Notebook Lost

The sun had set and darkness was approaching as I drove out of Mildura, about 12 hours drive from home, on the way to Roxby Downs in the arid region of South Australia.

Pulling to the side among the homes of the outer suburbs of Mildura I got out my all important little green notebook ans satellite phone.

Semi trailers and B doubles rolled by making it impossible to hear, so placing the the notebook on the back of the ute I dialled the number for Kootaberra Station and moved away from the traffic as the phone rang.

After that call, leaving a message for my wife and checking my message bank I simply got in the ute and got going.

It was 40 minutes later that I was thinking about where I’d put the notebook and realised I’d left it on the back of the ute. Sure enough it had blown off. No sign of it on the tray or in the trailer.

It’s the notebook that I’ve carried on outback trips for several years and contains, not only all my important phone numbers for the outback stations and contacts, but also GPS waypoints for the landmarks by which I’ve found my way around and relied on for an emergency.

So with little hope of finding the notebook but it being of such value, I set off back toward Mildura, driving slowly, neck craned, chin over the steering wheel, eyes starring at the centre line and the opposite edge of the highway.

The traffic was mostly big trucks and I was afraid of missing a spot as the trucks approached and passed.

Many times I stopped and walked back with the torch, only to find an old cigarete packet, drink bottle or piece of broken plastic. It was a slow trip but I kept my hopes up that I may find the notebook where I first got up to 100kph, just out of Mildura, about 60km back along the highway.

Well, I was getting a bit sick of getting out and walking back on a fools errand. On this occasion I’d been going quite slow so pulled up only just past the object that stood out in the headlights, in the scrubb at the edge of the road. I reached for the torch but the door post got in the way so I got out, leaving the motor running and the lights on, expecting to back again in a matter of 30 seconds. As I approached the object suspended in the small saltbush at the roadside the realisation hit. “My book!” I exclaimed out loud.

It soon became obvious that the notebook had been run over by a B double with its 26 wheels. The pages were dog eared, creased and torn. The back cover was ripped off. More importamtly, the back pages where I had all my phone numbers were missing.

Over the next hour or so I searched the salt bush, grass, prickle bushes and bare dirt along both sides of the highway, for several hundred metres in either direction, finding many pages, some whole and some shreaded. But search as I may, I eventually gave up without finding the all importent page with the phone numbers for Kootaberra and South Gap stations, places where I haven’t yet visited.

This meant dropping in unanounced to Kootaberra Station, the next afternoon, but all was well. Very nice people.

So now I’ll need to get a new notebook and do some transcribing. Sure glad to have the bulk of the information back.

The incident cost me two and a half hours and I continued driving till 1.00am to cover enough country for a good start in the morning.