We had to push through all the crowds to take this photo – the 1770 cairn – a very important piece of history.
Bec: Now, we need to set some ground rules for this road trip.
Matt: Yes we do. As driver, I’m in charge of the windows. I pick up or down. If the windows are down at speeds greater than 60km/h I find it distracting.
Bec: Molly gets anxiety, and likes the window down so she can sniff things. Thus, if she’s on my lap – I get to choose when the window goes down.
Matt: Sure. As long as it doesn’t annoy me. *click*
Bec: What was that clicking sound?
Matt: Nothing.
Bec: Have you put the child lock on the window?
Matt: Nope.
Bec: Why won’t the window go down?
Matt: Maybe it’s broken.
Bec: Turn the child lock off please. You promised! I want the window down!
Matt: It’s too distracting and I’ll crash. Don’t you want us to be safe?
Bec: You perving on the Swedish backpackers in Wicked Campers you always look at will make us crash, not a window being down.
Matt: Um, I think you’ll find they’re German. You can tell by their accents.
Bec: How can you hear their accents?
Matt: I heard them at the last petrol station. They were talking about how lonely they were in Australia and how attractive all the men were. Particularly the ones with close cropped haircuts.
Bec: You mean bald men?
Matt: I prefer to think of us as mean with closely-cropped haircuts. It means we have lots of testosterone you know.
Bec: If you don’t unlock this window right now, I can promise you you’ll be wishing you had a Wicked Camper to sleep in, because there’s no way you’ll be staying the house with Molly and I.
Matt: *unclick*
Seven hours later, Bec and Matt arrive in 1770. Bec has a nap. Matt goes fishing. Several hours later, Matt returns.
Matt: So, while you’ve been napping, I’ve been out fishing in my boat.
Bec: When did you buy a boat? I thought we agreed no boats until we paid off the house.
Matt: ‘Boat’ was an aspirational adjective. I was just in the canoe. Anyway. So I caught a MASSIVE fish.
Bec: Is it in that bucket? Are you on tonight’s ‘Coastwatch’?
Matt: No, it was SO massive, I was worried it might have actually been a previously-undiscovered species of whale, so I let it go.
Bec: Wise decision. It might have sunk the ‘boat’, right?
Matt: No. I was going to keep it, but then The Sea Shepherd appeared and started trying to board. I left my water cannon at home and had no way to repel them, so I threw it back and pretended I was doing some science, just in case.
Bec: Was your ‘science’ an experiment to see the affects of sunburn and fish smell on the male human sex life? If so, I fear the results may alarm you.
Matt: You won’t be joking when I bring us home dinner. Either way, did you see the cairn?
Bec: What?
Matt: You can just see it out the window. Look, up on the hill.
Bec: I’m not falling for that. Cairns is about a thousand kilometres away. Even I know that.
Matt: No, the cairn. Commemorating Cook’s landing in 1770.
Bec: You know how much I love history.
Matt: Yes. Did you see the cairn? It’s a like a pyramid.
Bec: No. But that does sound kind of interesting I suppose. I always wanted to see the pyramids.
Matt: It was built in 1970. They raised the money for it in less than a month.
Bec: Wow. That’s actually impressive considering the pyramids took thousands of years to build. So where is it? I can’t see it.
Matt: There, see. Up on the hill.
Bec: I can’t see a pyramid.
Matt: It’s not a pyramid, it’s a cairn. You need to lower your expectations.
Bec: I can’t see it.
Matt: Up there.
Bec: That thing that looks like it’s about one metre high? How did Captain Cook land all the way up there on the hill?
Matt: He didn’t specifically land there. It’s just a commemorative cairn indicating the fact that Cook landed somewhere near the Town of 1770 in the year 1770.
Bec: Had he run out of place names by then? Or was this the only place he discovered that year?
Matt: No, the town was named 1770 in 1970. Before that it was called ‘Round Hill’.
Bec: Well that’s infinitely more interesting then. Either way, that just looks like a pile of rocks, not the pyramid you promised.
Matt: It’s not just a pile of rocks. It’s a very important piece of history.
Bec: What makes it different from any other pile of rocks?
Matt: It has a plaque.
