Sometimes when I think about it, I’m amazed that I’m not still sitting in a grocery store carpark in Katherine, Northern Territory. Katherine is an outback town, 3 hours south of Darwin, filled with tradesman, a Woothworth’s, a large Aboriginal population, and not much else. In a serious way, Katherine is the last real town you’ll hit if embarking on an Outback road trip, like we were. Melissa, Michael and I agreed, all of the T’s had to be crossed and I’s dotted before we left Katherine. If everything went to plan, we’d be cruising out of Katherine fully stocked, gassed and prepped for the Outback road trip we’d all been waiting for. But of course, things never happen the way you think they will.
It was a Friday, late afternoon when we rolled into the Woolie’s carpark, the whole town was ready to shut down for the weekend. Despite the crowds, we found a parking spot right smack dab in the middle of the lot. We went in to the store eager, and with a game plan. We bought everything: water, canned goods, eggs, rice, pasta, toiletries, wine, beer, spirits, and plenty of ice. Our shopping cart was so full, we struggled to fit everything into the Tetris game that was our Holden Commodore station wagon, Connie.
There’s no better way to describe the heat in the North Territory other than, oppressive. After stuffing Connie to the brim with our loot, the three of us hopped in and rolled the windows down, immediately. This quick reaction to a boiling hot car, is really what made our night. Mike, as usual, was in the driver’s seat. He turned the key and while the electricity turned on, Connie’s engine did not. She’d stuttered before, so he tried again. Nothing. And again. The three of us sat for a minute in our car that wouldn’t start, windows down, filled with everything we owned.
Mike was the amateur mechanic, he figured it had to be the battery, but the battery was new. We popped the hood and the battery light was green. We tried to turn the key again, and this time, it just wouldn’t rotate at all. We were stuck and absolutely clueless about what to do.
Two tradies about our age rocked up to see if they could help. The boys discussed possible solutions, tried taking the battery out and putting it back. After becoming sufficiently stumped, they offered us a beer and their words of advice: You don’t want to leave your car here overnight, there won’t be anything left when you get back.
Somewhere in that time a heavily tattoo’d man returned to his car directly in front of ours and called out a possible solution before driving off. Next, an awkward but talkative gas station attendant came to try his hand at getting Connie going. He’d apparently owned several Commodore’s and offered some potential solutions as well as jumper cables. After being unsuccessful, he drove off as well, mentioning as he left what we already knew at this point, we couldn’t have picked a worse time or place to breakdown.
While Australia is modern in many ways, it cannot claim the treatment of it’s indigenous people as such. The Aboriginal quagmire, I’ll call it, is self-inflicted, obvious and a prevalent issue in Australia, particularly in the Northern Territory. The parking lot we’d broken down in was crowded with homeless Aboriginal people, socializing, fighting, trying to find someone to buy them alcohol (which is restricted for them to buy). A broken down car, windows down, filled with food, booze, bedding, and camping gear just wouldn’t survive the night untouched.
At this point, it was getting dark. Melissa and I decided to try the police man stationed at the liquor store. As it turns out, he used to be a mechanic. Even still, everyone was stumped and again, the only advice we were given was not the leave the car unattended. Approaching probably 8pm, the mission turned to towing the car from the parking lot. I should mention that the barren drive approaching Katherine is littered with “Katherine Towing” advertisements. In their words, they will tow “Anything, Anywhere, Anytime.” Well, Melissa, Michael and I know this to be a flat out lie.
Melissa and I first took a walk to find a hotel where we could tow the car to. The woman on reception was kind and worried about us. She said we could park it out back in the employee lot. Great, we thought.. that’s something. So, we called that Katherine Towing. We were told that they would not tow us, they cannot fit into even an empty parking lot and that we were on our own. The man on the line didn’t exactly tell us to go fuck ourselves, but he might as well have.
At this point it’s getting late, and nothing about the situation had changed. Each of us feeling helpless, angry and absolutely incredulous. Personally, I was distraught. If we weren’t going to get towed we needed to at least make it look like the windows weren’t blatantly open. Which is when I decided to go back into Woolie’s just before closing to buy trash bags to tape the windows up with. In my state of mind, I figured that we needed all of the trash bags to extra protect our windows. This is when I purchased twenty five dollars worth of trash bags, more than any human being should need at once. I realized how over-the-top I’d been about the plan when Melissa returned with just one roll of duct tape to secure my 6 or so rolls of industrial-strength trash bags. Needless to say, for the rest of the trip we never needed more bin bags.
While she was buying that one roll of Duct Tape, Melissa managed to speak to someone who knew someone who had a grandfather who may know someone who could help. Great, we’d love that phone number. We called and waited, someone was supposed to come by. No one really had battery left on our phone so we used the pay phones near buy. It was almost midnight at this point, anyone who wanted to break into our car had been watching us struggle with the situation all day. We gave up the trash bag window idea and thought about calling a cab, and unloading everything from Connie into it so we could sleep for the night. We hadn’t eaten or drunk anything all day, we were physically and emotionally drained. The receptionist from the hotel we’d talked to drove by in a little four door car, she was still concerned. She offered to pull us along with her car, while it was the most helpful thing anyone had offered so far, we knew Connie was just too heavy to manage that.
It was midnight when the very same heavily tattoo’d man we’d seen at the very beginning of the ordeal drove into the now-empty carpark. I’m not going to lie at first, at first we were a little sketched out. It wasn’t long before we realized that the same man who’d we’d parked in front of to start off the day in Katherine was that friend of someone’s grandfather and our knight in extensive face tatts. He also happened to be a mechanic. Instead of towing us, he promptly ripped the ignition barrel out of it’s place ( essentially, the way you rob a car.) and VROOM.It was the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard. Just like that Connie started up again. Our nameless hero figured the real issue was the fuel pump, which would probably set us back a few hundred.
Unbelievably, we drove ourselves out of the Woolworth’s parking lot that night. Out of all the outcomes, we didn’t think this would be it. It took ten hours in a Woolworth’s car park, countless conversations with strangers, a new ignition gage, new fuel pump, and twenty five dollars worth of trash bags, but we somehow got Connie back up and running. When we got in to drive off, we put the windows up and for the rest of our two month road trip, never rolled them down before starting the car again.
Our favorite receptionist continued to be a complete gem when we finally made it to the hotel, giving us a private room for the same price as we were paying for a shared hostel dorm. As we laid there in that private room, exhausted, finally able to breathe, we went over the details of the day we’d managed to get through. The last thing we had expected.