My job search led me to discover that I was living in a parallel universe in which casual farm labourers earned more than journalists. A career change was in order. I secured a position working on a vineyard without too much hassle and once I had bought a car, some camping equipment and enough food to last me two weeks I set off towards a place called Dandaragon.
Dandaragon doesn't appear on most maps because for the most part it isn't accessible by sealed roads. It isn't a town – it more of a small, ill-defined region. New fangled inventions such as mobile phone signal and Internet are decades away. If you're travelling there you better have good directions.
I had good directions. They came from Google Earth and were emailed to me by Katy, the woman I would work for. The four-hour journey from Perth to Dandaragon was a complicated one so the print-off of the directions was four pages long.
I'm not too proud to admit that there were a number of wrong turns made on the way but with the help of random strangers and petrol station staff I managed to keep going in the correct general direction. I was quite pleased right up until I made my scheduled turn off a main road onto a dirt track called 'Scenic Drive' sometime approaching mid-night. I consulted my directions to see where I should go next and found that there weren't any more directions. They were cut short either by Katy's email or by the printer I used. Whatever the reason, I was stranded. I had Katy's number but I had lost signal hours ago. To top things off, I was running low on petrol and had passed the last station around the same time as my phone died. I knew I had to be close to the farmhouse I was due at a few hours previously so I continued up the five kilometre length of Scenic Drive looking for a signpost or a vineyard or anything that might get me out my predicament. The only thing that indicated that there might be life on Scenic Drive was a light in what looked like a barn or large shed.
I may not be from the country but I've seen The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes, Wolf Creek and God help me, Deliverance so I know that wandering into a random farmyard in the dead of night invariably means torture, rape and murder. Besides nurturing a racking fear stemming from horror film-induced trauma I was reluctant to saunter onto someone's property in the middle of the night out of a sense of common decency. Unfortunately, I was out of options.
I pulled up at the edge of the property and, like someone having a near-death out-of-body experience, walked towards the light. It was a garage for tractors and other farm-related paraphernalia but was empty of people, be they hill billy serial killers or otherwise. I walked back outside and spotted a fairly swanky-looking farm house further into the property and a light was just barely visible through the curtained front window. I felt like an idiot, but just bit the bullet and knocked on the front door.
A farmer answered and he instantly struck me as a kindly sort. I apologised for disturbing him at such a late hour and explained my predicament. He was unconcerned by my arrival on his doorstep; probably because the lad was quite clearly hammered. Nonetheless, he had a plan to resolve my crisis and the wheels were immediately set in motion. Only two vineyards in the area employed contractors to prune them and he knew both. He threw on his wellies and with trusty dog bounding along behind him he headed towards his ute (that's Ozzy talk for a open-back 4x4). He tore off down the dirt track in the direction I had come from while my 1985 semi-vintage motor struggled to keep pace.
After 10 minutes of desperately trying not to let the bloke get away he pulled up to a gate that opened towards a small, borderline derelict house that looked to be in total darkness. We both jumped out and peered over. There were tents pitched outside the house – it was definitely the place I was after. I thanked the bloke profusely as he jumped smiling back into his ute. He waved away my appreciation and seemed happy to have done a good deed, if in a slight rush to get back to the crate of beer he had been working his way through.
I didn't feel like ruining anyone else's peace and tranquility so I quietly pitched my tent among the others and climbed in. The introductions would wait until morning.
