An Aussie Wedding

Notes from a roadtrip into the outback

We went to a wedding—deep in the Australian outback. So deep, they say the skies there are some of the darkest on Earth. We landed in Australia. A landing made memorable with five glasses of wine, prescription painkillers, and a $4000 fine for carrying beef pickle. Who knew beef would get us into trouble even outside of home.

She was waiting on the porch—a star of yesteryear. Thirsty, haggard, but still a head-turner. The keys were in the fusebox. The weed, in the glove box. She roared to life—a V8 engine with enough power to pull all the baggage we’d been carrying for days, months, years.

We drove past the great ocean, through breathing rainforests and a lake so blue, you’d write a song. And then, into a fiery desert where the tarmac dissolved to dust.

Dead kangaroos lined the road—rotting like bad decisions. Now and then, a young wallaby would dart from the scrub, a flicker of reason you almost followed. A solitary bar, a lone bakery, a one-horse town built around a 500-year-old gum tree. The only open door - an op-shop with an earnest keeper, disappointed she couldn’t find us a guitar.

Lizards with stump tails. Lizards with frills. Lizards that played dead, pretending to be roadkill. In the beating sun, we arrived at the wedding— a row of goat carcasses crucified over burning coals, smoke rising like an offering to the gods. A feast being readied for 400 souls gathered to celebrate a marriage twenty years in the making.

The signs were there. Always there. One read: Watch Out for Snakes. But we chose the other: Good things come to those who wait.