I nearly didn’t go

I am not a confident country-road driver. I haven’t done much of it in my life, and when I have, I have usually had my partner with me. You see, I doubt my ability to judge a safe overtaking opportunity and execute it, and I’m not too sure what to do if I encounter a kangaroo hopping across the road.  I also doubt the ability and agility of my car, which is still new to me, and without realising it just a couple of worries have shrunk my world. Somewhere along the line I had convinced myself that unfamiliarity equated to inability. 

Burra River at night

Recently  David has been working in a town in our state’s mid-north. He has come home on the weekend  and has been happy to hunker down and enjoy the comforts of our own space during his time off. However I thought that this past weekend I would travel to where he is and enjoy a couple of days seeing new sights.

I must admit that I felt  terrified of the drive, and I almost talked myself out of going. Had I done so I would have missed out on so much enjoyment had I let those anxieties win. But before you have visions of me thundering up Horrocks Highway with Born to be Wild blaring through the car speakers, the cool winter breeze blowing in my hair, let me set the record straight. I sat almost bolt upright, ignoring the audiobook playing in the background, hoping that I didn’t feel the need to overtake anyone and counting down the kilometres until Burra appeared in front of me.

The sense of relief and pride that I felt when I drove down Commercial Street was palpable. My nerves had held out, as did the car, and I was richly rewarded by a fabulous weekend.

At the risk of sounding like a travel guide, I have to extol the virtues of this part of South Australia.  There are many delights to be enjoyed of the adjacent Clare Valley vineyards, which we naturally sampled. Clare Valley is best known for its rieslings, and we found a couple to bring home to share with friends over summer.

But this is winter, and sitting next to open fires in a country pub is de rigueur, and far be it from me to ignore an obvious trope. We found ourselves in the Magpie and Stump in Mintaro sitting right next to the fire. One of the memories that will stay with me is wandering around the wattle-lined streets of that little hamlet, watching wild rabbits bounce around the gardens, entirely unfazed by our presence. 

Burra’s history is everywhere, and we spent part of the weekend exploring some of the sites on its Heritage Passport trail. But it was the ruins of Hampton, an abandoned village, that stayed with me. Standing there, I tried to imagine it as it once might have been: vegetable gardens behind the houses, perhaps goats and chickens in the back gardens, dogs and cats wandering the streets. I imagined miners knocking on neighbours’ doors to walk to work together, washing fluttering in the breeze and children running up and down the streets and it was strange to think of all that ordinary life happening here, where now there was almost nothing left.

It is easy for my imagination to take flights of fancy and picture what life could have been like in this village’s hey ay

When I stayed in Burra as a child, I remember walking along the streets and picking up tiny green stones - copper. In my memory this occurred along the main street, but I’m not going to swear to that. I really wanted to recreate that on this visit, but decades have elapsed since that first visit and, unsurprisingly, tiny pieces of copper are rather harder to find than I remembered. Imagine my happiness, then, when I found a couple of crumbs of copper and azurite on the ground at the Smelters Yards. They came home in my pocket: tiny souvenirs of this weekend, but also a link to the little girl who had once walked these streets looking for green stones. 

Before I was really ready (in more ways than one) it was time to travel home. Once again my nerves were as taut as a violin string, not only because of the journey itself, but because the moment I got into the car the heavens opened.  Water was over the road in many places. Not only did I count down the kilometres to each town on my way home, but I had broken the trip down into 15 minute increments (there were 9 total, in case you were wondering), and I ticked them off as each passed..

But I took it carefully, fifteen minutes at a time, town by town, and I made it safely home.

Nothing magically changed.  I still don’t love country driving, and I still might not fancy overtaking a road train with a kangaroo eyeing me suspiciously from the verge, but I went. I pushed the boundaries of my personal map a little further than they were the previous week, and I have tiny green stones sitting in a glass bowl on my kitchen bench to prove that the person who very nearly didn’t go…

went.