And so on to Birdsville.
They are making a bitumin road to Birdsville, and for many Kilometers we were driving on the original dirt track, and - amazingly - alongside the new sealed road. There were no signs to indicate we could go on the new road. There was NO ONE around, working on it. It was surely the Devil's Temptation.
We bumped along beside the smooooooth blackness. We might as well have been children with our noses pressed against the candy store window. MMMMMmmmmmmm Bitumin.
We could see where the temptation had become too much for other drivers and where they had crossed over onto the sealed road. Their dusty tracks continued for a while on the blackness, then evaporated and could be seen no more. It made you wonder if that too had happened to the cars and their inhabitants. Had they sold themselves to the devil for the sake of a smoooth road? Were they now, in fact, on an endless hellish bitumin highway, with no turns from the road, and no pies or cooling drinks for which to stop?...
Or perhaps had they just reached the Birdsville pub a lot quicker?
Was this the ultimate temptation?
It was just too much, and I felt like Christian leaving the marked path in the Pilgrim's Progress, as i gave the nod to follow suit and cross over to 'the dark side'.
But it was no 'Valley of Despond' like Christian's detour, but smooooooth and black, and a relief from the bumping,
...and a bit sticky,
...and with quite a lot of crackling sounds as the free bitumin chips flew up against the caravan
...and we just got to thinking what the hot probably still sticky tar was doing to our trusty wheels...
and we were back on the unsealed road in a hurry.
No devil, no temptations put in our path to test us, just the QLD roads authority being sensible.
Made us need to get to that Birdsville pub even quicker; our minds were clearly fuddled, and we had beeen on the road too long!
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