The RSL club (Returning Services League) was truly an experience, though not quite as raucous as I had expected for a Friday night out at the only bar in town. We found Sean sitting with his friend Lenore, a lifelong Comboynian who works at the local cheese factory. Her kids were there too, kept in the larger hall area in back of us by an invisible fence. All the pubs we've seen in this country are loosely divided into a series of rooms or areas. Some areas are more family-oriented than others, and kids are always forbidden access to the room holding the inevitable row of slot machines.
RSL clubs impose yet another rule requiring any non-member to be sponsored by a member. Sean signed us in the big book at the entrance, just to make it official. He introduced us to another friend who had recently moved to Comboyne from Sydney. In stark contrast to the drunken farmers sitting at the bar, she was stylishly dressed, articulate and instantly friendly, explaining to us some of the complications of local politics. Noticing a few hostile looks coming from the bar crowd, I wondered how much Sean and his bunch are considered pariahs in this traditional little place. The nightly dinner special was only five aussie dollars, served up by a pair of friendly women in the kid room.
One was about two hundred pounds overweight, while the other's upper plate of dentures kept slipping as she chastised the boy in front of me for driving too fast the other day with only a \"P\" permit (new drivers aren't allowed to exceed 80 km/h, I learned). As we waited for our food, the night's big event began: the weekly meat raffle, in which two men (presumably officers in the club hierarchy) drew numbers and announced winners over a P.A. system with great ceremony. Prizes included a pound of ground chuck, lamb chops, steaks and pigs feet --all wrapped up in cellophane just like in the supermarket.
This morning served up more country fun. It's the annual Comboyne \"show\" --a country fair and exposition. Sean said he'd be there in a cow suit promoting his café, but we were disappointed to learn he had run into town (Port Macquarie) on an errand. Kristine predicted that old Noel at the gate would let us in for free, and she was right; we were waved through without hesitation. We were there a little early, but did get a chance to see everyone setting up their displays, including the brave local firemen dressing up a mannequin in firefighting gear. Not far out of town the road dropped precipitously.
It wasn't a very satisfying descent, hurting my hands from squeezing the brakes so hard. At the bottom, after meeting Sean on his way back to Comboyne, we stopped for a second breakfast at a funky café and art gallery amid a little cluster of houses known as Byabarra. Our hosts --Alan and Frith-- were distinctly hippyesque in appearance, and a tad less capitalistic in their approach than their Comboynian counterpart. Both the food and the art were surprisingly good. In a flowing dress and wild hair, fifty-ish Frith described for us her lifelong dream and ambition to drive a herd sheep on horseback across Australia to Perth.
\"Isn't it kinda dry and boring in the middle?\" I asked incredulously. \"Oh we'd just ride around that part,\" came the blithe response. The next fifty kilometers undulated wildly through forests and fields, never giving us a chance to catch our breath with a flat stretch. We rejoined the Pacific Highway at a place called Telegraph Point, steeling ourselves for the worst. With a strong tailwind, we made good time on a 30km piece of road remarkable only for its heavy traffic, comparatively civilized grades and exotic marsupial roadkill. Sean had described Kempsey as \"a shithole\"; Frith called it a \"slum\"
and our guidebook referred to it as \"a large town.'' We took their words for it and skirted the city's center before heading back into green cow pastures, once again along country roads. We arrived in dinky Gladstone exhausted and famished, urgently seeking the café Frith had recommended, in an old Masonic lodge attractively situated on the banks of the Macleay River. My mouth watered in anticipation of the salmon crostini I had selected from the menu. Then a bimboid waitress materialized to take our order and informed us that only tea was served at this late hour. After a tasty but unsatisfying late lunch of carrot cake and iced coffee, Fred changed a flat tire (his first since leaving the States) while I checked out the beds at the local pub --Gladstone's only accommodation.
Initially we had thought we'd camp out tonight, but a ripping wind and threatening skies made us postpone yet again. Besides, I have wanted to spend at least one night in a traditional \"hotel\" (Australian for bar) since arriving here. So it was with bitter disappointment that I discovered the beds to be entirely unsleepable. While the \$10 price tag was certainly attractive, the thought of sleeping in a hammock-shaped bag of springs was not. Wearily, we remounted our bikes to head for the nearest real beds, in South West Rocks over 20km away. Thankfully, it was mostly downwind and pancake flat, following the course of the wide river through fields of startled-looking cows.
After hearing several people wax rhapsodically on the place, South West Rocks came as a bit of a disappointment. The place reeks of downmarket holiday paradise, a prefab little town with little to offer beyond a beachside setting. We found a sleazy overpriced room in a hotel whose most interesting feature was that reception doubled as a liquor store (\"bottle shop\" in local lingo). At least it had decent beds... Also decent was the Chinese dinner we wolfed down. Afterwards, we thought we'd check out the local pub (conveniently located in the same complex as our lodgings), but we turned around after just one peek.
The place looked like purgatory and the only sound we heard when we entered was a thundering belch that was most likely manufactured as a greeting to us. Deciding to forego SWR's elegant nightlife, we retreated to our cavernous hole of a room for a glass of scotch and an initiation to the televisual joys of \"Xena: Warrior Princess.\"