The great escape

IT WAS MY birthday the day I got my driver’s licence. I had just turned 17, and technically, I had been of legal age for three and a half hours when I sat the test. My appointment was the first of the day: 9:30am. I was shivering with nervous energy, more prepared than I had been for any of my school exams. Like a typical teenager, I needed this, I told myself. I needed to escape. I was going to get my licence, drive my friends around, blast loud music and never come home! Years later, I learned that desire never goes away. And rather than escapism, what I actually yearned for was independence, control and freedom.

Ever since I was a child, with my nose pressed against the rear passenger-side window and my family’s summer belongings piled up around me, I have equated the car with freedom. Like many Australian families, every December, as thesoundtrack usually made the cut. We’d play ‘I Spy’ games and do radio quizzes. I knew the route by heart and had landmarks memorised to guide the journey. ‘Scary Trees’ equalled one-quarter of the way. ‘Big Bob’s Burgers’ meant we were halfway. ‘The Big Dinosaur’ told me there were 45 minutes to go. This all changed the year a rural bypass was built, of course. Gone were the award-winning pie shops, fresh fruit vans, shell-art shopfronts and the musk sticks I would beg my dad to stop for at a roadside sweet shop.