The Basics have fueled up the rented van and are cruising around Australia. Today, Wally De Backer from The Basics filed this tour blog for Undercover.
Today’s the big prep day. We go out to the Aboriginal communities west of Alice Springs in the late afternoon, so seven days worth of breakfast, lunch and dinner groceries are called for. I already have my extensive list of breakfast cereals in mind for the shop...Crunchy Nut Corn Flakes, Sanitarium Corn Flakes, Natura Organic Corn Flakes, Home Brand Corn Flakes. You have to stay healthy out in the bush.First up in the morning though, is a radio interview on CAAMA, the Central Australia Aboriginal Media Association. We arrive a little late and are quickly ushered directly into the on-air studio. G-Man, the breakfast deejay tells us during a song that CAAMA has over 420,000 listeners and that our song “Just Hold On” has been getting stacks of requests on the station. He says it’s been a “hit”. We had no idea. It just goes to show how things can bubble under the surface for a band and you might never find out about good things going on...unless you actually travel to the red center in this case. This morning we play a couple of songs acoustically (“What Do You See In Me” and “Hey There”). Tim and I have got a bit of early-morning-backing-vocal rasp (too many Corn Flakes perhaps?) but the songs still sound great, and G-Man is super excited- he’ll have us back in the studio next week and he’s going to keep mentioning our upcoming Darwin shows throughout the week. Brilliant!
Me and Tim fill up an entire shopping trolley in the afternoon. Lollies? Definitely. Mint slice? Of course. But we also have Tim’s extremely detailed prep list for the seven dinners we plan to cook over the course of the week. He’s going to repeat his roast chook and vegies extravaganza (see www.youtube.com/thebasics), I’ve got a curry in mind, and there’s plenty of bbq to be had out in the bush. We stand at the counter chatting about the gastronomic delights that await like two housewives. Even the check out clerk says we’re making him hungry. Everything perishable goes in our massive esky with ice, and we pack the van and our friend Nathan Brown’s 4WD with the rest of the mass of shopping bags.
The first part of the trip out to Haast’s Bluff, where Nathan is the stationed youth worker, is about 170km. It’s a one-lane road, but it’s bitumen and we coast along fine. It’s the last 60kms that’s the real killer. Dirt road, heaps of red sand, and massive corrugation see us shuddering and bumping along for about two hours, very seriously wondering if the Roadside Assistance number on the windscreen is valid out here.
We stop for a camel (Nathan said there was “no chance” we’d see one out here). Photos! A couple of kangaroos give us a scare, bounding out in front of the van at the last minute, but eventually we make it the community at about 9pm.
I figured we’d just crash straight away in Nathan’s cabin because everyone’s pretty knackered, but no-one’s had dinner so Tim and I whip up a super fast and massive spaghetti bolognese (with corn flakes) and suddenly the whole Sunshine Reggae Band arrive at our place and there are many introductions and a few stories. This is going to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Lucky the spag bol managed to serve 8!
Wally
