Stamps: Peter Kline
30/08/2009
Rainbow Beach, Australia
By Peter Kline
Too neat-pat to see it as a deliberate warning, a police rig-up closer than telephoto to the tourist boardwalk: We’re used to pulling half-chewed limbs out of sharks. Are you?
Too comforting to read it as visible Justice, which the Wicked, but also the Foolish, must surely suffer.
Too easy to write up headlines for the local rag.
Beach Bender Goes Bad
You Can’t Get There From Here, Stupid Who’s Gonna Tell Mum?
We had nearly undergone the same fate. The day before, we were set to take our rented Mitsubishi Outlander across the channel to unpaved Fraser Island for a few days of messing around on the dunes. We were going to make the commercials real, Professional Driver on Closed Course, Do Not Attempt. We’d purchased our permits, checked the weather, confirmed the ferry. All that remained was a 200-meter drive over soft sand from where the road ended to where the ferry picked up on the beach. Twenty meters in, we bogged down and could go nowhere. The undercarriage rested on sand, effectively suspending all four wheels in the air. Caravans of well-equipped safari trucks with plenty of clearance and properly reduced tire-pressure drove around us, package-tour backpackers gawking from every window. Just before sundown, we coaxed a friendly local with a pick-up truck to tow us out for a case of beer, then checked into a swanky hotel to soothe our stymied bravado.
The following morning on the beach, this ready-made excuse, this pat-on-the-back, this miserable old Subaru Sportswagon with the tide washing over the dashboard.
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Peter Kline has magnesium paddle shifters and a keyless entry.
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Note:
“Rainbow Beach” is part of the Stamps project. Click here to learn more >>
