My dad had a Chrysler Royal in the 60’s I think it fell off the back of a truck... no really, I am sure it did! He got it from a friend of my Grandfather’s. A man my Grandfather had shared a hospital room with in England and one of the earliest “family friends” we had back then when we first arrived in Australia. Dad had scooped up our family of five and relocated us here on the other side of the world. The man that owned the wrecking yard sold the car to my dad for a good price, but there seemed to be some mystery about that car. I don’t think my dad was all that comfortable with the deal. And the man didn’t remain our “friend” for too long after that. The car was white with a red stripe down the side that looked like a tick on one side. And it bothered me, as a little girl, that the tick went the wrong way on the other side. It had red seats inside and fins at the back like the batmobile and three tail lights on either side, in a vertical row, like traffic lights. But the bottom one wasn’t green. I loved the chrome bits and I can remember tracing the letters c-h-r-y-s-l-e-r with my fingers sometimes while we were waiting for dad to unlock the car.
In those days we didn’t wear seat belts and invariably I had to sit in the middle to stop my brothers from squabbling. It just meant they squabbled across me and involved me in their skirmishes. I was happiest when I had the window... (I still am, especially when I fly). Face pressed up to the glass watching the world go by. The memories of those road trips stay with me still. Especially at night, watching the shadows from the street lights rhythmically sweeping across the back of the bench seat and the starry beams of light reaching out to out car and seemingly pass us from light beam to light beam. I loved watching the moon follow the car and the sky turn from blue to orange to black as the sun set. I loved watching the windscreen wipers effortlessly wipe the raindrops away over and over and over, no matter how much it rained they just kept on doing their job, tirelessly.
It was from the backseat of the Chrysler that I first saw Lake George. It had water in it then. We had driven from Sydney to Canberra late in the day and it seemed an incredibly long way to me. It was dark and drizzly. The click click of the windscreen wipers was lulling me to sleep, and I’d grown tired of watching the little red bars on the speedometer filling up and emptying as the car accelerated and slowed. And then Lake George appeared suddenly as vast dark void with only the waves at the shoreline defining its foremost edge. “Is that the sea?” I asked. “Its Lake George” came the reply. We are nearly there.
To this day I always feel a sense of relief on my way to Canberra, when I reach Lake George and I am “nearly there” ...driving around the edge I reminisce about the family road trips.
And when I fly to Melbourne I always look out for it from the plane, following the Federal Highway with my eyes along the edge until it veers off unexpectedly on its way to Canberra.
The roadway still hugs the hills on the western side, though it has been raised and rebuilt in later years. It is a different world looking west. The hills rise sharply out of the plain and in daylight they seem to swim with the oils of the eucalypts, gray green, like an Arthur Streeton painting. The sky above takes on an intense polarised azure. But it doesn’t hold your attention for long, because the vast empty primordial grandeur of Lake George yawns away to the east.