"Freemantle, near Perth"

since 27 Nov, 2000

I've just gotta tell you this story. It was simply just too amazing.

(It also made Column8 on Fri 1st Dec 2000 :-)

Last weekend I was travelling with 2 friends to Bathurst for the annual V8 car races. It was Friday night & we were about 30kms North of Bathurst heading along a dirt road to stay overnight on a friend's property. It was about 10:15pm when we came across a car, an old Kingswood I think. There were two people next to it flagging us down madly. I pulled over & wound the window down an inch. The couple came over & the lady, in an agitated state, spoke very quickly. I only caught some pertinent words such as "going to Perth", "lost", "half a tank of petrol".

Deciding that we'd need to hear more of the story before we could determine their problem, the three of us got out & asked them to explain a bit more slowly what their problem was. What we heard was essentially...

They were returning to Perth,
They had left from Punchbowl in Sydney that afternoon
They had half a tank of Petrol
They wanted to be in "Port Aguta" that night (another 15hours drive)
They wanted to be across the nullarbor by the next day
They wouldn't have any more money for fuel until next Thursday

Now, to be fair, these people weren't asking for money or anything like that, they simply seemed *a bit* lost at this stage. We realised they'd been through Bathurst so we asked what went wrong at that point:

"We saw the sign"
"What sign?"
"The sign showing us which way to go"
"What, the sign to Orange (the next town on the way to Perth)?"
"No, to near Perth"

Oh bugger! The penny dropped with the three of us right then & there. By God's grace alone I just kept a straight face. Tony walked off because he couldn't contain himself & Andrew had more than hilarity in his voice. We were 30kms up "the Freemantle Road"! Freemantle, near Bathurst, is one of those spots on the map that you never see when travelling through at night; no township, no homes, no lights, hardly an intersection really; whereas the "Freemantle" they're thinking of is the area south of Perth City that consists of about 1/4 of Perth's 1 million inhabitants! A slight difference of ~249,990 in population & 3600kms of driving. Desperatley looking for some way in which these people could be helped (Tony in fits, believing that they were well & truly beyond that), I asked...

"Have you got a map?".
"Oh yes"

& I was delightfully suprised until I saw it; I was presented a book showing a whole map of Australia about 4 inches wide. It was a gross road map showing major towns like Sydney, Canberra, Bathurst, Broken hill, Port Augusta, Perth etc. Absolutely no useful detail. I turned to the cover to find that it was a Sydney Road map. `Oh brother how am I gonna explain this without sounding like I'm taking the mickey...'

"Well, I think I can see your problem... this map, although showing you the major towns, really isn't detailed enough to show you all the turns to get home to Perth."
"Oh"
"When you get back to the service station in town, you'd better buy a large foldout map of Australia"
"Really?"
"Yes, & I s'pose you realise you won't make it to Port Aguta tonight?"
"Oh, ok."
"Well, head back down this road, cross the bridge..."

Absolutely Unbelieveable.