There we were, driving happily along in the middle of a great, vast Australian Outback nowhere in our air-conditioned cocoon, minding our own geriatric business, not a living soul, not a car or truck, in sight for miles, when ... WHAM!
We met Eddie the Eagle. Flat out. Full on. No warning.
With a massive, terrifying thud, the huge wedge-tailed eagle, dark brown, white flashes under outstretched wings flung wider than our hired four-wheel-drive SUV, slammed into the windscreen.
He (she?) had risen too slowly from the carcass of a dead 'roo on the roadside. The ubiquitous crows had flown away in the nick of time, as they always do, but the eagle wasn't fast enough. Perhaps he'd eaten too much, or his talons had gripped too tightly. Or he simply took off the wrong way.
Whichever, as we were travelling at the 100kmh speed limit on the tarsealed highway and had become rather blase after seeing so much obvious road kill, Eddie (as we soon named him) met his explosive fate through my carelessness and his own.
Well, we think he met his fate. After pulling to a wobbly stop, composing our frightened selves and turning back to the scene, we found Eddie standing shakily beside the road. He was still alive somehow and was staring at us: malevolently, accusingly.
He had to be badly injured. Hit full bore at 100k! One wing was certainly hanging low and he wasn't moving, but he was still alive. Overhead, many crows and several other wedge-tailed eagles were already circling. Were they waiting for us to leave before moving in? The law of the jungle?
We had nothing with which to dispatch Eddie, and I wasn't keen on getting too close to a hurt and angry eagle anyway. I didn't know what to do.
Judi sensibly said we'd better move on. We couldn't do anything away out here to help Eddie. And besides, we'd better look at helping ourselves. We were in south-western Queensland, a full 1000km west of Brisbane and still 650km, another day's travel, from our destination, the Birdsville Track. We wouldn't get a smashed-up windscreen replaced easily anywhere to the west; best we turn back and find help.
She'd had a bigger fright even than me. Eagle Eddie had been suddenly full in her vision in all his 3m-wing-stretched glory; and then almost in her lap. He had struck the windscreen right in front of her. The screen shattered but held together like a giant cobweb, with a central bulge hurling small rectangles of glass into her face and chest. For a second, she feared Eddie would come right through and hit her. Imagine a hurt and angry eagle - Australia's largest bird of prey - in the front seat with us as she fought him off and I tried to bring the wagon under control! Fortunately, the windscreen on my side had only a few lateral cracks and I could still see to drive.
The last town we'd been through was tiny Quilpie, 60km back. Intriguingly, the railway town was celebrating its centenary this very day, the Saturday of a long holiday weekend. We'd stopped for a pub lunch and watched some of the activities, noting as we left that the local motels and the two pubs had ``no accommodation'' signs posted.
I rang the rental car company's help line from my cellphone but got only a metaphorical shrug of the shoulders and a get-it-fixed-yourself message. Where? Dunno, mate, try Charleville. That was 230km to the east. We limped there at 60kmh, hoping the battered windscreen wouldn't fall in, back to the motel we'd left that morning.
Sorry, no windscreen repair facility here, cobber. Try Roma, said a guy at a garage on Sunday morning as I bought a roll of tape for basic repairs. Another 270km. We got there late afternoon, muttering about rental companies, changed plans, missed chances and the like, and wondering by now whether our love affair with the Outback was the real thing or not.
Funny that. We've found in our extensive wanderings that travellers either love the Outback, the wide open barrenness of Siberia, Mongolia, Iran, Pakistan and the other 'stans and such, or they can't abide them. We've always loved such places, seeing beauty and solitude and nature and hospitality rather than repetitious sameness and discomfort.
This trip was our third into the Aussie Outback, and it won't be our last. We'd started from Sydney in our hire car, a four-wheel drive so that we could go on to dirt roads and remote areas, winding our way across New South Wales through Wagga Wagga and Mildura to Broken Hill; all good highway driving.
We hit a mix of tarseal, gravel and dirt roads from this historic city, still mining and bustling today, as we went north towards Cameron Corner, where the state boundaries of NSW, Queensland and South Australia all meet. Gravel roads were like ours at home; red dirt roads rather different and easy to drive on when dry. When wet? No roads for a novice (or a rental car).
What you see and meet is fascinating. Far-off, flat horizons, huge, ever-changing skyscapes, gums, more gums and mulgas; kangaroos, emus, wild pigs even; roadkill by the tonne, occasional roadtrains and utes; shade after shade of browns and greens and blues and greys ... and every now and then, wonderful people.
One such was at Roma. She and her son ran Roma Windscreens and from 6.30pm on Sunday night on this holiday weekend she tried to locate the right windscreen for our vehicle, ringing all her contacts in a 600km semicircle to the east.
"Leonie here, mate,'' she rang me at 8.30 next morning. "I dunno where it came from yet, but when I woke this morning there was a windscreen for you in me yard. Reckon it was me mate at Dalby [250km away]. He said he'd do his best to get you one overnight. Someone's dropped it off. I'll be round to your motel to get your wagon once I've dressed and put me teeth in.''
Less than two hours later, Judi and I were on our way again, heading for more adventure and colour on a readjusted route to Lightning Ridge and beyond, windscreen fixed, faith and love restored in the people and places of the wonderful Aussie Outback.
