Mick had been on the road for four days and had two more days to go before he reached home in Perth. When he wasn't driving he was unloading stuff, or sleeping while his co-driver Marty took over.
I was travelling across the Kimberley in Western Australia by road train – a 160ft-plus, three-trailer, 64-wheel truck, which might as well have been a locomotive as far as the kangaroo was concerned.
I met the tattooed "truckies" in Alice Springs, and with personalities bigger than their beer bellies, wearing shorts, "thongs" and singlets, Marty and Mick were every bit the Crocodile Dundees of the road. They spoke of "sheilas" and warned me: "There's no dunny stop, so if you're coming with us, you'll have to pee in a bottle." As a farmer's daughter I can take most things in my stride, but aiming into a bottle seemed a tricky proposition.
