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Urunga. But you ll have to hide the dog.
Aaargh!
Alice! Don t sound so worried. People do it all the
time. I ll call Wiz, my neighbour, and ask him to pick
you up at the other end. Have you still got that map of
my property that I drew for you?
Yes. Oh, Joel, it was so awful at that place. It was like
Colditz for dogs.
It s over now. I ll be there as soon as I can. Okay?
I don t want to drag you away from Sydney.
And I don t want you to be by yourself at the moment.
How s Mr Chang feeling?
We can t call him that any more. It s just Chang. He
already seems a bit happier.
He ll love Bello. It s dog heaven.
Bello. Anything with three or more syllables in Australia
is automatically shortened. Even two syllables is too long
sometimes. I suppose at some point I will be magically
turned into Al.
I flag down a taxi. My ticket to Urunga uses up a
precious $50 note, but at this stage I d give anything to put
some space between me and Bark s of Byron Bay. Not to
mention Dani s boiled-eggs bottom.
Because I board the train with so much junk old
suitcases, a sewing machine and various plastic bags
Chang, hidden in a cardboard box, goes undetected. I
traipse through carriage after carriage, dragging my stuff
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behind me, until I find two unoccupied seats in the full
blast of the loo doorway. Every time I open the flaps of
Chang s cardboard box to give him some air, he wisely
declines. I wish I could. Instead, I try to fall asleep.
After a long journey during which I veer between
dreaming and waking, the driver finally announces that
we are approaching Urunga. I turn to the window and
see two pelicans flying overhead.
Please let that be a good omen.
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sixteen
day. A bearded man walks up to me in the car park
G
and offers his hand. He says his name is The Wizard
Formerly Known As Wayne, and he s Joel s neighbour.
Joel has told him all about me and the situation, he adds
whatever that is , and if there s anything he can do, I only
have to ask.
I look at him properly to see if I ve heard the wizard
thing right. He doesn t look particularly magical. His beard
is short and clipped. He has no pointy hat. No purple cape
with stars. No shoes that curl up at the end although he
does have tanned, bare feet and a toe ring.
I m Alice, I say.
Call me Wiz, The Wizard Formerly Known As
Wayne offers.
Then he takes my bags while I let poor Chang out of
his box, and we make our way to his VW campervan. I
see that Wiz drives with a can of beer on the dashboard.
He also walks like John Wayne after a week in the saddle,
and when he sits in the front seat, his legs are so far apart
that his knee keeps bumping into mine. What the hell has
he got in his underpants? A jar of pickled onions?
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Got the dog on the train alright, did ya? He nods at
little Chang who is cowering at my feet.
They didn t seem to want to check. Maybe they were
just being nice. Chang s been very good though. He
didn t pee anywhere and he wasn t sick. That s a bit of
an achievement for him.
That is the extent of my conversation with The Wizard
Formerly Known As Wayne as we begin the journey. I
try, but give up. He d clearly rather keep his eyes on the
road and concentrate on the art of truck-dodging.
As trucks scream past us, I check my phone. There s
no reception.
Depends where you are, Wiz informs me. Stand
outside the back of the pub and see what happens.
Instead I take in the countryside. I am slowly getting
used to the Australian landscape. So far, I have only seen
it framed by car and train windows, but there are some
things that are becoming familiar the enormously fat,
healthy cows, for a start, and the brilliant green grass. In
this part of the country, at least, there is no drought. It
looks positively lush.
I see a river through the trees and assume it must be the
Bellinger that Joel loves so much where you can famously
drink the same water that you swim in. Suddenly, I long
for a swim and a drink, come to that. I wanted to explore
the beach at Byron Bay too, but I suppose I ll have to do
that another time. Another year. Another decade.
We pass a swimming pool and a golf club, and then
we are in Bellingen itself. It s just as Joel described it:
one street, one pub, one supermarket, one chemist, one
newsagency, one garage, one library, one war memorial.
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There are Christmas lights up everywhere, even though
Christmas is long gone, giving the impression that the
whole street is celebrating something.
Well, it s not London, says The Wizard Formerly
Known As Wayne, offering me a bag of nuts.
We drive for miles, leaving the war memorial far
behind. I am too afraid to ask Wiz how far away Joel s
property is, in case he loses concentration and runs into
a truck. Trucks in Australia don t carry orange juice or
chocolate, as they do in England. They invariably have
huge logs on board, or herds of cattle.
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