Has progress destroyed our loos?

Double Vision with Charlie Adley

I was on the side of the road, in the middle of nowhere between Sydney and Melbourne. Must have been 40°C in the sun, and although very familiar with hitching, I was new to Australia.

Glancing down at Blue Bag on the ground beside me, I saw it was crawling with thousands of ants. An hour earlier I’d laid a wrapped burger on top of my bag for about five seconds, but clearly that left enough scents of interest to alert these – ouch! – little biting bastards to swarm over my most treasured possession.

Lifting Blue Bag I shook it and swiped it, encouraging an expeditionary force of the formic acid carriers to crawl up my arm.

That was when the pain hit me. My gut, twisting and oh yes oh right now, urgently needing to void itself.

My natural ownership of my intestines had suddenly disappeared. They’d declared UDI and their contents were on the march for freedom.

To my left, to my right, hundreds of miles of flat Australian beige scrubble. Between them, a busy major road.

Nowhere to run, nowhere to pooh, except over there, a tatty old corrugated steel barn, so off I went, clenched of sphincter, to discover it actually had a toilet. The rest of the barn was exposed to the road, so there could be no commando ablutions.

It had to be in the little loo.

The dunny.

Oooohhh. Yuck.

There was no room for Blue Bag, and even if there had been I’d not rest it there. That bag had sat on every surface known to man and nature, but this was alien.

A tiny cubicle with daylight only peeping in below the corrugated sheeting, the air was old, stagnant and roasting. Every single surface had been colonised by beast, bug, mould or fungus, and as soon as I closed the door, I started to sweat like a power shower.

I’d have done it anywhere else. Give me a bush to hide behind and I’m your sub-human, but I couldn’t bring myself to drop my kecks in full view of all those passing motorists.

To read Charlie’s column in full, please see this week’s Galway City Tribune.