Picture this: Three guys from Melbourne score some free, last minute tickets to a design conference in Sydney. They hire a car and appoint Ben, the only one with a full license, the task of driving the seventeen hours there and back. Collectively, they have about $20 to last them the whole weekend.
t was Thursday morning when we picked up the hire car, filled the boot with beer, swung by a friend’s house for some Dexies (to keep us awake) and hit the freeway, impressively, only an hour behind schedule.
We had pre-arranged to stay with a girl who lives in this amazing mansion but when we rocked up she told us her housemates had changed their minds and we couldn’t stay there anymore. We called a few other people and eventually, at 1.30am, a girl we had met once agreed to let us stay the night. We got to her place and started drinking what we call an English pint. This is where you find the biggest vessel in the house and fill it with beer. Unfortunately our beer was warm and the vase we found stank so it kind of made us feel sick. Anyway the next thing we knew, the girl whose house we were at, came out of her room in a full-on white cloak, carrying a charred cross and we were like: “What the fuck?” She asked us whether we wanted to go to the park and burn crosses with her. We assumed she must have been taking the piss but it turns out she was serious and a member of some KKK group in the area. We were like: “Maybe we’ll just keep drinking actually”. As soon as she came home and fell asleep we grabbed all our gear and bailed as quickly as we could.
We spent the day at the design conference drinking free V energy drinks and taking naps in the promo bean bags and at about 2am decided to call it a night. Our home was now the hatchback we had driven up in which was parked out the front of China Heights. We put Sam, the tallest, in the back and then Ben and I got in the front and put our feet up on the dashboard. We only had one blanket between us and it was horrible. At one point Ben opened his eyes to see people looking in through the window trying to take photos of us. At about the same time we realised we smelt really bad and headed to the beach to try to get clean. We went swimming in our jeans—which was fucking freezing—and got changed in the car park. I lent Sam my dirty undies, which were still cleaner than his dirty pair.
Day two of the conference was much the same as day one. We parked the car in the underground car park at the venue and slept through most of the speakers. That night we went to the after-party where Ben met a girl who invited him back to her place for the night. So Ben (the only one of us with a license) gave us the car keys and left us to keep partying at Club 77. By 2am we were stupidly tired and pretty drunk and decided we had to get out of there. We made it back to the underground car park and realised Ben hadn’t given us the ticket to get the car out. Regardless, Nick approached the ticket inspector, wreaking of booze, and told him that we’d lost our ticket but needed to get out of there. Nick told him he’d been mugged and only had his bank card and a stat dec from the cops. Two massive security guards were called over and Nick somehow managed to convince them to let us out of the car park with nothing but his bank card and a lie about a stat dec. It was ridiculous.
When we finally caught up with Ben and were on our way home, we made a stop at the Dog on the Tuckerbox, a famous monument just out of Gundagai, and came out of the bathroom to see Ben walking up to a van. From where we were standing we could see that the van had an L-plate on the back and that the driver’s mother was sitting in the passenger seat giving her son a driving lesson.
We saw Ben speak to the driver for a second and then suddenly walk really quickly away from them, while the mother jumped out and ran after him with her fist clenched like she was going to punch him. She caught up to him and instead of hitting him, we saw her drop something in his hand and whisper something in his ear. We were even more shocked when we discovered that she’d given him a handful of pot but, thanks to her, our trip home was actually bearable.
Our trip to Sydney was kind of annoying from the outset for me as I was the only one who could drive and was forced to watch the other two get more and more drunk while I had to keep stopping so they could piss. When we eventually found a place to stay in Sydney, I went straight to bed while the others stayed up drinking. I guess I was sleeping in the bed that belonged to the girl who lived at the house because when Sam and Nick woke me up at about 5am, she was asleep next to me. I told them to piss off but they made me get up and eventually explained that they thought she was with the Ku Klux Klan or something. I stuck with the boys that night and we had a terrible sleep in the car but the next night I met a nice girl who invited me to stay at her place. I slept for hours and got bacon and eggs bought for me in the morning and left to find the guys feeling like a new man.
When I did finally catch up with them, they looked like shit and were desperate to start heading home. They continued to drink beer and at one of the many stops we were forced to make, I saw a black van which had reggae coming from it and figured I’d go check out whether they had any weed which I might purchase from them. I sauntered over and casually asked the driver whether he could help me out but looked up too late to discover that the boy I’d asked looked about 17 and appeared to be sitting next to his mother. They both looked as shocked as I was so I apologised and quickly walked away. The mother jumped out of their van and started storming towards me as I braced myself for a lecture. The next thing I knew though, she dropped a couple of buds into my hand and said “This should see you through guys”. I couldn’t believe it. We got back in the car, turned up the radio and finally headed home in peace.
It Happened
