Piled the whole family into the car last week, drove east and turned south. Kept going all the way to Sydney. I haven’t done a genuine road trip in years. Probably decades. I used to do them all the time when I was a young writer and felt that I had to get myself down to Sydney to schmooze the editors at all the mags I was freelancing for, or wanted to freelance for.
A couple of things I noticed. The road’s better, mostly. Apart from Coffs Harbour, the freeway doesn’t really run through any towns any more, which makes for a duller but faster trip. Much faster. And I kind of resented grinding through the traffic in Coffs so much that I’m not gonna second guess the advantages.
Most of the quirky little food stops along the way, however, have either disappeared, been driven out of existence by fast food chains, or retreated well away from the main drag. We got off the freeway in Bangalow, Yamba, Kempsey, Port Stephens, and Newcastle, adding a couple of hours to the transit time going there and back but getting better breaks for the effort, I reckon.
Sydney was a bit cold and wet, but everywhere is at the moment, innit?
I met with a couple of bookstores about the re-release of Felafel this week, talking to them about logistics and pricing for print-on-demand titles, but we were also taking the kids through some family history before Anna flies out to the UK for a year at the end of the month.
One of the spots we called in was Goldberg’s in Newcastle, one of Jane’s old haunts and still a fave. Had me a very decent breakfast there.
