Weengallon (ha-ha, wee-a-gallon, get it?) and Boggabilla (haha, bog . . . um, get it?).

  Joel laughed along with the others. Mum and Dad shook their heads. They didn’t understand great comedy when they heard it.

  They motored into Queensland in the late morning. ‘Welcome to the Sunshine State’ the sign said, and indeed it was. It was a baking hot day now, and Joel just wanted to get there.

  ‘How much longer?’ Scott asked for about the millionth time. ‘Are we there yet?’

  ‘Hang in there, boys, we’ll be boogie boarding before dinner,’ Dad replied.

  They all knew how excited Dad was about the boogie boards. He’d found them heavily discounted at the Bendigo Bulk Buy the day before they left. ‘It was a boogie-board-bargain bonanza,’ Dad had joked, when he showed them off. ‘How lucky are we?’

  They flew through Goondiwindi and past Inglewood. They really were getting close now. In a town called Warwick there were palm trees down the main streets. Mum pointed out mango trees in many of the front yards. ‘Wow, imagine waking up to mangoes from your own tree,’ she said wistfully.

  The Falcon galloped on, their brave bench-seated steed. The warm wind whipped through the car, but everyone wanted the windows down. What was that smell? A combination of pine trees and ocean, Joel thought. They rolled through the hinterland. Joel saw golf courses and lakes. Off to the left was a suburb called Carrara.

  ‘Hey, that’s where the Bears played!’ Troy exclaimed. The Brisbane Bears were a football team that had recently merged with Troy’s beloved Fitzroy Lions.

  Ten minutes later, there it was. Mermaid Beach! After two days of sweaty travel, they were finally there. The sand was white and gleaming in the strong afternoon light. The whites of the foam were the only streaks across the endless blue of sky and sea.

  ‘Not as flashy as Surfers Paradise,’ Dad said, ‘but perfect for us.’

  ‘We’ll visit Surfers to have a look, though,’ Mum said.

  ‘What’s our resort called?’ Joel asked.

  ‘Diamond Waters,’ Dad replied. ‘There’s a water slide on the brochure. And a diving board.’

  The boys cheered.

  They cheered again when the Falcon pulled up and Dad applied the handbrake.

  They cheered again when Joel asked Dad to lean on the horn and blow the siren for the start of the holiday.

  ‘Didn’t we already do that?’ Dad asked.

  ‘Do it again!’ the boys chorused.

  Dad looked at Mum and gave the horn a quick parrrrp.

  The boys erupted. ‘Hooray!’ shouted Scott. ‘We’re here! We’re here! Let’s get in the pool! Last one in is a rotten egg!’

  EIGHT

  Checking in took half an hour, Mum dragging the boys back out of the pool. And there was a further delay when Scott mistook a tiny packet of soap in their bathroom for white chocolate.

  ‘But it had such a shiny wrapper!’ Scott said, foaming at the mouth and spitting with disgust.

  The other boys were laughing hysterically. ‘Really, you should ask Mum or Dad if you can have soap this close to dinner,’ Troy teased.

  Soon enough, they were sprinting across the soft white sand of Mermaid Beach like Ironman champions. Each boy had a boogie board under his arm. Each had a smear of zinc cream across the nose.

  ‘Between the flags!’ Dad shouted, as he applied sunscreen to his own shoulders. ‘And not too far in! Scott and Joel! I want to be out there with you!’

  The sea was a blast of pure exhilaration. It was warm, so much warmer than the ocean they swam in on Great Ocean Road holidays. Joel hip-and-shouldered the first wave like it was a pack of footballers. The spray shot into his eyes and up his nose. He laughed at the joy of it all. Then the wave sucked back so hard that it knocked him off his feet.

  ‘Careful, boys,’ Dad warned. He’d sprinted in himself. ‘This is a patrolled section of beach. But none of us inlanders is used to undertow like this.’

  The boys were battered by waves and struggled to get out past the shore break. Dad steered Scott’s boogie board, and Scott shrieked once or twice at the size of the sets.

  Eventually they were all in a line, with the ocean providing a rare moment of calm.

  ‘Great-looking boogie boards,’ Dad said, glancing out to sea. ‘The old man’s not a bad shopper, is he?’

  The boys all agreed.

  Dad’s grin was enormous under his dripping beard.

  ‘And to think your mum wanted me to buy boards at one of the surf shops up here. Save on car space, she said. Can you imagine how expensive they would have been?’

  Joel was more interested in his board’s floating present than he was in its thrifty past. Especially as the swell was climbing again.

  ‘Okay, boys, paaaaaaadle!’ Dad shouted. He held onto Scott’s board and started swimming.

  Joel kicked with all his might. He dared not look back, in case he saw the size of the wave and chickened out.

  ‘Woohoo!’ yelled Troy as he was swept forward. He was definitely on it.

  Adam joined in. ‘Yeeeeeeees!’

  Joel was third in line and felt the glorious thrust as well. He was on it. He was riding his first Queensland wave!

  It lifted and roared and surged, and Joel wondered for half a second if this was the best feeling in the world. Better even than getting pushed up for a screamer in footy, or kicking a winning goal. Then the wave tossed him down, a fast, violent dunking. The boogie board slammed into the
sand beneath him, and Joel felt his mouth and nostrils fill with water. The force of the water whipped him into a forward roll. With his lungs bursting, Joel used his legs to push to the surface again. He spluttered and coughed. His brothers were staggering in the surf beside him. They’d all been dumped by the same wave.

  ‘Woah! That was full on,’ Troy said.

  ‘Radical!’ Adam agreed. ‘We’ve gotta go again.’

  Scott appeared on the verge of tears. ‘These are too big,’ he whimpered.

  Simultaneously, they pulled on their wrist straps to retrieve their boogie boards.

  ‘Oh no, mine’s snapped in two!’ Adam said.

  ‘You’re kidding,’ Troy added. ‘Mine’s busted, too!’

  Dad retrieved Scott’s board. Joel hauled in his own.

  ‘Broken!’ Joel said, with wide-eyed disbelief.

  They all looked at Dad. Dad held the two parts of Scott’s board, staring at them forlornly.

  ‘One wave,’ Dad said. ‘They didn’t last one wave.’

  None of the boys said anything. Then Troy started grinning. Joel felt a laugh building inside his tummy. He tried to hold it off. Dad seemed so disappointed, but Joel couldn’t help it. Soon all the boys were in salty tears of laughter, pointing at their dad as he clutched at escaping fragments of boogie board. Even Dad saw the funny side. ‘Your mum is going to love this.’ He grinned. ‘She’s never rated me as much of a shopper.’

  NINE

  In just about every holiday activity, Joel sensed the twins testing him out, trying to discover what they kept calling his ‘kryptonite’.

  They went to the five-dollar all-you-can-eat Chinese place in one of the malls on Cavill Avenue, and it quickly turned into an eating competition.

  Scott only ate fried rice, but boy was he putting it away! ‘Eight bowls!’ Scott announced proudly, through a mouthful of rice and peas.

  Meanwhile, the twins and Joel were pushing into double figures for bowls consumed, eyeing each other off, laying down the challenge.

  Joel powered through bowl number ten — chicken chow mien.

  ‘Bowl number twelve,’ Adam said with steely eyes. Beef and black bean.

  Joel knew he could go again, maybe once, but not too many more times than that. He’d try to bluff his way through bowl number eleven with a couple of spring rolls. Not that the twins let him get away with much. They’d probably count spring rolls as only worth a half.

  Mum started to get worried. ‘Come on, boys. Don’t be silly about it. You don’t want to ruin your night out with a tummy ache.’

  Joel knew that his mum’s words of warning wouldn’t make a difference. This was a serious challenge now. None of them wanted to back down.

  ‘Well, I hope you’re leaving room for ice cream,’ Mum said, as Troy stared glumly at bowl number thirteen, sweet-and-sour pork. ‘There’s a great little ice-cream shop downstairs.’

  That did the trick. All four boys pushed their half-eaten bowls away and rose to their feet. Joel lifted his arms above his head, just to make sure there was room left inside for his lungs and diaphragm. Urrrrgh. His stomach felt enormous.

  Adam went to the toilet before they left. He came out and Joel thought he could smell vomit on him.

  That was the problem with competing against Adam and Troy. How could you win when one of your older brothers was willing to eat until he was sick, just to triumph in a five-dollar all-you-can-eat-Chinese eating competition?

  Kudos, though. Adam had found room for his ice cream.

  Joel had fallen behind in minigolf. It was a magnificent course, a whirring matrix of swinging logs, water wheels and motorised jungle animals. Joel’s favourite hole was the twelfth. You sank the ball on one level, and then it was sucked up through a clear tube and spat out of an elephant’s trunk onto an upper green. You then climbed a wooden fort to finish the hole.

  After the fifteenth hole, Adam was a shot in front of Troy, who was six in front of Joel. Scott said he was eight shots behind, but Joel had seen him have eleven putts just on the fourteenth.

  Scott was out of the reckoning. Joel and the twins were still fighting it out.

  Adam claimed a three on the sixteenth hole.

  ‘Hang on, you’re cheating!’ said Troy. ‘You missed the tunnel! You didn’t even get it onto the bottom level the first time!’

  ‘Did so,’ Adam said.

  ‘You did not,’ argued Joel.

  Adam resolutely stuck by his score.

  Joel relaxed his shoulders and whacked his ball at the tunnel under discussion. It rolled straight through — bullseye — and then rebounded off two walls and into the hole.

  ‘Hole in one!’ Joel said. He began a little dance, which he knew would be very annoying for anyone who had to watch it. The sixteenth hole’s mechanical flamingo danced along with him.

  Troy lined up and missed the tunnel. Then he missed it again. He took a six on the hole and nearly threw his putter.

  On the seventeenth, Joel teed off first. He mis-hit the drive, but it ricocheted off two walls and up the little hillock protecting the hole. Hole in one. Back-to-back holes in one!

  ‘Fluke,’ Adam said sourly.

  This time it was Adam’s turn to implode. He lipped out once, and fluffed the return putt. Missed again. A six.

  It was all tied up on the eighteenth. For the first shot, you had to strike it into a yellow cup, and then a mechanised plastic seagull ‘flew’ the cup on a wire and tipped the ball onto a raised green. Joel saw that the seagull never put the ball in the hole. It always dropped it in the same spot and the ball would end up a metre or so from the cup. It was an automated bird. A hole in one just wasn’t possible.

  Troy teed off first, and then Adam. They both hit the yellow cup the first time and the seagull did its thing. The twins’ balls ended up side by side. One-metre putts. Both pretty easy. It looked like being a draw. Almost certainly a playoff.

  Joel played his tee. He also putted it into the yellow cup, and the seagull took off again. It dumped its cargo, and the ball rolled in the direction of Adam’s and Troy’s balls.

  Then, out of nowhere, a toddler standing nearby threw a stuffed toy koala onto the green. The koala clipped Joel’s ball while it was still rolling and deflected it . . .

  ‘Oh, you are kidding,’ Troy groaned, as they watched the inevitable unfold, as if in slow motion.

  ‘No no no no nooooo!’ screamed Adam.

  The ball rattled home and Joel had his third consecutive hole in one.

  ‘Interference!’ the twins shrieked, and called for Joel to place his ball back alongside theirs. But Joel was hearing none of it. He had the putter above his head and had embarked upon a putt-putt victory lap. He even high-fived some strangers standing next to the popcorn machine.

  ‘I win!’ he shouted.

  ‘Protest,’ the twins replied.

  They never agreed on that result, but Joel didn’t really care. In his own mind he’d won, and the assist had gone to a fluffy brown koala wearing a green waistcoat.

  And there was no way the twins could claim minigolf was his kryptonite.

  Joel did cop some losses as well.

  The ‘draw fours’ didn’t fall his way in UNO.

  He was caught ‘fish out of water’ three times in a row playing Marco Polo in the resort pool.

  He couldn’t match the older boys when it came to diving-board tricks at the resort or boogie boarding at the beach.

  And he was the loser in a super-fun game they played where you had to toss a plastic drink bottle in the air and make it land on its base.

  But Joel didn’t care. The twins couldn’t give him a hard time about any of these defeats. How would they explain it? ‘We found Joel’s sporting weakness. He’s one of the worst people you’ll ever see at tossing a drink bottle in the air and making it land on its base.’

  He was meeting every actual sporting challenge his brothers threw at him. He was hanging in there! And Joel could tell from their frustrated response
s that they were running out of things to test him with.

  Joel was having such a good holiday.

  TEN

  All the boys were desperate for a kick. Yes, it was the end of December and most kids thought of it as the middle of the cricket season, but cricket season was pretty much ignored by the Selwood boys. They kicked the footy all year round. Mostly just for fun, but also because the twins were getting serious about their training. Next season they would be top-age Under 14s, and the scouts for the Bendigo Pioneers would be coming along to games.

  Joel was still too young for representative teams, but he was more than happy to make footy a 52-weeks-a-year obsession. Indeed, it was Joel who begged Dad to drive them to an oval.

  ‘You don’t want to go to the beach?’ Dad asked.

  ‘Can’t we go to the beach in the afternoon?’ Joel said. ‘I wanna have a kick. Especially now, while it’s still cool.’

  ‘I saw a field with goal posts,’ Scott said, ‘when we went to the supermarket. Although there were only two posts.’

  ‘Rugby League goals,’ Joel explained. ‘They’ve got the crossbar.’

  ‘They’ll do, though,’ said Troy, handballing a footy to himself.

  ‘Absolutely, they will,’ agreed Adam.

  ‘Well, there you go,’ Mum said, laughing into her coffee. ‘We drive seventeen hundred kilometres to soak up the sun and the surf, and within three days you’re climbing the walls looking for footy ovals.’

  None of the boys even answered. They just shrugged. Of course we are, thought Joel. What’s weird about that?

  The miracle was they’d lasted three days.

  ‘The name’s Daniel Merrett,’ said the redheaded kid, ‘although most people call me Sauce.’

  ‘Sauce?’ Adam echoed.

  ‘My nickname,’ Sauce explained, and pointed to his hair.

  Joel couldn’t believe it when Sauce said he was the same age as the twins, a fraction younger, in fact. He was enormous, a full half-head taller than Troy and Adam, and with a giant barrel chest. His arms hadn’t filled out yet, but it was a colossal frame for a kid who’d just turned thirteen.