Arrive alive

We drove up the east coast, flanked by the Berserker Range and the Athelstane Range, and through the Great Green Way. Brisbane to Cairns, on the Bruce Highway, going 110 or 80 or 60 kilometers an hour. Keep left unless overtaking. Past ranches of cattle, past vast fields of pink-topped sugar cane, past kangaroo roadkill and billboards for resorts, island dreams. We drove a Hyundai i20 with no power. We named it Gemma. 

The first twenty minutes, in the center of Brisbane, felt like a video game. It was a test of your senses, keeping left while driving on the right. Carl, our Garmin, lagged, and we missed turns, missed one-way streets, missed the hotel twice before landing. Later, the reverse would become normal, I would stop flinching at right turns, and Phillip would merge seamlessly into roundabouts. Survive the drive. But day two, after leaving Hervey Bay, we weren't comfortable yet, and we'd question Carl's logic about turning right when we were naturally curving right, and we'd get waved into a lot by a police officer in neon yellow gloves, and we'd be asked if we knew we'd entered a school zone because we were going 58 in a 40, and we'd say no, and he'd tell us he'd give us a warning but that we could be prevented from leaving the country if we got a ticket and didn't pay up, and he'd give Phillip a breathalyzer test at two-thirty in the afternoon, and we'd drive off religious about speed limits toward Rockhampton. Free driver reviver ahead.