I can remember Dad, now nine weeks gone, scooching under prospective cars for me in the car yards in Geelong. After I very firmly said there was no way I was getting a Toyota Corolla, because I didn't want a 'girls car', he helped me find the car of my dreams - a '71 Valiant. A Holden, a Ford Fairlane, or any other twenty year old vehicle would have done me equally well. All us girls wanted cool old cars. We lived rurally, and we wanted adventures. It didn't matter these machines were petrol guzzling, taking the pennies that had fallen down the couch to fill them up and eating into our beer and cigarette money.

What mattered is they were cool, big cars that fit everything from long haired boyfriends to Great Danes to surfboards to the entire contents of our wardrobes. They'd line up at share houses and thump into each other after late nights drinking because none of us were very good at reversing, or indeed driving. We'd spend the last of our dole money on petrol to get us a few more clicks down the road, rolling down hills in neutral to the garage. We'd change our own starter motors, tyres, pipes. We learnt how cars run, how to navigate these huge beasts. We learnt how to drive.

You can see my surfboard diagonally across the seats here. My little border collie would jump in the back and curl up in my clothes and damp towels. When we went out to see grunge bands I'd wake up in the morning on the back seat with condensation on the window, in some alleyway in Melbourne, with a dry mouth and likely a little regret. It was big enough to comfortably sleep in, in the days before we were sold dream campers for much, much more than the $1500 my Dad paid for the Valiant. It was either the Valiant or a trip to Hawaii. I never regretted that decision. I loved that car madly.

My boyfriend and I drove it to Robe once, across the South Australian border. Cans of UDL and VB tumbled about the floor. Long silences, because he was a moody fucker. Coming through Mount Gambier and the Blue Lake, the radiator gave up, and we used bush mechanic skills to connect the wiper reservoir via a pipe to the radiator, enough to shoot jets of water to cool her down. We'd stop every 45 minutes and fill it up. Twelve hours of limping down the highway. When I got in her the next day, she was dry of oil and water - not a single morsel. I worried I'd cooked her. I filled up both and she started first go.

Cars like this owned the road. They slid over the hot ribbons of tar disappearing onto burnt horizons. They were family cars and surfer cars and bogan cars. They were the cars of the Australian suburbs. Not quite the powerhouse Charger, which fetches fair prices today, this smaller version came in the legendary Hemi six-cylinder engine in 215, 245, and 265 cubic-inch capacities - mine was a 245. By all accounts, it's performance was a rival to Fords and Holdens and more than capable of holding its own on Australia's vast highways and rugged dirt tracks.

Though it's largely forgotton now, I occasionally see one on the road, and dream. My hand sits upon the stick shift on the wheel, puts it into determined gear, and I cruise off to Western Australia for adventure, a milk crate of food and a pile of books to read, my dog, my board, and a girlfriend. My feet are bare. The floor is gritty with sand. I can roll a cigarette with my wrists resting on the wheel. Into the tape deck I slide L7 or Mudhoney or the Beastie Boys or maybe something mellower like Jeff Buckley or Ben Harper or Lee Scratch Perry or Ozric Tentacles. I have to listen to the whole album, flipping the tape half way through to listen to the remaining two songs then half an album of something else, or maybe songs taped off the radio, two fingers at the ready.

In this dream, the car has not been sold for parts yet because I've run her to the ground. In this dream, there are paper maps and petrol is still cheap, and girls travelling in beat up old cars is rare. Everything is still a wild frontier, unexplored, un-media'd. I'll roll to a stop behind a water tank or in the pine forests, lock the doors and lay on the back seat and drift off to a view of the stars. In the morning I'll slide the dip stick out of the golden oil and be satisfied she'll get me a few more hundred kilometres.

Me and my dream car, heading west.

With Love,

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